How to Learn Piano Online and Have Fun
Have you ever thought about learning piano but you haven’t really gotten the whole teacher-student thing to stick? Maybe you’ve tried a few lessons and you just feel like it wasn’t quite right for you. You might even have a digital electric piano that you like but you just feel like you aren’t using to your full ability.
There’s a lot of other factors in which going to piano lessons isn’t really the best option for you—be it money, time, or a lack of focus or commitment. Everyone knows that taking music lessons is expensive, and that’s because it’s a very special type of skill that takes a lot of knowledge and hard work.
Maybe you live in an area where there isn’t a music school and the only other piano teacher in your town is too expensive or too boring. There are a ton of reasons not to take piano lessons with a real teacher. But maybe there are some other solutions you can try to resolve this issue.
- In fact, if you’re interested in learning how to play piano or keyboard in a fun and interactive fashion, then look no further then Piano for All. This course features 10 in-depth eBooks that contain 200 video lessons and 500 audio lessons. And best of all, the course works on PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, or any Android phone or tablet. Get your copy of Piano for All today while supplies last!
Now, after all, learning to the play the piano is a really rewarding experience. You can play for parents and other family members, join a band, get into recording and production, or simply just learn how to play Christmas songs when it’s time for the holiday season. Regardless of your motives to play the piano, you might still need a solution that will allow you to learn in a more convenient way.
That’s where the Internet can come into the picture. You might not realize this, but there are so many resources out there that are perfect for learning piano, and you can do them all on your very own computer or even print things and make little books. And a lot of these resources are really fun to use as well.
In this article, I’d like to tell you about some great alternative learning methods that I’ve tried so that you can learn the piano from the convenience of your own home without worrying about the price and stress of finding a teacher. While some of these solutions might cost some money, there are also some benefits attached to them.
Before we move on to our next section, if you find yourself in need of a new piano to begin learning on, use our interactive table below to compare some of the most popular digital pianos on the market:
| Photo | Model |
|---|---|
 | Yamaha P-515 |
 | Casio PX-870 |
 | Yamaha YDP-165 |
 | Roland RP-102 |
 | Casio PX-560 |
Why Learn Piano Online?
One of the primary benefits of learning the piano online is that you can do it on your time. That means you don’t have to worry about missing a lesson, or figuring out transportation to the lesson. It also means that you don’t have to lose money if you’re feeling ill and need to cancel a lesson. The lessons will be waiting for you on your computer.
Now, while learning piano online does seem glamorous, and certainly more convenient than getting a real teacher, there is still quite a lot of argument in favor of getting a real teacher. For instance, what are you supposed to do if you have a question about something? Are you supposed to simply leave a comment on the YouTube video and hope the instructor will answer it? That could take days.
Or perhaps you’re choosing a method that doesn’t grant you access to any sort of authority. I’ll talk more about these methods later. What are you supposed to do then? And how are you supposed to know if you’re playing the right thing if no one is there to (gently) remind you of the proper technique, notes, etc.?
I believe that with the convenience of learning online also comes some limitations. I absolutely support students who choose to get a teacher at a music school or some similar place, but I also support those who are brave enough to handle everything on their own. It’s sometimes way easier, and sometimes way harder, so it’s an interesting trade-off.
With all of this in mind, if you need help getting some great resources for learning the piano online and ensuring that you have fun, I have some suggestions for you.
Online Courses
While YouTube is free, it might be too tough to get a consistent experience in order to ensure you’re learning everything you’re supposed to. For instance, if you can play “Let it Go” because of a tutorial but you don’t know what a C chord is, you won’t have much long-term success.
Buying an online course is a better way to get a more cohesive experience. Piano For All is an online piano learning course that consists of 9 books and over ten hours of audio and video. And it’s only $40.
This is a very rhythm oriented course, which means you’ll learn more about chords and playing in a group than you might with other traditional resources. This can be a blessing and a curse, especially if you’re more interested in learning Bach than Rolling Stones songs. But if your aim is to play in a band, this learning style is fantastic.
Here’s a list of the books it comes with:
1. Party Time / Play by Ear / Rhythm Piano
2. Blues and Rock n Roll
3. Chord magic
4. Advanced Chords
5. Ballad Style
6. Jazz Piano Made Easy
7. Advanced Blues & Fake Stride
8. Taming the Classics
9. Speed Learning
There’s also a tenth book that deals with helpful tips on things like how to choose between a semi-weighted digital piano or a digital piano with weighted keys.
It’s a great resource, and definitely a perfect supplement if you’re interested in learning piano mostly if not exclusively online. Below, take a look at a video review of the Piano for All eBook course:
YouTube
For the past decade, a massive majority of video streaming has funneled into one single platform: YouTube. Because of wonderful implications for revenue on this dominant platform, streamers from all over the world are constantly uploading videos covering nearly every topic, ranging from news, cooking, art, and music, including music tutorials.
You see, YouTube has made it possible for people who know about music to share their knowledge with the world in exchange for subscriptions and ad revenue. You might have thought that people on YouTube were just doing music tutorials for free, out of the kindness of their hearts, but in actuality, they have an incentive for being as helpful as possible. The more helpful they are, the more views (and more money) they’ll get.
Don’t feel disillusioned though, this is still a wonderful resource for you. YouTube is absolutely amazing. There are hundreds of thousands of free piano teaching tutorials. Videos can range from a few minutes to well over twenty, the longer videos going into extreme detail about everything from rhythm to melodies, and even things like complex jazz chords.
There are options for players of all levels. If you’re a beginner but you’re moving up to an intermediate level, there are specific YouTube piano learning channels based on that level.
Now, YouTube is a great resource, but there are a couple of issues with it in my opinion. You can easily get too distracted and click on viral videos, which can disrupt your learning. You might also find trouble finding more videos by the same channel, as a lot of really helpful streamers have only posted one video. This lack of consistency can be frustrating.
E-Books
With the introduction of tablets and the Amazon Kindle came e-books. But did you know that there are actually several e-books available online that can teach you the piano?
Professional teachers who are dedicated to making learning convenient and easy design these books and put them online for the public to purchase, and there are also free ones as well. There are plenty of them so you can simply Google for piano learning e-books.
If you have a tablet, you can download these to your tablet and place it on your music rest so you don’t have to play in front of your computer. This can be a nice way to simplify the process, and it works great if you already have a tablet.
If you’ve got a lower budget and you want something to get started with, check out the Piano Encyclopedia. It’s 111 pages and it’s really great for learning the basics, although it’s not really designed for kids.
Websites That Sell Sheet Music
Suppose you’ve gotten some lessons in the past but you’re no longer taking lessons. That means you can probably read a little bit of music, right? Well fortunately, you don’t have to have a teacher in order to get new songs.
There are several websites that have large archives of sheet music you can download in order to learn them yourself (a lot of them are blogs run by piano teachers themselves, in fact). Now, this solution isn’t for everyone, because you need to know at least beginner level piano.
But the great thing about these websites is that there are thousands of songs available, even current pop music and movie scores. And they come in all sorts of different levels, so wherever you’re at, there will be something for you.
Using Blogs
If you’re a savvy search engine user, then you know that when you search for something, pretty much anything, blog posts will pretty much always come up. And believe it or not, blogs hold a lot of the power when it comes to finding resources for learning piano online.
There are two types of blogs in this area. First, there are articles like this one that can help you find resources in order to enhance your experience. Second, there are ones that are actually resources meant to teach you piano.
Try searching for a few, and you might be surprised by what you learn. You might find that there’s a similar experience between learning on blogs as there is on YouTube. Perhaps one blog post might give you partial information, but the writer hasn’t written anything new for a while and so you’ll have to find another blog that deals with the same topic.
But the problem is that the other writer might teach it a different way.
However, gleaning bits of information here and there from blogs is a perfect way to get you learning. Even reading new ones each week can help you get new information that you can apply on your own piano.
Conclusion: What to Do
Now that I’m more on the advanced side of my experience with the piano, having taken lessons for seven years and played for over ten, I’m pretty familiar with music theory and I know every basic chord, every scale, mode, etc. However, I’ll never be done learning. Although I don’t take lessons anymore, I am always watching new tutorials on jazz melodies or reharmonization techniques or alternate theory that can expand my mind and help me create.
So I actually use almost all of these techniques, with the exception of buying courses geared more toward those who are musically new. The only time I would buy a course like that would be to use it for teaching a student of mine.
So I buy sheet music online, I read blogs, I download e-books, I watch a lot of YouTube, not just for learning piano, but for other things like guitar and music production. You wouldn’t believe the kind of resources there are out there. All you need is a little bit of time and willingness to learn.
As you learn the piano online, your commitment shouldn’t waver. It can be easier to slack off without the accountability of a personal teacher, so you’ll have to keep yourself accountable. Try setting goals for yourself. Maybe one week you can learn a song, and then the next week you can focus on scales. The more you put into structuring your own experience, the more you’ll get out of it.
Learning music online is really fun, and while it’s different, it can be really effective. Obviously there are benefits to taking the traditional approach, but modeling that and expanding on it is always exciting. With these resources at your fingertips, I hope you can find a lot of success in learning the way you want to.
- If you’re still interested in learning how to play piano or keyboard, get your copy of Piano for All today, which features 10 eBooks, 200 video piano lessons and 500 audio piano lessons!
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