The Next Best New Way to Learn to Play Piano

January 18, 2021 Leslie Young

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The next best new way to learn to play piano – yeah, right, you’re thinking…

Yes, really! I spent the last 30 years reinventing how to teach piano. It’s revolutionary. It’s easy. It takes very little practice time (think ten minutes most days). It’s fun because there’s nothing to memorize. If you can read words, you can teach yourself or your child to learn to play piano at home. If you are a professional piano teacher, it will advance your students rather quickly – even the ones you need to “reboot” from scratch.

Not your mama’s learn-to-play piano books

In the past, the method to learn to play piano was like learning to read a book by memorizing whole words, and the instructions were like this:

Think of a piano as a book.
Hold the book in your hands this way and do not move them.
Here is a word for you to say: “the” – say it with me.
Now you say it yourself.
A rather illogical approach for reading music, wouldn’t you say?

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Here’s a page from a typical beginner book to learn to play the piano. It’s a picture of the middle part of a keyboard with a key labeled as Middle C.

The instructions are:
The Middle C key is in front of the group of two black keys under the brand name of your piano.
Play this Middle C key with your right hand thumb 1.
Play the D key with your right hand pointer finger 2.
Play the E key with your right hand middle finger 3.

Here’s what the CDE keys looks like on a staff. Play C D E with your right hand thumb 1, finger 2, finger 3:

Does this teach “how” to read music? Did this teach anything for the student to use to think on his own? No. A picture was shown; the directions were given; the directions were followed.

This is like the whole word approach to teaching English in a Reading Class. The student is shown a word often enough until it is recognized and learned. But if a reader knows the sounds represented by individual letters, then any word can be read, in any book, at any time.

Until now, learning to play piano was like learning each word of a book on sight. Basically . . . memorizing.

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The modern new way to learn to play piano

Today there’s a brand new way – a logical way to learn to play piano – a modern way, based on the educational principles of Instructional Design (which is basically learning one thing at a time).

The Revolutionary Piano Method

Learn how to think, not just memorize.
Learn the right hand first.
Learn the left hand next.
Play both hands together.
Then learning timing.

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The Thinking Process:

Under the piano brand name is a group of three black keys.

Pretend to pick them up with the right hand. The thumb naturally curves around the left side of the first black key, the one on the left of the group of three.
Slide the thumb down toward you and play the white key under the thumb. This is center F – the key that is in the center of the piano keyboard.
Skip the next key to the right of center F and play it. This is the A key.
Skip the next key to the right of A and play it. This is the C key.
Skip the next key to the right of C and play it. This is the E key.
Look at the yellow keys below that you have just played:

The F A C E keys that you played are drawn on paper as four spaces with five lines in-between them:

Now that you have learned the space keys F A C E, use them to learn the line keys.

By always starting with the closest space to name and find the line key, you will soon learn the line names and locations of the line keys!

Check out the sample pages in Lesson Book 1 for more illustrations of this simple Thinking Process to learn to play piano.
https://piano4me.org/beginner-series/