Can we learn keyboard on our own??

Hi,

Am new to this community. I got great interest in learning keyboard playing.

Is it possible to learn keyboard with just reading online tutorials and practicing them??

If it possible, which keyboard u suggest to buy??

Hm. I taught myself some of my keyboard playing skills, but there's a lot you can learn from a teacher.

Hi,

Am new to this community. I got great interest in learning keyboard playing.

Is it possible to learn keyboard with just reading online tutorials and practicing them??

If it possible, which keyboard u suggest to buy??

If youre a genius, maybe. And I dont think you mean to become an amature from it.

If youre a genius, maybe. And I dont think you mean to become an amature from it.

definitely not!:) I wanna learn it to the fullest!

which keyboard is good to start with a teacher??

Uh, I learned on Steinway's, so I really wouldn't know...

I have a crappy yamaha keyboard, it does me well enough, but I try and practice on the pianos at school whenever I can.

I've got a Casio. the best advice i can give you is try and get one with 77 or 88 keys so you're not frustrated when you can't go below C.

Wow that's a n00bish question :) just kidding. The answer is: of course. you can learn any instrument without a teacher. Though they do help.

As posted above, a casio or yamaha. Full size though. None of that stupid, 4 octave stuff.

But it might be better to get a piano. Even a bad piano is better than a good keyboard when it comes to sound authenticity.

Yeah, you want to get a real piano. Try to get one with 88 keys. The sound and touch from real pianos cannot be recreated by electric ones.

Even a bad piano is better than a good keyboard when it comes to sound authenticity.

Actually, I'm not sure I'd go that far. (Just to stir up some debate. :D) I'd rather play a Yamaha stage piano or Clavinova than a really bad upright. The purist may cry, but the action really can be better.

I started piano on my own. I bought a Yamaha PSR-275 66-key keyboard on sale at Wal-Mart for $100. Although they list for about $275 and I think I got a pretty good deal for the $100 because I never saw them that cheap again.

I pretty much used the piano voice only because my sole intent was to learn the piano. The Yamaha served me well to start out. I never had a problem with on 66-keys for beginner lessons and pieces.

Not much later I got a free acoustical upright. I can’t imagine going back to the keyboard now. I used the sustain pedal all the time now and the feel and sound is much better. Although the Yamaha keyboard did have a sustain pedal option, I just never bought one. The pieces I play now require a sustain pedal.

One nice thing about an electronic keyboard is that you can use headphones and practice anytime without any worry about neighbors, etc. I live in the backwoods so I don’t need to worry about neighbors.

I currently have five acoustical pianos. I got them all free and I’m restoring some of them. I tune my own piano. It’s not all that hard actually. I use a Korg tuning meter. I just use the meter to tune a single string in a triplet then tune the other two by ear. It works for me. In fact, I’ve had people compliment on how well my piano sounds (not my playing! ha ha) By the way, I don’t use all the fancy tools of a professional piano tuner. I just use a guitar pick and pluck the string I want to tune individually. It works just fine for me. I did buy a tuning ‘hammer’ (wrench).

The entire action can be removed from an old upright piano extremely easily. Hammer can be repaired and/or reshaped pretty easily too. I’m talking just hobby quality here, but it’s not shabby. I mean if you get the piano for free you have nothing to lose if you screw it up right? You can improve the sound of an old upright tremendously just by putting in a little bit of effort. You can also adjust the action on all the keys so they are all identical. It might sound like a lot of work, but it’s just an easy job times 88.

Finally, if you have money to spend, I hear there are some really nice 88-key electronic keyboards that have very good sound and feel to their keys. You’d be talking at least $1000 and up for the really nice ones. But if you need the quietness of headphones because of neighbors or family, then it might be well worth going the electronic route.

I wouldn’t hesitate to start out on a 66-key keyboard. It’s not all that confining, and if your real intent is to learn to play you can just forfeit any pieces that go outside of that range for now. It’s a good place to start.

There also seems to be a misconception that if you start out on a keyboard you won’t learn the real ‘feel’ of a real piano. I wouldn’t worry about that in the slightest. Moving from a crappy keyboard to a real piano is EASY! Going from a real piano back to a keyboard is what’s HARD!

Of much MORE IMPORTANCE than the instrument you learn on is your TEACHER! Yes, you can self-learn if you are keen at gleaning information, a self-motivator, and have a clear understanding of your goals, AND you are seriously willing to learn from what you read.

However, one of the greatest advantages of a teacher is not just the lessons, but the MOTIVATION! You’ll learn much faster if you have a teacher who has expectations of you. It’s also important that the teacher is motivated and interested in YOUR PROGRESS! There are a lot of crappy teachers out there who will just teach standardized piano methods and take your money. You can do that yourself for the price of the method books. You need a MENTOR more than anything. Someone who will guide you and take an interest in where YOU want to go. A good teacher will work with pieces and lesson YOU like, and not just shove traditional crap rotely down your throat.

For a free online teacher I recommended Chuan C. Chang’s free online book: “Fundamentals of Piano Practice”

Piano Lessons: Learning and Teaching Piano, Piano Tuning.

Best of luck to you!

And do yourself a favor and seek out that really GREAT teacher/mentor.

There also seems to be a misconception that if you start out on a keyboard you won

one word:

yes!

i tought myself when i was 3!!!

Anyone who tells you that you can't learn without a teacher is completely wrong. It is, however, always a great idea to get a teacher if you can, and you may not develop yourself to your full potential on piano if you don't have proper foundation. It's all in what you expect of yourself.

I think that you can learn to play without a teacher.But, if you want to be good at it, or avoid injuries you should learn with an experiencedd teacher.

My grandmother gave me a keyboard for Christmas last year. It's a Casio. I was usually playing the upright piano but now the keyboard has also become of interest to me.

It's helped me a lot in my playing better.

* wonders if coolmac is still around *

Okay, those who say it is impossible to learn piano without a teacher/instructor are entirely WRONG. Learning piano without a teacher is far from impossible, it's just harder. I'm saying this from personal experience. I'm 17 and I started teaching myself piano from "How to Read Music" books. No kidding. I started at age 11 or 12 and by the time I was 14 I was playing difficult concert pieces by Beethoven, Liszt, and Brahms.

When people say you can get overuse injuries and all that, it is perfectly true. I just happened to be lucky. I only decided to get a teacher because I was getting pretty good and I just didn't know where to go next.

Bottom line (IMO) - You don't need a piano teacher to learn to play piano from the start. If you have the motivation, good, reliable resources (method books, ect.) and good intuition you should do fine in the beginning. You have to push yourself into more and more difficult things, but you have to be careful how hard you push yourself. This is why having a good teacher is recommended.

On the subject of pianos/keyboards, I learned on a really crummy, horribly out of tune upright. Now I am a more advanced player and my main instrument is a Yamaha Clavinova with 12 assorted broken keys. It suits me just fine, and I'm even playing such delicate pieces as Debussy. My bottom line here - Getting a keyboard with weighted keys is comparable to getting a Steinway as long as you don't have any competitions to prepare for. :toothygrin: To a begginner, the difference in touch and sensitively won't matter as much as it would to somebody who has to play a real piano in a recital or whatnot. That said, it goes without saying to practice on a real piano (preferably a non-upright if available) whenever you get a chance.