Designing a Clear Roadmap for Your Self-Taught Piano Journey
1. Planning The Unknown 🫣
When learning anything self-taught it can be difficult to know what to learn and when to learn it. This is why having a teacher can be such an advantage, because they have been through the process themselves and have likely seen and helped many people acquire the exact skillset that you are hoping for!
However, learning the piano self-taught also has many advantages (e.g. it’s much cheaper) and with a clear roadmap, it’s more than possible to negate some of the downsides and make big strides towards your piano goals!
But, how do you actually get there? How do you know what to learn? How do you know what order to learn it in? How do you know how long it’s going to take and how long it’s supposed to take?
2. Getting Clear on The Goal 🎯
Well, firstly it’s important to ask yourself why you want to learn the piano and what you want to get out of it. Many people consider learning the piano to be one skill, when In reality it’s a set of skills. We can think of each of these skills as an empty cup and as you learn, you are filling the cup. As a self-taught pianist, you get to decide (based on your goals) which cups are the most important to fill and in what order!
Here are the 5 cups you can fill:
Most things that you do on the piano will likely be helping to fill multiple cups at the same time, for example if you are learning to improvise you might also be learning some theory and technique as a byproduct. So, we can think of each thing that we do as theory “focussed” or reading “focussed”. This way we know we are spending time prioritising the cup that’s most important but we know we are also getting the added benefit of filling other cups at the same time!
3. A Full Cup 🥛
In order to know which skills we want to prioritise it’s important to ask ourselves…what would having a full cup look like?
READING: A full reading cup would mean recognising all of the symbols you may come across, being able to sight read pieces that you want to play, being able to learn pieces from sheet music without your reading ability slowing you down!
TECHNIQUE: A full technique cup would mean being able to play evenly, having good coordination, being in control of your fingers, staying relaxed and having the physical ability to play any piece of music you want.
IMPROVISATION: A full improvisation cup would mean that you are able to make songs up on the spot, that you can maybe play an improvised piano solo, that you could play a song from just the chords and that you can play something in multiple styles on demand.
LISTENING: A full listening cup would mean that you could listen to a song that you like and be able to recreate it on the piano, you can hear different types of chords and hear what features give a song it’s style.
THEORY: A full theory cup would mean that you understand chords, scales, keys and meter. It would also mean that you understand harmony, cadences and why music sounds the way that it does!
4. Getting From A to B 🚗
Now that you know what you can learn and maybe have an idea about which path you might want to go down, we need to layout the roadmap to get from where you are now to where you want to be!
The most important part of gaining a skill such as learning the piano is consistency over time. So it’s best to form routines and habits and stick to them. This means you need to practice regularly and have structure within each practice session.
It’s important that if you want to be a well rounded pianist that you try and prioritise your main goal but also include the other skills as they all contribute to your general musicianship. So the way that I like to think about structuring practice is using a Starter, Main Course and Dessert Framework!
STARTER: Warm Up (25%) - I normally advise to start your practice with some SCALES and SIGHT READING. This is because it gets your fingers moving, it gets your brain working and you are practicing READING, TECHNIQUE and THEORY all while warming up!
MAIN COURSE - The Main Goal (50%) - For most people this is going to be working on PIECES or SONGS. If your main goal is to PLAY BY EAR then you might be doing this by listening to songs and honing that skill, if your main goal is READING then it could be working on graded pieces or spending some time on a long term piece of music you are working through. If your main goal is IMPROVISATION, then this could by playing from a chord chart and making your own version of a song. No matter what your main goal is, this is going to form the main section of each practice session…and if your goals change then so should your practice!
DESSERT - For Fun (25%) - This is your chance to spend some time on secondary goals or fill up the cups that are less important to you. If your main goal is READING, then for the last section of your practice try working something out BY EAR or try IMPROVISING by making up a song. This part of the practice is less serious and just to work on something different so it should require less intensity and be fun!
5. Where To Begin 🏁
So now you should have an idea about what you want to do with the piano, which cups are most important to you and how to structure practice to attack those skills.
Everyone learns at a different rate and has different strengths and weaknesses so WHEN to learn specific things on the piano is a little more difficult to tackle! However, here is some general advice;
READING: Sight reading and reading are two separate skills. Sight reading is your able to instantly recognise notes and reading is your ability to understand sheet music. So try to read something easy you have never seen before each practice session as you warm up.
TECHNIQUE: For your warm up, a good rate of learning would be to add two new scales each week and spend that week getting them nailed down! You could also pick two exercises each week that target your particular technical weaknesses such as the “Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist Exercises“ or exercises from “A Dozen a Day”.
IMPROVISATION: Fundamentally, improvisation is simply “making stuff up” and the best way to learn improvisation is by doing it and finding sounds that you like. So for this, it’s less about what to learn and more about spending time playing and having fun with it. Understanding music theory will help you with this and give you ideas to play with!
LISTENING: Playing by ear is all about following a formula and for this I direct you to the Monday Music Tips Article I wrote before this one on “A Beginner’s Introduction to Playing Piano by Ear”. Once again this is all about understanding theory and playing around with what you like the sound of!
THEORY: Theory is often learnt as a byproduct of learning to read, however, spending some time on theory alone gives you a big advantage on many of the other skills. So for this I would start by understanding keys and chords. Learning two keys per week (and their scales) along with the chords that are in those scales will directly help you to improvise and play by ear. Learning chords will also help your reading because as soon as you can see chords in written music, you no longer need to read individual notes, you can see shapes and read several notes at once!
Learning to play the piano looks different for everyone and it’s important that you get out of it what you want to. By structuring your goals, practice and your approach to adding new things to learn, you will better be able to form habits and routines. After this, if you stay consistent and commit to the journey I have no doubt that you will look back and be surprised at what you’ve been able to achieve!
Matthew Cawood
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