Learn to play the piano

“Paying a teacher was out of the question, so I set out to teach myself the piano. The first thing I did was sit down and memorize a very familiar hymn. I played it over and over again, perhaps several hundreds or thousands of times, until I could play it adequately well. I then played that hymn at church meetings whenever the regular accompanist wasn't around. I couldn't play anything else, but I had one song that I could play passably.”

“So I started playing jingles from commercials. Before long, I was able to pick out simple tunes of songs that are very familiar to me, and even to add accompaniments. When I started practicing playing by ear, I also realized that my sight reading skills improved dramatically, since rather than reading every note, I was able to put my fingers where they should be according to the feel of the music.”

“I'm 44. My kids have gradually moved out in the past year (uni etc). I decided I needed something for myself. Started piano lessons about 9 months ago too. Haven't regretted it once. Even managed to get myself a lovely piano. It's such a nice way to end the day, just sitting down and working through pieces I'm learning. I have a tutor but she is on holiday for a few weeks so she's given me my first long, actual song to learn (The Only Exception by Paramore - I chose it cos it's my favourite band). I was completely overwhelmed at first but I'm so excited to be getting it.”