Possible to teach yourself piano?

Question

after 4 years tution...then carry on using books?......can't afford lessons atm

can you still be good?

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible to teach yourself piano and become good.  Clint Eastwood taught himself, and I think he's very good at it.  How good you become depends on how dedicated you are, how much time you can devote to practice, and the kind of ear you have for music.

Answer 2

I taught myself to play piano.  I'm not great, I mostly just dink around, but I just found a system that worked for me and wend with it.  There are books in music stores that aren't expensive and can give you a good start.  Check one out sometime ad get started with it!

Answer 3

yep! nothing is impossible "just remember it" :D

Answer 4

Playing the piano is all about TECHNIQUE and you can't learn that on your own or for free off the Internet.  If you REALLY want to learn the piano then you need to HIRE A TEACHER.

Can you teach yourself to drive a car?  Can you teach yourself how to fly a plane?  Can you teach yourself ANY Profession that requires a certain amount of academic training?  The WHY do you think you can properly teach yourself how to play the piano... or guitar or any other instrument?

The reason that everything AmeriKans do is so mediocre is, they believe they can learn to do everything on their own and then they the get their feelings hurt when someone tells them how much the stink at it.

Answer 5

As people have said, its important to learn a good technique. I was having lessons but found it really laborious learning pieces and therefore improving until I went on to music that I really liked. For me, this was songs from the shows or basic pop songs. I slowly started "hammering" my way through "Everytime" by Britney Spears, simplifying the music if i could, so that i was left with a basic melody on the RH and chords on the LH.

Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Absolutely!! Get yourself a good book or two to learn all the basics.  I'm assuming you're not a really young kid so you should be able to learn as long as you stick with it. Plus there are so many tutorials on youtube these days so the resources are definitely available.  The most important thing to do if you want to get "good" is to dedicate lots of time to practice. If you want to learn to read music then you are really serious about learning the piano and you may want to consider paying for lessons. But as far as playing some songs for fun, it's definitely possible to learn on your own. Good luck!!

Answer 7

You can teach your self somethings about the piano- how to read notes, the names of the keys on the piano, things like that. But, like others have mentioned, to really develop technique (especially important in the Classical repertoire) you really need to study with a qualified instructor.

For example, sure, you could probably teach yourself how to play the notes in Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, but in order to truly understand what all the music is demanding (in terms of technique, form, musicianship, etc.) you really need to have a instructor/professor helping you.

This always gets lots of thumbs down, but it's the truth: Plenty of people think that they are successful at the piano (or any instrument) when they can sit down and plunk out a song without hitting any wrong notes. But, my experience has been that the average pianist has no idea about technique, musicality, etc. Most pianists that I've heard have no concept of expression or technique in music.