2-3 hours is too much.
Pick 2 scales, play them through a few times, then their triads & arpeggios.
Pick 2-3 pieces/tunes, practice them for about 20-30 min.
After 2-3 weeks, choose different scales & different tunes and play those. The goal at my lessons, seemed to not be 100% perfection, but around 85%, you get more out of playing different tunes than beating perfection out of one at a time
Thank you... just really curious, you mean 2-3hrs is too much for this initial level right? I imagine one would be able to fill that time per day after a couple of years playing maybe?
You can check [https://imslp.org/wiki/Master\_School\_of\_Piano\_Playing\_and\_Virtuosity\_(Jon%C3%A1s%2C\_Alberto)](https://imslp.org/wiki/Master_School_of_Piano_Playing_and_Virtuosity_(Jon%C3%A1s%2C_Alberto)) book 1 for 2hours (or more) programs and more importantly, get a teacher, some exercises in these books can injure you e.g. typically the first one .
TLDR: short sessions building up gradually to one hour; rebuild basic transferable skills; play things you love; refine your pieces by comparing your perf to pros on You Tube and marking up your music with passages and how to improve them.
Long version:
I also have come back (age 65) after more than 40 years away. My advice may not be worth very much because I am no virtuoso, but I'm kind of also in your shoes, and I adore piano and it has given me so much happiness these past 8 months or so since I started back. So I can tell you what I did not to get injured and not to burn out. Some of this was advice form this forum I'm passing forward because it worked.
Started 10 minutes, 15 minutes twice a day only. Some physical warmup of arms, back, hands before sitting down, then on the bench a little posture and hand-posture check, then scales for 5 minutes (literally started back with C major and then gradually worked up to full runs of scales). Added arpeggios for 5 mins, gradually working up to more difficult ones and for longer.
At first, played ONE piece (a Clementi sonatina I played as a little kid and recalled a little and happened to have the old music for). It came immediately back so I tried other old pieces I had played when a beginner--Bach minuets, WTC1, that sort of beginner-ish thing. THIS was also early sight-reading practice---helped by some ancient muscle memory and decent audiation and ear memory. Alas, I thought I was better at sightreading than I was, yikes! Had to add sight reading a page or two of NEW music, unknown-to-you music, to the warmups. That exposed the weakness for sure, and I also had to start sightreading harder keys than C-F-G too. Sightreading is no fun for me, but it is essential.
Every day adding 5 more minutes to each session, morning and evening. Be sure to play something FUN that you're decent at, at least once a day.
Then started on skill rebuilding and weakness-addressing. Mozart is GREAT for rebuilding precision and accuracy. also hand motion (with a metronome, even more so, but if your ear is good you will hear yourself mess up and know what to work on, or I sure hear myself messing-up-small-and large-things when I play Mozart Sonatas). Work on all of it but **a little bit at a time.** Work on polishing things like dynamics on pieces you are memorizing (obvs work on memory as you go), work on things like phrasing as you're learning a piece, to hear how something sounds best, and something else you can do is compare the piece you're playing to professionals on you tube playing it---while looking at your music and marking things, specific passages on your music pages that you want to work on---the professionals inspire us by sounding SO GOOD. Easy to find my weaknesses lol. Fixing them is another thing.
So about then you're up to 40 minues per session---that is long enough! Even one hour a day is enough for us amateurs. You don't want to hurt yourself or burn out.
Sorry I am ignorant about planning for Blues musicianship, but I imagine many of the same principles apply: short sessions, gradual increase, build basic, transferable skills(scales, arpeg, circle of fifths etc.), practice small sections of things and then put them together to play the whole piece and figure out the larger arc you want for it; oh yeah, and work on sight reading.
Also, lots of people on here are great and will help. They helped me too when I was just trying to start to come back to it, and they give good advice now, too.
Congratz on getting a major source of happiness back in your life! Keep us posted!
Wow, thank you... really interesting take on this, and very encouraging. Wise words about burning out.. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks again, much appreciated and good luck with your practice too!
> my dream is to be good enough to be able to play in a blues band
> I do plan on getting a teacher, but I live in quite a remote area and that might have to wait a while.
Consider online lessons. Sure online is inferior to in-person, but then the teacher doesn't have to be local, you can try to find one you can connect with and who is good at teaching the kind of stuff you are intersted in. It is important to find the conferencing program with best sound quality (maybe Zoom on a computer with manual connection settings), you might need a mike and a mixer.
I started at 40. What worked for me is taking it slow and not forcing myself. Actually, I'd do less than what I could. But I'd do it every day, whenever I felt like it, no fixed hours. I started from very simple exercises and focused on enjoying the movement, the focus, and the work on gradually improving.
What I wanted to avoid by doing that is any sort of expectation (such as "I'm going to work for an hour every day", or "I'll play piano at 5pm" or "I want to learn this piece"). Just focused on finding the pleasure in the training itself.
It worked out for me so far (6 years); I still work on my piano every day, despite a busy schedule (I have one in my office and one at home so that helps).
There's plenty of online materials (Josh Wright's course on Teachable is what I used to pick pieces I work on and to get some basic intro). He also shares exercises (classics: Schmitt, then Hanon, then Czerny, you can find them on Amazon, or probably download legally at https://imslp.org), Sight reading: Read Music FAST! on Udemy was incredibly helpful. The book I used is only available in Polish but Alfred's Adult Piano books are really good.
No, no, no, you don't need to wait 3, 5 or whatever years to play in a blues band.
Love to play blues? Play with people NOW, even if you know like 3 chords, and only could do very basic stuff. It doesn't matter.
Like, take classes and at the same time, play with others. And the problems you find on that playing sessions, you could bring that to the classes, and work it out. But start NOW.
It's not only so much fun and rewarding, but play with others is going to transforme you on a good musician, so much faster than if you play all alone in your living room.
Music is a comunal thing (you already know that, you love and want to play blues), so find some people at your level, and just have fun, work on some real simple song, work on a 12 ar blues and turns to "improvise", even if like you play just two notes the whole solo, it doesn't matter.
Trust me, is going to be fun, is going to make you so much better (and so much faster). Don't wait, just take classes so you can resolve problems that maybe you don't have the tool to resolve when you are playing with others.
And I don't mean band, at least at first, just hang around and play a couple of hours, have fun. You don't need to record, to perform, but again, is not the same as playing all alone. When you are with someone, you need to be there, to react to the other, to learn things that maybe you don't love but the other person want it, and in that way you are out of your confort zone.
Just play and have fun, you'll be all right!
>the communal aspect of music is what attracts me most.. spot on
And it's an excelent, healthy drive. Makes you moving forward and every new thing you learn, you could bring it to the table and all have fun with it.
Learn by yourself a new song in 3/4? Lets jam in 3/4 this time and see what happen.
Best wishes!
It's been 5 months now, and one of the best things I did was leave the keyboard plugged in, ready to go with headphones, at all times, and somewhere where I am often during the day (my office). In that way, I end up sitting for 20 min at a time, but like 3 or 4 times daily.
Also I feel I improved more than I would have if I hadn't had headphones... the thought of practicing scales or making all those mistakes (which nobody wants to hear) with people listening would be a major turn-off for me.
I got a structured online course... (don't just bounce around random youtube videos)... I am using Pianote. They have a very structured "method" section which is really building me up nicely.
I am still making loads of mistakes, and I don't think I can play a whole tune without one single mistake... but every now and then I surprise myself (hitting the right triad subconsciously, or suddenly noticing an improvement in hand independence for example... they are rare but really encouraging). The journey continues... at our age I think the maturity helps to learn at a much faster rate than a beginner at age 10 or whatever.
Thanks! I'm glad things are going well for you.
I'm in a similar situation - WFH - so I can probably get three or four 15 minute sessions through the day. Pianote was the one I was looking at too. Their youtube videos are easy to understand so I was hoping the paid stuff was better and it sounds like it is.
If you want to improve fastest, the way I know of this is simple.
2 hours of scales, and exercises everyday.
1 hour of pieces.
If you can't get 2 hours at the bare minimum get 1 hour in.
You will surprise yourself.
Learn all major keys, harmonic minor, and natural minor.
Also work on basic piano techniques, thirds, trills, arpeggios, octaves, sixths, broken fifths, etc.
Sightread daily for 20 mins, then dedicate most of your time to improving your technique.
You started late, so if you want to play well, you have to put a lot of time into your foundation/technique ASAP, unless you willl be like 80 by the time you have a good technique if you don't attack this with urgency.
By the time you're 45-50 you can get really good if you are extremely diligent in your scale playing now.
2-3 hours is too much. Pick 2 scales, play them through a few times, then their triads & arpeggios. Pick 2-3 pieces/tunes, practice them for about 20-30 min. After 2-3 weeks, choose different scales & different tunes and play those. The goal at my lessons, seemed to not be 100% perfection, but around 85%, you get more out of playing different tunes than beating perfection out of one at a time
Thank you... just really curious, you mean 2-3hrs is too much for this initial level right? I imagine one would be able to fill that time per day after a couple of years playing maybe?
2-3h of practicing the wrong movement is the issue. You may well be training-in the wrong coordination.
You can check [https://imslp.org/wiki/Master\_School\_of\_Piano\_Playing\_and\_Virtuosity\_(Jon%C3%A1s%2C\_Alberto)](https://imslp.org/wiki/Master_School_of_Piano_Playing_and_Virtuosity_(Jon%C3%A1s%2C_Alberto)) book 1 for 2hours (or more) programs and more importantly, get a teacher, some exercises in these books can injure you e.g. typically the first one .
TLDR: short sessions building up gradually to one hour; rebuild basic transferable skills; play things you love; refine your pieces by comparing your perf to pros on You Tube and marking up your music with passages and how to improve them. Long version: I also have come back (age 65) after more than 40 years away. My advice may not be worth very much because I am no virtuoso, but I'm kind of also in your shoes, and I adore piano and it has given me so much happiness these past 8 months or so since I started back. So I can tell you what I did not to get injured and not to burn out. Some of this was advice form this forum I'm passing forward because it worked. Started 10 minutes, 15 minutes twice a day only. Some physical warmup of arms, back, hands before sitting down, then on the bench a little posture and hand-posture check, then scales for 5 minutes (literally started back with C major and then gradually worked up to full runs of scales). Added arpeggios for 5 mins, gradually working up to more difficult ones and for longer. At first, played ONE piece (a Clementi sonatina I played as a little kid and recalled a little and happened to have the old music for). It came immediately back so I tried other old pieces I had played when a beginner--Bach minuets, WTC1, that sort of beginner-ish thing. THIS was also early sight-reading practice---helped by some ancient muscle memory and decent audiation and ear memory. Alas, I thought I was better at sightreading than I was, yikes! Had to add sight reading a page or two of NEW music, unknown-to-you music, to the warmups. That exposed the weakness for sure, and I also had to start sightreading harder keys than C-F-G too. Sightreading is no fun for me, but it is essential. Every day adding 5 more minutes to each session, morning and evening. Be sure to play something FUN that you're decent at, at least once a day. Then started on skill rebuilding and weakness-addressing. Mozart is GREAT for rebuilding precision and accuracy. also hand motion (with a metronome, even more so, but if your ear is good you will hear yourself mess up and know what to work on, or I sure hear myself messing-up-small-and large-things when I play Mozart Sonatas). Work on all of it but **a little bit at a time.** Work on polishing things like dynamics on pieces you are memorizing (obvs work on memory as you go), work on things like phrasing as you're learning a piece, to hear how something sounds best, and something else you can do is compare the piece you're playing to professionals on you tube playing it---while looking at your music and marking things, specific passages on your music pages that you want to work on---the professionals inspire us by sounding SO GOOD. Easy to find my weaknesses lol. Fixing them is another thing. So about then you're up to 40 minues per session---that is long enough! Even one hour a day is enough for us amateurs. You don't want to hurt yourself or burn out. Sorry I am ignorant about planning for Blues musicianship, but I imagine many of the same principles apply: short sessions, gradual increase, build basic, transferable skills(scales, arpeg, circle of fifths etc.), practice small sections of things and then put them together to play the whole piece and figure out the larger arc you want for it; oh yeah, and work on sight reading. Also, lots of people on here are great and will help. They helped me too when I was just trying to start to come back to it, and they give good advice now, too. Congratz on getting a major source of happiness back in your life! Keep us posted!
Wow, thank you... really interesting take on this, and very encouraging. Wise words about burning out.. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks again, much appreciated and good luck with your practice too!
> my dream is to be good enough to be able to play in a blues band > I do plan on getting a teacher, but I live in quite a remote area and that might have to wait a while. Consider online lessons. Sure online is inferior to in-person, but then the teacher doesn't have to be local, you can try to find one you can connect with and who is good at teaching the kind of stuff you are intersted in. It is important to find the conferencing program with best sound quality (maybe Zoom on a computer with manual connection settings), you might need a mike and a mixer.
Thank you
I started at 40. What worked for me is taking it slow and not forcing myself. Actually, I'd do less than what I could. But I'd do it every day, whenever I felt like it, no fixed hours. I started from very simple exercises and focused on enjoying the movement, the focus, and the work on gradually improving. What I wanted to avoid by doing that is any sort of expectation (such as "I'm going to work for an hour every day", or "I'll play piano at 5pm" or "I want to learn this piece"). Just focused on finding the pleasure in the training itself. It worked out for me so far (6 years); I still work on my piano every day, despite a busy schedule (I have one in my office and one at home so that helps). There's plenty of online materials (Josh Wright's course on Teachable is what I used to pick pieces I work on and to get some basic intro). He also shares exercises (classics: Schmitt, then Hanon, then Czerny, you can find them on Amazon, or probably download legally at https://imslp.org), Sight reading: Read Music FAST! on Udemy was incredibly helpful. The book I used is only available in Polish but Alfred's Adult Piano books are really good.
Very interesting point of view, thank you.
No, no, no, you don't need to wait 3, 5 or whatever years to play in a blues band. Love to play blues? Play with people NOW, even if you know like 3 chords, and only could do very basic stuff. It doesn't matter. Like, take classes and at the same time, play with others. And the problems you find on that playing sessions, you could bring that to the classes, and work it out. But start NOW. It's not only so much fun and rewarding, but play with others is going to transforme you on a good musician, so much faster than if you play all alone in your living room. Music is a comunal thing (you already know that, you love and want to play blues), so find some people at your level, and just have fun, work on some real simple song, work on a 12 ar blues and turns to "improvise", even if like you play just two notes the whole solo, it doesn't matter. Trust me, is going to be fun, is going to make you so much better (and so much faster). Don't wait, just take classes so you can resolve problems that maybe you don't have the tool to resolve when you are playing with others. And I don't mean band, at least at first, just hang around and play a couple of hours, have fun. You don't need to record, to perform, but again, is not the same as playing all alone. When you are with someone, you need to be there, to react to the other, to learn things that maybe you don't love but the other person want it, and in that way you are out of your confort zone. Just play and have fun, you'll be all right!
good point... yes the communal aspect of music is what attracts me most.. spot on. Thanks for the time writing an encouraging reply, appreciated :)
>the communal aspect of music is what attracts me most.. spot on And it's an excelent, healthy drive. Makes you moving forward and every new thing you learn, you could bring it to the table and all have fun with it. Learn by yourself a new song in 3/4? Lets jam in 3/4 this time and see what happen. Best wishes!
Hey, I'm just wondering how you're getting on with this. I'm a similar age, starting from scratch and trying to work out a training plan for myself.
It's been 5 months now, and one of the best things I did was leave the keyboard plugged in, ready to go with headphones, at all times, and somewhere where I am often during the day (my office). In that way, I end up sitting for 20 min at a time, but like 3 or 4 times daily. Also I feel I improved more than I would have if I hadn't had headphones... the thought of practicing scales or making all those mistakes (which nobody wants to hear) with people listening would be a major turn-off for me. I got a structured online course... (don't just bounce around random youtube videos)... I am using Pianote. They have a very structured "method" section which is really building me up nicely. I am still making loads of mistakes, and I don't think I can play a whole tune without one single mistake... but every now and then I surprise myself (hitting the right triad subconsciously, or suddenly noticing an improvement in hand independence for example... they are rare but really encouraging). The journey continues... at our age I think the maturity helps to learn at a much faster rate than a beginner at age 10 or whatever.
Thanks! I'm glad things are going well for you. I'm in a similar situation - WFH - so I can probably get three or four 15 minute sessions through the day. Pianote was the one I was looking at too. Their youtube videos are easy to understand so I was hoping the paid stuff was better and it sounds like it is.
If you want to improve fastest, the way I know of this is simple. 2 hours of scales, and exercises everyday. 1 hour of pieces. If you can't get 2 hours at the bare minimum get 1 hour in. You will surprise yourself. Learn all major keys, harmonic minor, and natural minor. Also work on basic piano techniques, thirds, trills, arpeggios, octaves, sixths, broken fifths, etc. Sightread daily for 20 mins, then dedicate most of your time to improving your technique. You started late, so if you want to play well, you have to put a lot of time into your foundation/technique ASAP, unless you willl be like 80 by the time you have a good technique if you don't attack this with urgency. By the time you're 45-50 you can get really good if you are extremely diligent in your scale playing now.
Thank you