Why learning piano as an adult can start with chords, not sheet music

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A lot of adults who want to play piano picture the same first step: years of scales and reading notes before anything sounds like music. That's one way in, but not the only one. Here's another path that tends to keep people at the keyboard.

  1. 1

    You don't have to read music to start.

    You learned to talk long before you learned to read. Piano can work the same way. Playing by ear first, and picking up notation as you go, means you start with real music, and the written notes have something to attach to later.

  2. 2

    Chords are the backbone of most popular songs.

    Pop, rock, blues and ballads are mostly built on a handful of chords played in patterns. Learn those chords and a few rhythms, and a lot of familiar songs come within reach.

  3. 3

    Patterns stick better than memorized notes.

    Chords make shapes under your hand, and those shapes repeat across the keyboard. Once you see the piano as patterns instead of 88 separate keys, new songs feel less like starting from zero.

  4. 4

    Variety keeps you practicing.

    Practice drags when every lesson sounds the same. Moving through styles, from ballads to blues to jazz to classical, keeps it interesting, and each style teaches you something the others don't.

  5. 5

    A clear next step beats a pile of random tutorials.

    Free videos are everywhere, but they rarely build on each other. A course that tells you what to practice next, in order, takes the guesswork out of whether you're working on the right thing.

  6. 6

    Where Pianoforall fits.

    Pianoforall is an online piano course by Robin Hall, offered since 2006. It's a series of interactive ebooks with the video and audio lessons built right into the pages, and it works on PC, Mac, phones and tablets, even offline. It starts with rhythm-style chords, then moves through ballads, blues, jazz, ragtime and improvisation into classical pieces, teaching you to read music as you learn to play by ear. It comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee. You still have to put in the practice. It gives that practice an order to follow.

See the course

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