Took piano lessons as a kid and stopped? Coming back can feel different this time.

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Plenty of people had lessons growing up and quit somewhere around the scales. Coming back as an adult, you get to choose how you learn and what you play.

  1. 1

    Reading notes isn't the only way back in.

    If sight-reading is what made you quit, you don't have to start there again. Playing by ear and by chord shapes first gets your hands moving, and the reading you remember comes back alongside it.

  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

    Play the styles you skipped.

    Childhood lessons often stuck to classical pieces and exam books. Coming back is a chance to try blues, jazz, ballads and improvising, then return to classical if you miss it.

  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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