How to play piano for beginners – 15 things you NEED to focus on to grow as a pianist

This video is a guide on how to play piano for beginners and also anyone else who has some experience but is looking for ideas to develop their skills in a way that will give them more freedom on the instrument. These 15 things (Well really A TONNE MORE) are not just cheap tricks, but more my philosophy on learning and teaching that I really believe will help you learn how to grow as a pianist or keys player and get better at piano in the long term. Essentially, this video is jam packed with important piano lessons for beginners and teaches you a lot about how music actually works so you can learn to speak music as a language.

These are things I have learned over many years experience, learning myself, playing with other musicians and teaching. Things that I know from first hand experience that many beginners don’t realise and need to know in order to get good at piano. They will help lay a strong foundation of fundamental musical knowledge and piano skill to set up you up to keep learning and learning, get far more advanced and go down many musical avenues.

Of course it’s impossible to unpack everything completely in one video, so this is an overview of, and advice about things YOU SHOULD BE LOOKING INTO AND WORKING ON over a longer period of time. Each topic will be getting its own dedicated videos to delve deeper into exactly what and how to learn effectively!

Here’s the Jacob Collier 5 Levels of Harmony Video I mentioned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRkgK4jfi6M&t=19s

How to Name the White Notes https://youtu.be/-WpnZ-NghAQ

How to Name the Black Notes https://youtu.be/FqIqB9Q5Aeg

The 15 Things (Mixture of practical, music theory for beginners and general advice on learning)

1 Learn the notes names and Keyboard 3:50
2 Basic Technique 7:24
3 Scales 12:58
4 Melody 17:47
5 Chords and Harmony 19:00
6 Thinking in Numbers 23:41
7 Chords of the Major Scale 29:01
8 Chord inversions (Playing chords in different ways) 32:46
9 Learning Songs and Music 38:58
10 Focusing on Ears 41:48
11 Rhythm 47:33
12 Basics of Reading 52:01
13 Learning to Learn well 54:11
14 Musical Terminology 59:23
15 Enjoy Making Music 1:00:32

Thanks for watching!