Any advice on learning to play piano?

I agree with many of the previous posters that practice, patience, and to start off playing both hands separately are good ideas. Another critical issues is *how* you are learning...

Books are OK, but usually not very easy to follow. Check out http://www.amazon.com/ for some deals... (search for learn piano)

Online courses are fast becoming popular these days, but there are very few really good ones out there. You can read reviews of most of them at http://www.onlinelessonreviews.com/piano-lessons/i...

Private lessons are good (assuming you're teacher is decent), but terribly expensive. Check your newspaper classifieds to see if there are any teachers accepting students.

Hope those ideas help you some! :)

I've been working with the course for about a week now, and it's incredible. Just the practice aids and the different scales and memory techniques in Book 9 are worth the price of the course, alone! There are two things that make this course stand out. First, all the video and audio files are embedded in the lesson. I have yet to find another piano course that makes it this easy. It's so nice not to have three files going at the same time!

The second thing is that you actually get to play in each lesson! And the songs are not "Mary had a Little Lamb" types! From the Beatles to Bethoven, it's all there. I have several piano courses that I have ordered over the internet. This is the one I use because it makes learning fun! I'm amazed! Once you get the rhythms down, you really can sound like a pro! Great fun! Thanks for making this available at such a reasonable price. Anyone who doesn't grab this up is going to go the long way home! Joy!

Now ANYONE Can Learn Piano or Keyboard?

I definitely think learning an instrument is a good way to improve yourself etc and it can be very rewarding if you appreciate music, but from personal experience, piano and other instruments which are generally played alone can be boring and you can easily lose interest. So either learn another instrument which could be played in a band situation, like trumpet or saxophone etc if you think you'll be too bored with piano, or, if you think you won't get bored, just learn piano now and maybe do another instrument in a few years. P.S. I found that being in a group of musicians, whatever instrument you choose, means that you improve much faster, as if you don't, you're pulling down the whole group, not just yoursef, and also, you have more people than just your regular teacher to help you etc. Good luck! :)

Playing slowly is the most important thing. Don't rush too much or let yourself get frustrated when you can't go fast. So when you start playing, do it slowly and concentrate. It won't be easy, but if you want to play the songs you have (I assume you have a beginner's book with songs, if not, you should get one becuase there are instructions in there) you can do it. Also, you will bet better in time, because the brain grows new connections in the corpus collosum as you coordinate your left and right brain hemispheres through music practice (my paino teacher told me this).

Practice at least an hour daily in order to master this and take the advice of the others on this post to play slowly, hands apart and hands together.

I just read it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a virtuoso. Now, don't become discouraged. You can still become a good player by practicing every single day for an hour.

Practice with hands separately and each with metronome. When putting them together, set the metronome at a much slower tempo than what you were using for hands separately. Gradually work your up.

Also, my teacher taught me to play in rhythms.

For example, if you have four consecutive eighth notes, you could do two slow, two fast, and vice versa. Or, with sets of three, three slow, three fast, reverse.

Any other questions regarding this, let me know.

Good luck!

The best thing I always found to do was to play each hand seperately (called playing "hands alone") and then after you have each hand pretty solid, attempt to play them together. Start by playing them REALLY slow. You can just keep getting faster until the piece is up to speed.

Good luck!

Yes, learn the basics first like middle c,chords , notes-(all cows eat grass),exc.. if you do that you basically know how to play most anything maybe not to much of the rhythm or tempo but i mean at least you can play it and youtube videos

It takes time, it takes patience. Practice each hand independently and slowly work them together.