---
title: 'How to Start Learning Piano - Self-Taught!'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=p00zsi71t6I'
video_id: 'p00zsi71t6I'
date: 2026-08-18
duration_sec: 893
channel: 'Matthew Cawood'
---

# How to Start Learning Piano - Self-Taught!

> Source: [How to Start Learning Piano - Self-Taught!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=p00zsi71t6I)

## Summary

This video offers a comprehensive guide for self-taught piano learners, covering everything from choosing the right instrument and setting effective goals to understanding what to learn and how to overcome common pitfalls. The creator shares personal insights and practical advice to help beginners stay motivated and progress steadily.

### Key Points

- **Starting Self-Taught Piano** [00:02] — The video begins with the creator reflecting on how they would approach learning piano differently if starting again, setting the stage for a guide on self-taught piano learning.
- **Essential Equipment** [01:08] — The first step is to get a digital or acoustic piano with 88 weighted keys, which will last a long time and provide a proper playing experience.
- **Defining Your Goals** [01:22] — It's crucial to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve, whether it's playing a specific piece, reaching grade 8, or using the piano for music production. This goal will guide your learning path.
- **Goal Setting Framework** [01:48] — The creator recommends setting long-term (6 months to a year), short-term (weekly), and very short-term (daily) goals. Long-term goals are outcome-based, while short-term goals should be input-based, like practicing four times for 30 minutes a week.
- **Maintaining Momentum** [03:19] — Once you achieve a long-term goal, set a new one immediately to keep the habit going. Consistent, back-to-back goals turn practice into a daily routine.
- **Core Skills to Learn** [03:32] — The essential skills for a beginner include sheet music reading, scales, chords, music theory, and aural skills (listening). All are important and should be started early.
- **Why Learn Sheet Music** [04:01] — Reading sheet music allows you to see exactly what the composer intended and expands your interpretation. It's a tool that reveals what's possible in music.
- **Importance of Scales** [04:28] — Scales are the building blocks of music. They help with dexterity and make note patterns automatic, making it easier to play pieces in a given key.
- **Chords and Patterns** [05:06] — Learning common chord patterns like triads and seventh chords helps your hands automatically know where to go, improving sight-reading and pattern recognition.
- **Music Theory Benefits** [05:47] — Understanding music theory makes it easier to write your own music, transcribe pieces, and change keys, which is especially useful for singers.
- **Aural Skills** [06:15] — Developing listening skills helps you understand why you like a piece and enables you to play by ear, improvise, and play with others.
- **Common Problem: Tension** [06:54] — Tension is a major issue. Notice if your hands are tense and practice shaking them out between notes, especially during scales, to keep them relaxed.
- **Common Problem: Posture** [07:36] — Sitting too high or low at the piano is a common mistake. Your arms should be just over a right angle (90 degrees) to allow comfortable hand positioning.
- **Common Problem: Finger Technique** [08:06] — Using weird fingers or turning your hand upside down is problematic. Learning scales helps with correct fingering, and planning your fingering in advance is advised.
- **Common Problem: Looking at Hands** [08:33] — While not inherently bad, looking at your hands instead of the music hinders sight-reading. Try to consciously follow the music with your eyes once you've memorized a piece.
- **Common Problem: Covering Mistakes with Pedal** [09:13] — Using the sustain pedal can hide mistakes. Play pieces with and without the pedal to ensure your playing is clean and accurate.
- **Common Problem: Learning Too Fast** [09:38] — Trying to learn difficult pieces too quickly is a mistake. It's better to progress steadily and master the fundamentals before moving on.
- **Common Problem: Using Stickers** [10:03] — Avoid using stickers on piano keys. They prevent you from learning the actual keys and associate notes with letters rather than the keys themselves.
- **Recommended Resources** [10:29] — The creator recommends YouTube videos from 'Piano from Scratch' and 'Musicians Inspired' (for the landmark system), books like 'It's Never Too Late to Play Piano' by Pam Wedgewood, and ABRSM theory books.
- **Staying Motivated** [13:27] — To keep going, record your progress monthly, quantify success with challenges like 60 days of practice, and seek feedback from peers or musicians.

### Conclusion

The video provides a solid foundation for self-taught piano learners, emphasizing the importance of goal setting, consistent practice, and avoiding common mistakes. With the right mindset and resources, anyone can successfully learn piano on their own.

## Transcript

lot of other people started selft talk and if I was to start again today there very differently so in this video I want to tell you how you can start learning the piano self tour including what you need how to set goals what you should
learn and why I'm going to talk about some common problems that a lot of people run into how to avoid them and how to fix them I'll give you some good video book and course recommendations to best fit what you want to learn and I'm
also going to talk about how to keep going and to get better over the long advantages to learning self-taught such as let's be honest you can play what you want and obviously it's a lot cheaper to learn without a teacher however there
are also some disadvantages to learning selftaught and that is that you don't also run into problems that are going to affect your playing long term such as if need to know or if you've skipped a certain element of practice like sight
going to alleviate some of those disadvantages of playing selft talk so to get started firstly you're going to need something to play on and if you don't have something to play on already then the best thing to get is a digital
piano or an acoustic piano that has 88 keys weighted keys and that has a instrument that has those things then it's going to last you a pretty long to need is an idea about what you actually want to achieve by playing the
piano that can be as simple as you want to be able to pick up a piece of music that you want to get to grade8 piano could be that you're a music producer theory and use the piano to do that there are lots of reasons why you might
are someone for example that wants to be going to be pretty pointless sitting down and reading a bark Prelude so that's what you need let's talk about how you're actually going to get there
learning the piano without losing motivation was to set long-term goals short-term goals and very short-term goals now to me long-term goals are something that should take around 6 months to a year to complete for example
taking a graded piano exam or learning a Beethoven Sonata longer term goals tend to be outcome related so they're goals where you want to get something out of their own they're very difficult to stay motivated which is why you should have
short-term goals and very short-term goals these should both be based on input rather than outcome and by that your short-term and very short-term goals should be based on what you actually do rather than what you're
actually going to get out of it for example a shortterm input goal might be this week I'm going to practice four times for 30 minutes and that is a goal you do it or don't do it and then there
are very short-term goals and that is things that you're going to do today now once again this should be input related rather than outcome related so it needs the guarantee of an outcome but your very short-term goals should always be
in service of your short-term goals and your short-term goals should always be in service of your long-term goals and here's an example for you so I might one on the piano and in order to be able to do that in 6 months time this week
I'm going to practice 6 days a week for 30 minutes and in my practice today that is 30 minutes long I'm going to practice two of the scales I'm going to practice might also do four sight reading exercises and then the key to this is
long-term goal then you need to set another achievable long-term goals straight away if you have constant long-term back-to-back goals then it just becomes habit and on a day-to-day basis it's just something that you do
bothered but what do you actually need to learn when you're first starting to largely depends on what you actually want to get out of learning the piano things that you can learn the first is sheet music reading there's scales
chords music theory and oral skills which is just listening now I would themselves the piano especially at the basic beginner level to try and start because they are all all very very important so let's talk about what's
categories and why you actually might want to learn them so firstly sheet music reading you can very easily see visually on a piece of music exactly what's happening and composers can be really specific when writing sheet music
as to how they want you to play it if you just play by ear for example then to play it which is not a bad thing but learning how other people write music and seeing what is possible in music can expand how you interpret something
you've read the more tools you've got and then there's scales scales are what music is made from on a piano there are 12 different unique keys and major and minor scales which are the most common
types of scales narrow those 12 notes down to just seven so if you are reading a piece of music or you're listening to a piece of music and you know what scale a lot easier to work out what the note should be and when you practice scales
giving yourself an opportunity to get really dextrous but you're also making that set of notes automatic in your hands so if you know the scale of G major really well and you come across a piece that's in the key of G major then
which notes you're going to be playing on the keys then there's chords there are certain patterns of chords that are really important to learn such as Triads or seventh chords these types of chords are really common and come up time and
time again so if you learn the standard patterns of chords that you're going to in a piece of music your hand is automatically going to know where to go patterns and pattern recognition and that's why people at first start
difficult to site read music because what they're trying to do is read every single individual note on the page whereas someone who is more experienced and just see it as a set of patterns that are happening that they've seen
before in other pieces then there's music theory if you understand how music works then it's very easy to write your own music to write transcriptions or if you're a singer then you can change the key of a piece of music so that it
learning music theory is very very helpful and it's kind of interesting and then there's oral skills and oral skills just mean listening skills so learning to hear different notes and how they relate to each other and learning how
listen to a piece of music and you really like that piece of really like that piece of music there's no music playing and you want to understand why you really like that piece of music so you can recreate
want to be able to work something out on the piano by ear then you're going to want to learn how different intervals sound and intervals just means the your ears is really beneficial especially if you want to improvise if
you want to play with other people if you want to work stuff out by ear it has lots of benefits so that's what to learn and why let's talk about some common problems that people often face when learning by themselves the first and
probably the biggest is tension and tension is a massive problem because to do what you want them to do and it can be very tempting to force them by you can do about this is first of all notice if you are tense or not if your
hands start to wake or you're finding that your hand is becoming rigid then something about it if your hands are generally tense then what I would recommend doing is using scales to practice trying to shake your hand out
every note like this by wobbling your hand like that it means that your hand can't be tense you're finding that you're just tense then stop on the notes where you're finding that your hand is tensing and do
the same thing so wobble your hand about the second common problem that people have is sitting too high or too low at the piano now I'm probably not helping piano too high for videos and that's just so you can see my wonderful face
the best way to think about why you should sit and where the piano should be positioned is that your arms should be just over a right angle or 90° so if I height for this piano I'd be sitting kind of
hands can sit comfortably and you're not having to do any weird movements to be problem is people using weird fingers and doing things like this or putting their hand upside down once again if you learn scales and this
does combat most of this problem because you learn the correct fingers to use in you're playing a piece of music and you've run out of fingers then you need to change the fingers you used earlier on rather than just trying to get
random fingers and jumping around my best advice is to just plan the fingers that you're going to use another common problem is people looking at their hands rather than looking at the music looking at your hands isn't inherently a problem
in itself the problem is if you are trying to learn to read music then not help you learn to read music it also of music then you're missing most of the detail that's in the music if you start
you start to memorize it so once you played a piece of music a fair few times which will happen try and consciously follow the music with your eyes rather than looking at your hands another common problem is covering mistakes
using the sustain pedal if I play a scale and it sounds like this with the [Music] pedal all of those notes sound the same pedal all of those notes sound the same but if I play the same scale like
this you can hear a very clear gap between the third and fourth note and that Gap was covered by the pedal which means although my hand is not doing the covering it up so I don't know that mistakes there so to combat this try and
play pieces with and without the pedal and if there are mistakes without the covering it with the pedal another common problem is trying to learn really when they first start learning think that they should be learning more
quickly and that they're learning too slow so they try and force it by learning really difficult pieces or trying to run before they can walk and although it's okay to do difficult pieces sometimes you've really got to be
load of things in order to get there quicker because it will be obvious in your playing and the last common mistake that I see people make is that they use stickers on their piano my blanket recommendation would be to not use
learning what the keys actually are you're just learning to read the letter on the key it also means that if you're trying to read music you're associating the dot with the letter rather than the dot with the key okay let's talk about
piano as a self-taught beginner now firstly there is a video on YouTube by a YouTube channel called piano from scratch which is essentially a first and I actually think it's a very good video for those that have never played
are on the piano and that kind of thing it does a very good job of explaining another good video on YouTube is a video by a channel called musicians inspired and it's about the landmark system The Landmark system I think is the best
method for learning how to read sheet music and and where all the notes are on the page and the video by musicians inspired is very good at explaining it and then to plug my own videos I have done a video that is a complete guide to
video that I've made so I do sound a little bit personality however I covered that might be interesting in my video that is the top 10 most asked piano
to play by ear I've also done several videos on how you can go about starting couple of books that I would recommend first of all it's the book it's never too late to play piano by Pam Wedgewood this is the go-to book that I use when
start learning the piano I think it's very good at explaining and it's not as slow in progressing as a children's book might be a good book for children that are learning is the complete me and my piano book there are lots and lots of
and all of them are equally as good you've just got to find something that best fits how you learn for site reading I would recommend my site reading book music and you're starting to understand the notes site reading is kind of a
ability to read a piece of music immediately rather than spend some time my site reading book which you can download on my website is a series of hundreds of exercises that get progressively harder the problem that I
found with a lot of sight read material out there is that there just isn't reading book for example there usually are about 55 exercises and by the time you're probably not that much better than when you started but I designed the
book to get progressively harder and because there are over 400 exercises you can just constantly be saturating yourself with note reading and then for music theory I would recommend either the discovering Music Theory series of
books or the music theory and practice series of books by abrsm both of these grade one to eight and if you are an absolute beginner get the grade one book you feel comfortable with that then you can get the the grade two book and so on
it's very methodical with how you work through the music theory and start and then for courses there is a series of Music Theory courses on udemy by someone called Victoria Williams who goes through some of the grades of Music
Theory and she's very good at explaining and getting you to work through how the music theory works and I am currently working on a playing music by air course myself so when that's available I will recommend that so let's talk about how
to keep going and continuing to get better over a long period of time whenever starting any new skill a lot of people get very excited to start with and then want to practice six hours a day but then burn out and don't want to
practice the instrument anymore I think a lot of that problem will be solved by setting some long-term and shortterm goals to hold yourself accountable but things like recording your progress if you record yourself playing a piece
every month or every week or something like that then you can really start to to you could could even start a YouTube channel documenting your progress and then do a one year's piano progress video and then you might find yourself
being reacted to by me other things that you can do are things like quantifying success and measuring it for example if you did a 60-day challenge where you were to try and practice 30 minutes every day for 60 days straight by the
end of the 60 days you will know whether you've succeeded or not and that's measure and finally you can get some feedback from peers or from musicians group groups with other beginners in that are trying to learn and they're
always giving each other feedback or you can ask musicians for their feedback you have in the comments and I'll answer them or you can book in through my to improve and I know a lot of other musicians will do that too but if you
want to see me react to someone's one year of piano progress then check out year of piano progress then check out this video and I will see you there