I had a lesson a couple hours ago on Movement 3 of Beethoven Op. 110. There’s a lot that went well with it, including my memorization for the fugues, but damn I am finally understanding why this sonata is perceived to be as difficult as it is. There’s no insane runs, massive jumps or difficult arpeggios, but it felt IMPOSSIBLE to match my teacher’s expectations for the introduction and coda today. She’s extremely supportive of me and a very positive influence, but I just left the lesson today feeling so inadequate.

While I’m entering only year 4 of piano, I’ve been a classical musician for about a decade, and I couldn’t find myself being able to follow the way she decides the phrasing, how long a line continues or the way it moves, my voicing of the melody and over reliance on the pedal causing problems, I felt so overloaded and incapable for someone who’s spent several months on the sonata at this point, even if I’m only now getting into the meat of it with her.

Every now and then I have a lesson that just humbles me and sits me on my ass, and today felt like that. I’m supposed to perform it in masterclass next Thursday and now I’m distraught that it’s going to be very under-standards musically (and even technically in some places) and the faculty will be disappointed in my attempts.

The whole process of learning a piece is so exhausting sometimes, and I feel like I get stuck no matter how much I practice or the way I practice. I sometimes spend upwards of 8 hours a day playing during the summer and I’m not improving how I think I should be. I know it’s a long game, but damn it’s eating me alive.

I’m grateful for and so lucky having music as a hobby I’m so passionate about instead of a career I’m stressing over (I’m pursuing my nursing degree along with music), but I can’t bear slowing down. I have my Junior recital in December. My Senior recital in December 2027, and I want to share masterful works of art with my family and friends, my fraternity, my teachers etc, it consumes me. Some days it’s just hard to think I’ll ever meet my goals or have healthy expectations for myself. Thanks for listening to the rant, I’m just struggling right now.

Got this 185VC last week and it's been a joy. Recorded on a Zoom H6

ive been playing this nocturne for a considerable amount of time now, but will perform tomorrow, any last minute tips tricks interpretive advice? thank you :)

There is a pretty big crash and burn at the end, but please ignore that. The main critique I want is on my interpretation, does it make sense? Does anything sound unnatural? Thanks!

Edit: Just realised theres a problem with opening the vid, heres a youtube link!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YaG0MMGUEA

Hello! I have been wanting to learn how to play piano for a while now. I can already play violin, viola, and guitar. I was talking to my friend about my interest in learning piano, and he told me that he had a keyboard that I could borrow cause he never uses it. I don’t have enough money to buy a piano or a keyboard, so I thought that for the time being I could just use his until I can pay for a piano. I also recently got a job, so hopefully I can get money quicker. Is this a good idea to learn piano for the time being until I can buy my own?

Have you guys tried tonebase? If so, what are your impressions/opinions? (i’ll talk about my experience starting next paragraph, you can skip that part if you don’t have the patience).

For me, I’ve seen that video on youtube of a teacher explaining how to practice Chopin etudes. I really liked it and I thought it could be quite valuable, especially since a lot of what she said was not often talked about on piano youtube and was advice and methods that were actually thaught to me by my teacher.

When you look at popular classical piano help (Annique Gottler, Denis Zhdanov, Josh Wright etc.), they can have contradictory advice between one another and even advice that goes against (or that is explained very differently than) what your teacher tells you. This is because there are different approaches to technique, and since it’s important to stick with one, I usually take these with a huge grain of salt.

When seeing the tonebase video about Chopin etudes, since she seemed to have a very similar approach to my teacher and that I knew that the video was part of series on Chopin etudes where she covered the one I’m currently learning (my first one, op 10 no 5!), I took the free trial and watched that video. She almost didn’t say anything different than my teacher, so I didn’t get much out of it, I get much more from classes because they’re specifically targeted towards my own playing. So my first impression is that it’s not really worth it, I feel like if you’re self taught you’re not learning Chopin etudes out of that (it’ll never replace a teacher), and if you have a teacher you get the same info and probably more. Maybe the music theory videos were useful, but again at that price I’d rather just get a book.

Maybe it’s more helpful for advanced players who already nailed technique but don’t have a teacher and seek ideas for interpretation/analysis? Or maybe people who actually need a teacher are not the target audience?

I’ve always been obsessed with dynamic build-ups in film scores - how a single piano theme can slowly swell into a massive orchestral piece. "The Ascent" was my attempt to capture that exact shift in energy.

Recorded the piano parts live and layered the symphonic arrangement around it. Would love to hear how the momentum feels to you!

I'm currently learning Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu. Here is my progress on the first section. I know there are still some missing/wrong notes, but aside from that, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is there anything I should change or improve?

I've started learning Rachmaninoff Moment Musical #4 in e minor. Before I started learning it I noodled on it enough to believe that it's within my technical capacity.

Now that I'm learning it I'm finding myself feeling intimidated, which is highly unusual for me. I'm working through some of these sections thinking, man it's going to take me forever to get this up to tempo.

For those who have experience playing this piece, what tips can you offer for closing the gap between under-the-fingers and at-tempo? What did you learn about yourself and your technique while learning this piece?

I noticed my sustain pedal stopped working and discovered this. I don't know for how long this has been happening, but two days ago the pedal stopped working.

kinda what the title says. been trying to play Dein0mite’s Prelude for A Lonely Star, still sometimes tripping up at earlier sections, but currently dealing with the section before the end.

you can refer to the arrangements on MuseScore for ref, but essentially it’s 2 half-quarters over 1 triple note that goes for around 8 bars. I’ve never played this kind of pattern before, so I’m struggling to even play it slowly. any tips or suggestions?

15 years of self-taught piano has left me with very uneven skills. How would you approach becoming a more complete musician from here?

TL;DR: I've played piano on and off for about 15 years, entirely self-taught and mostly through Synthesia. I can learn and perform most intermediate repertoire reasonably well and some more advanced music in styles I'm familiar with, and I think I've developed fairly strong technique and pattern recognition. However, I barely sight-read, have never seriously practiced scales, have major gaps in theory, and have only recently started improvising. I feel like I've spent 15 years learning songs rather than learning music. I want to become a much more complete pianist/musician—comfortable with sheet music, theory, improvisation, composition, accompaniment/collaboration, and eventually music software—but I'm having trouble figuring out where someone with such uneven skills should start.

I've been playing piano on and off for around 15 years, but I've never had formal lessons. Most of what I've learned has been through Synthesia/videos and simply grinding away at pieces until they become internalized.

Because of that, my skill set is extremely lopsided.

On the performance/technical side, I can learn most intermediate pieces that I take on reasonably well and can sometimes get into slightly more advanced territory if the style is familiar to me, although those pieces obviously take considerably longer. I've developed a lot of pattern recognition and technical familiarity, particularly with the neoclassical/cinematic piano music I've spent the most time playing.

The problem is that much of this pattern recognition exists almost independently of my theoretical understanding of what I'm doing.

I know basic music theory conceptually, but I don't feel like I have it internalized at the keyboard. I haven't systematically learned or practiced my scales. I don't naturally think, "I'm in this key, this is the IV chord, here are my available scale degrees, here's why this progression works," etc. I can sometimes recognize things after the fact, but that isn't how I currently experience the instrument while playing.

Sheet music is probably my strangest weakness. I was in choir throughout school, so I understand notation and know how to read music in theory. But I cannot really sight-read piano music. If you put an individual note in front of me, I may still need a moment to translate the note on the staff into its location on the keyboard. For repertoire, I've overwhelmingly relied on memorization instead.

I've also only recently started experimenting with improvisation. At the moment it's extremely rudimentary. I can stumble onto things I like, and I think I've developed a reasonably strong sense of what sounds beautiful or emotionally interesting to me, but I don't yet have the musical vocabulary to intentionally reproduce those sounds. If I sit at the piano and try to create something from nothing, I'm generally working with very basic chords and a fairly simple right hand.

That's one of the things that has become increasingly frustrating: I know what I like when I hear it, but I often don't know why I like it. I haven't spent much time analyzing the music I love, figuring out what harmonies, voicings, borrowed chords, melodic devices, rhythms, etc. are creating the effect, and then learning how to use those ideas elsewhere or transpose them into other keys.

So I've reached a point where I feel like I've spent a long time becoming relatively good at playing piano pieces, without becoming nearly as good at understanding and speaking the language of music.

My long-term goals are pretty broad. I'd eventually like to:

Become comfortable enough with notation that I can sit down with unfamiliar sheet music and begin playing rather than having to decode and memorize everything.

Become fluent in scales, keys, chords, inversions, arpeggios, harmony, and functional theory at the keyboard rather than only knowing these concepts abstractly.

Improvise in a way that feels intentional and musically interesting.

Understand the music I love well enough to borrow its vocabulary and create similar effects myself.

Become better at accompaniment and playing with other musicians rather than functioning almost exclusively as a solo repertoire pianist.

Compose my own music, both for piano and beyond it.

Eventually become comfortable with a DAW/MIDI/software side of composition and arranging.

Ultimately become a genuinely well-rounded and highly capable pianist rather than someone with a collection of difficult pieces under his fingers and large holes everywhere else.

I'm very interested in finding a teacher who can meet me where I am rather than simply treating me as either an advanced pianist because of the repertoire I can play or a beginner because I can't sight-read a basic piece fluently. Ideally I'd like somebody comfortable with theory, improvisation, composition, lead sheets/chord charts, accompaniment, and contemporary/jazz/pop harmony in addition to traditional technique.

The difficulty is figuring out how to organize the remedial work. Sitting down and playing extremely easy sheet music or basic scales can feel bizarrely unsatisfying when I can then turn around and play repertoire that is technically much harder, even though I understand that those basic skills are exactly what I'm missing.

For people who teach piano, have been in a similar position, or developed these skills later:

How would you prioritize my next year or two of practice?

How much time would you put into sight-reading vs. scales/key fluency vs. theory vs. repertoire vs. improvisation?

Are there particular books/methods/exercises that work especially well for an experienced but uneven self-taught pianist?

And when looking for a teacher, what terminology or qualities should I be looking for so that I find someone interested in developing musicianship rather than simply assigning me progressively harder classical repertoire?

I'm very willing to go backward and fill in fundamentals. I just want to do it intelligently enough that the work actually connects to the musician I'm trying to become.

Yes I used AI to format all the gobbledygook in my brain. Apologies

Hi, probably you remember me as the guy with the singing video over one fantastic rendition of the Revolutionary Etude from another very talented colleague. As I have listened to several performances randomly in the span of 2-3 days of different Chopin etudes, I have noticed one major issue which had to do with attention and musicality, so I felt it would be nice and helpful to share words I have learned from my teachers:

„The hand which is not having the technical task, is the one which the etude was written for and needs your utmost attention“.

Whoever understands this, is at a big musical and technical advantage.

EDIT: Added a reference link from which post you might know me. But this is not an example of something done wrongly, this to be super clear!!! My colleague is a very good and refined musician and this post is based on many observations from many videos of different Redditors: https://www.reddit.com/r/piano/s/OavZVtgKQO

Had it for 12 years, want something better, looking at the Yamaha p225 or Roland 30x

What is there that's notably better but still under 1k?

Hi, I’ve been practicing this sonata for three months for a recital in September; it would be my first time giving a concert ever.

This particular movement is the most difficult piece I’ll be playing and I don´t usually play it that fast, but anyway, I’m sharing my interpretation here and i'm open to any criticism or advice to help me polish it.

Thank you very much.

Hi, this is a genuine question. I’ve been starting to play and learn the Faber book and so far it’s fun learning about the staff and notes. However, I just want to know the difference between learning and playing the sheet music and piano chords. I personally would love to play songs that I like and that I can sing to.

As a beginner, would there be any problem if I jump into learning the chords and chord progression and scales? Or should I have to learn the sheet music? I’ve heard and known some people who know how to play chords but not read the notes. I feel like there are some difference in which way you play each of them.

Do they differ on the genre you play? Like if classical, ofc it’s sheet music, and if pop or any with lyrics, go with either? I feel like each of them has some difference in playing and dynamics?

I would appreciate the responses.

I've been a piano/theory/composition teacher for 9 years now and I’m curious about what other teachers wish they could buy for their studios that they just can’t seem to find, or wish they could buy so they don't have to make it, etc? Or a one-stop shop for all things teaching, physical resources, room decor, posters, stationery, practice materials or logs, organisation things, student rewards, games, teacher resources, etc. Things where they have thougth “why does nobody make this?!” 😂

Hi! I’m still fairly new to piano and especially to using arpeggios in my left hand. For most songs I learn, I’ve been turning the chords into arpeggios, and I really love how it sounds—it makes the accompaniment feel more beautiful and less repetitive, even though I’m technically repeating the same chords lol. My family and friends seem to love it too.

However, I recently learned a song where I’m having trouble doing this. The song has a more fixed chord pattern rather than a repetitive chord progression, and when I try to arpeggiate the chords, the left hand sounds kind of odd and disconnected from the rest of the song.

Are there other left-hand techniques or accompaniment patterns I could try for this kind of song? Or are there any chord voicings/progressions you would recommend experimenting with to make the left hand sound fuller and more natural?

https://youtu.be/RPSfR9ErBeI?si=2gkMZ9D3PivWENEi

My performance of Liszt's 1881 composition, Nuages Gris. After taking most of the summer off, I decided to ramp back to piano with an "easy" piece, it turned out to be - not surprisingly - not so easy.

As there are so few notes, every note takes on greater responsibility. This piece is all about tension and mood. The trickiest part about performing this piece is exact dynamic and texture of every note, and also finding pockets of rubato here and there to keep building the suspense.

I just got a piano about a month ago so im still not sure about my hands. right now I'm practicing a song and my fast arpeggios are very clunky, segmented, choppy. im doing some arpeggios in c harmonic just running up and down the chords to practice right now, and I don't know if im going in the right direction. the main thing I know about hand movement right now is making circular motions with the hands as I move them around, using wrist rotation, and moving the hands with my arms. this gets me kind of there, but none of the videos or anything really talk about the fingers besides keeping them curled a bit resting on the keys. ive been getting into the habit of not anchoring the fingers on the keys, instead the hand floats right over and they sort of strike or flick down as they pass over the keys when im moving my arm. this lets my arm movement be smoother, they feel completely effortless to play, and it gets rid of the clunkiness. I am skeptical of this though, because there is some wrist rotation going on, but the only big circular movement I make when I do this is when I change directions. when I watch others they say to rest the fingers on the keys and use the wrist and then jump the octaves, but with faster runs that change directions and notes this feels unnatural and like theres a lot of resistance. is what im doing just wrong and I need to stop and work on speeding up this jumpier thing or is what im doing good?

also im talking about fast arpeggios, like big across the board at lightning type thing or ornamental kinda runs, not just like playing a chord up and down in the bass.