Too late?

Can someone who’s typically easily bored and lack an attention span or appetite to stick things through to the bitter end actually learn how to play the piano in his 40s?

My first attempt at learning piano was in the early 90s when I first found out about Miracle Piano available on the original Nintendo system. I was fortunate enough to get the piano and “game” and attempted to learn how to play. I can still remember being quite excited, until I ran into tempo and rhythm issues. Once I hit small road blocks I got frustrated and bored, and gave up on learning the timing on notes and closed that chapter.

Fast track a 2-3 years later, I tried a lesson or two at the local music school. For whatever reason, that also didn’t take or last very long.

In my 30s (2012), I decided to buy a Casio PX-130 and some method books. I tried to self teach, but after a few days of getting tired of the nursery rhyme like beginner songs the books were offering I instead tried to learn Fur Elise from a music sheet; obviously this was a hefty task for a beginner. I was only able to read treble staff notes via mnemonics. Once I made some progress with the piece, I got distracted and dropped trying to learn the piano once again all together. That Casio PX-130 went on its own journey of collecting dust in storage.

2022, nothing has changed. I still idolized the idea idea of being able to sit down at a piano and play music for my own enjoyment and relaxation. But, like I said, nothing has changed. I still only know the notes: FACE. I only know simply things like what quarter notes, half notes, whole notes are. I can find middle C is, and recall C chord being introduced to me with When the Saints Go Marching from one of the method books. While nothing has changed since 10 years ago in terms of me getting closer to actually playing the piano, perhaps in addition to the new events in my life the last 2 years – this might be the year to attempt learning the piano once again? Maybe I can continue the string of new experiences.

I had just started a new job one month before COVID happened and the lockdown began. Thankfully we weathered the storm made it through. I also got my new best friend a German Shepherd the same year, who’s now 2 years old. I purchased my first home at the beginning of 2022. You know what, I want to learn to play the piano. Let’s try to make it happen, regardless of past failures.

Lesson 14 (45 min)

At the start of the lesson I mention how last week’s assignment was tough. Up until this point my LH had been mainly focus on playing/holding a chord or bass note. However, with the Minuet piece, my LH has to play some eighth notes or even play a different rhythm while my RH was just playing single note staccato. This is definitely challenging and is taking me some time to get my brain to wrap around it.

After playing the usual Hanon slowed down a bit because when I try it at 76bpm on a grand, my fingers don’t adjust quite as fast as I would like it. After which he says we can move on to exercise 3, so that will be this week with hands separate the usual start.

I then play Minuet, but had to slow the tempo down for 1 problematic area, which I think with more repetition I will iron out. This week I will work on finishing the Minuet either hands separate or together depending on time. He shows me a part of the piece where there’s some voicing that I should note and demonstrated it for me.

We then went on to discuss voicing with the seventh chords, so I will be playing the 1st and 5th note of the chords with my LH, and with the RH I will be playing the remaining two notes. He introduces a new piece All the Things You Are. he said this is a could piece to practice figuring out on my own how I want to arrange the chords. He did give me some tips to figure out how I wanted to voice it depending on distance from the treble clef note.

I then play my prescription melody with the chord change a few times, and he gives me some tips to work on this some more. I get the gist of it he says and we will continue the exercise.

For the work in progress, Fly Me to the Moon, we spend the remainder of the time drilling the first 2 bars to get that swing rhythm and accenting better.

Lesson 13 (45 min)

Pretty thorough lesson this week. Lots to work on. Per usual class begun with a quick Hanon warm-up, this week I showed my proficiency with Hanon Exercise 1 and 2 in continuity at 76bpm, hands separate. New homework – hands together. It’s interesting how well you can do it separately, and the moment you just attempt hands together and your brain fights you on this.

I then performed Bach (not Bach) Minuet in G hands separate till the double bar. Homework – work till double bar hands together. I tried it a bit when I got home and tried hands together some, and could already see I will need to put extra effort in bar 10 and 12, where the treble clef has me playing staccato notes, and LH has to play some eighth notes. Brain is not immediately clicking on this rhythm switch, as most of the pieces prior to this one have had my right hand controlling most the rhythm and more complex hand movement with LH only playing chords or bass notes.

We then worked on my playing my 4 chords against the backtrack of Softly as in a Morning Sunshine. I had this at 76bpm, alternating between the chords every 2 beats. So this week my teacher gave me a prescription rhythm to try. We tried it a few time with just a single note for the entire rhythm. He wants me to practice 1 note first and slow work myself up to 2, 3, repeated notes using only C, Eb, F, F#.

He tested me on dominant 7s for a few playbacks, and once satisfied, we moved onto diminished seventh chords. He explained there was only 3 and essentially inversions that covered the rest of the keys. So this week I am concentrating on C diminished 7, asking me to play diminished C triad + double flat B. He went on further to demonstrate voicing of chords and applications, something we will start next class. Additional homework is to continue Circle+Major7,minor7, and Dominant + Diminished. I found a neat YouTube video with a diminished progression I might try to add to the practice as it sounds quite nice to the ear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xwny96CSLs

Finally I attempt Fly Me to the Moon with the swing rhythm once again. Played it a few times, and he said I can attempt hands together this week. So we practiced a little of that for the remainder of the class.

At home I have been adding scales into my technical training portion of daily practice. Currently following ABRSM Initial and Grade 1 requirements. With Initial Grade, I was working on C Major Scale 1 octave, D minor natural scale, D minor harmonic and melodic scale. I have started also Grade 1, adding G Major Scale 2 octave, and upgraded C 1 octave to 2 Octave as well.

Current thoughts, I am excited about doing the Minuet in G, as it’s forcing my left hand into more activity. I can only imagine as my skill progress what other challenges more difficult Bach pieces will add to the mix.

Lesson 12 (45 min)

Class started with the usual quick Hanon warmup, but I might have tried to speed it up too much, so it was a bit sloppy. Slowed down the metronome some and got through exercise #2 ok. This week, I am back to hands separate and connecting Exercise 1 into 2 without the stopping C note.

I also asked if the rolling notes I was playing was similar to grace notes, and he began showing me examples of mordent, turn, etc. This was just a side note quick discussion.

Clearing Minuet by Leopold Mozart with and without Metronome I begin a new piece this week: Bach’s Minuet in G, though if google serves me right, it wasn’t actually by Bach, but rather it was Christian Petzold. So, this week I am working the first section to the double bar, hands separate 54-80 bpm. This is exciting because I think this piece is almost synonymous with every piano student’s curriculum at some point.

I play a bit of the harder arrangement of Fly Me to the Moon, but I was lacking in swing rhythm. We spent some time on trying to nail the feel and count of the swing rhythm, so that is what I will be practicing this week.

For the 4 chord progression from last week, I will be playing it against a back track in Real Pro. We also discussed improvising melody using 4 notes of the blues scale I have learned. He asked if I had time to try to make a small and easy to follow melody while playing it against the chord progression.

I played through the Major and Minor 7th chords along with the circle of 5ths. This week lesson began dominant 7s. So for homework I will be drilling those.

During the week I did try to work in some Faber Adult Adventure Book 1. I really need to get more sleep in and find sometime to get further in that book, as well as pickup Sightreading practice again. I did begin to practice some scales on my own, trying to get down 2-4 per week sounds like a good start. I am using the ABRSM syllabus for Initial and Grade 1 as a starting point.

Lesson 11 (45 min)

Class started with me mentioning to my teacher that I can identify and locate the major and minor 7th, but I can’t quite shape my hands on the chords instantly yet and will need more time. So he is holding off on going over dominant 7ths this week. I still played through circle of 5ths and major and minor 7ths for him though and he agrees I need to keep studying it. I think this week I will break up the 7ths into smaller chunks and try to memorize the shape better, rather than as a whole.

I played Hanon #2 hands together at 60bpm but did fall behind a little bit, so for this week I will work on getting it faster.

I tried Fly Me to the Moon at 100bpm on the grand piano, but couldn’t quite get it there, so we lowered the metronome and I played through it. Afterwards he gave me an option to continue practicing another week to get it there in terms of speed or to try the next version which is a lot more difficult. I think if I really drilled myself 100 is fine, so I said I think we can move on. So, we take a look at a different version of with grace notes and swing rhythm. So for this week I will be working on just the RH on this new version, slowly in chunks.

I played the Minuet assignment, 1st half hands together at 60 and 2nd part hands separately. For this week I will practice the entire piece hands together and also add some pedal.

He had me show the blue scales 2 octave with the chord change on descend, which was ok. So, this week I am introduced to 4 new chords that he wants me to memorize; eventually get to a point where I can play the chords while holding a conversation. He also introduced me to the app I REAL PRO and said it’s great to play with, especially if I get tired of practicing with just the metronome. The 4 chords are Cm7, Cm6, Dm7b5, and G7. I will be using Softly as in a Morning Sunrise as the piece, but only playing the chord changes.

I think between nerves and just not getting the transition from practicing at home solely on a Roland FP-30X and then jumping to the Kawai grand once a week adds a level of anxiety to my performance during the lesson and I don’t nail it as well as I imagine it would go. In any case, must continue to practice and drill even more. I think when I get to a point I feel comfortable with practice and piece on my own digital piano, I need to take it up another notch to compensate for then performing it on an acoustic piano and having better results.

Lesson 10 (45 min)

I had a rough week. Didn’t get much sleep, nor the amount of practice and study I would’ve liked. I was very honest at the beginning of this week’s class when asked how I made out with the material. I said I don’t think I got in enough practice and secondly I missed his notes on the Minuet that said to practice hands separate, so I ended up trying to do hands together on this piece to early. I think that stunted my progress a bit.

We started the class with me show I could do hands separate Hanon exercise #2 at 72bpm. He critiqued that I was rushing the middle, and it was probably because I was falling behind and then was playing catchup. This week I am tasked with hands together for this exercise. I will begin much slower and slowly ramp up, so I can iron out the issue with rushing the middle.

I then played hands separate the Minuet, and discovered I was hesitating on the last note of each bar for RH. I would start the first 2 eighth notes correctly, but then the final eighth note I was hesitating and it caused the next sections to go out of sync. So his suggestion is that I accent the beginning of each pair of eighth notes to work on the proper rhythm and tempo. So this week, I will do the first portion hands together, and hands separate for the later part.

He asked how I was coming along with the major and minor 7th chords, and he could read my non-verbal response and pause that I was not feeling too confident about them. He said take another week on it, since I need to be able to identify and get to them fairly fast before we can move onto the next games where I mix and match them into the Circle of 5th.

I went on to play Fly Me to the Moon at 72bpm, and his comment was that I got the hard part down, but then the quarter note at the end of most bar was coming out too early. So again, I will work on this through accenting that last note to get it squarely on the beat. This week’s assignment is to get this playable to 100bpm. Then we can start to spice it up.

I then asked him if I was practicing the blue scale in swing rhythm correctly, which I was, so thank goodness for that. This week I need to start playing it up two octaves, and then 2 octaves but switching the left hand to changing the shell and chord on descend instead of ascending.

Overall, while I had a bad week of practice and this week we didn’t really go into anything new, I think the class was thoroughly helpful. I have a list of things to work on slowly this coming week and should get through this and a better performance session for next class. We also discussed additionally why hands separate practice is useful to which I agree.

I think if I find some additional study/practice time this week, I will try to incorporate in some exercises from the Paul Harris Improve Your Sight-Reading! Piano book 1. I already currently try to do on a daily basis the minimum of 200 notes in the iOS app, Notes Teacher. And very recently I discussed a fun little game called Staff Wars, also on the iOS and try to get a round or two of that in every now and then.

Also from a YouTube video regarding to essential or useful apps, I began using Andante. It’s a neat little app to help track practice sessions, so I can make sure I am at least getting in the bare 1 hour minimum practice in, and in the right areas. A balance between technique, repertoire pieces, blue scale, chord recognition, and some note reading speed training.

Let’s work on better sleep, more rest, and more effective and efficient practice sessions this week!

Lesson 9 (45 min)

I was in Florida over the Christmas holiday so I didn’t have a lesson last week. Fortunately, I did have access to an older digital piano to practice on; in fact, it was my old keyboard from about 10 years ago from one of my many failed attempts to self-teach. I shipped it from NJ to FL; given my history, I didn’t want to give myself any excuse to get lazy or quit again. And oh boy, even at the novice level, you can feel the difference in key action going from a Roland FP-30X to practicing on a Casio PX-130. I made due and got in some practice here and there, and was hoping my practice was enough to clear the two pieces I was working on for my next class.

Onto Lesson day 9: Cranked the metronome to 72 and preformed Hanon #1 hands together for my teacher, and once without the metronome. He’s moving me to exercise #2 and once again starting at separate hands. Yeah!

We went over my playing of Fly Me to the Moon LH only, and he was happy I was able to play the chords off beat. He mentioned jazz/blues can be difficult for some at first because they are so used to staying on beat. He then broke down the melody for me and added a few fingers to my sheet. Then he had me play the first 3 notes over and over to get the timing down.

We then went over my Capriccio on metronome 100 and then again without. And, finally once more, but he wanted me to pay more attention to the dynamics on the sheet. After playing it for a 3rd time, he was satisfied, and Capriccio is done! Vacation goals success!

This week’s new classical piece is Minuet in D Minor by Leopold Mozart. My teacher put in some fingerings and spots he wants me to pedal. Spoke a little bit about chord voicing and show me some examples. He wants me to start the piece separate hands, and try to make it to the first section, but he did put notes for the entire piece if I had time to go beyond.

After playing Major and Minor 7ths with Circle of 5th, he showed me another method to locate 7ths since he saw that I was still struggling a bit. He had me find the outer notes of the 7th chords first by locating the full octave and then just dropping it by a 1/2 or whole note and adding in the major and minor that I already knew.

For blue scales, he introduced swing beat, so this week I am practicing blue scale with the count of C 1-2, E 3, F 1-2, F# 3, and so forth.

For Moon River, I played it with broken chords and with metronome 80 and without, Moon River is now cleared as well.

Definitely some progress, but I need to put in more effort.

Lesson 8 (45 min)

Still a little jittery at the beginning of each lesson, coming from my home digital piano to my teacher’s Kawai Grand. Fingers just tremble, originally I thought I was coming out of the car cold and didn’t have time to warm up. However my teacher says this is just performance anxiety and a lot of his students experience it.

Showed proficiency with Hanon Exercise 1 both hands at around 72bpm, 4 notes to a beat, separate hands. This week I am tasked with 50-80bpm hands together, try 2 notes or 4 notes to a beat.

Closed out Marche Slave, simple piece but it was the first time I jumped to another octave and after practicing it some, I really enjoyed the tune. Played it for him once at 72 on the metronome and once without.

So this week I am being assigned a new classical piece. He played through 2 pieces, first Capriccio Allegro by Karl Gossec, and second was Minuet in D Minor by Leopold Mozart. I will begin learning Capriccio first. Signature calls for 6/8 and Bb, so he spent a little time just showing me the fingering of the left and a bit and reminding me to remember Bs are now Bb. I won’t be playing it this week as it is written, but instead be playing it as 6/4, and anywhere from 60-116 on the metronome.

I then played Moon River as previously assigned adding 3 chords to a bar. Once he was satisfied, he said for this week we will break up the chords and showed me 2 methods. For example, previous a Cmaj was CEG together, this week I had the option to either play it as C E G broken up, or play C first followed by E G together.

He then had me show Circle of 5th LH and Major Seventh right hand together. Then we went over Minor Sevenths, with them rather then being 1/2 step from Root, they are whole step away. So we tried a few examples.

After grabbing a sheet, he proceeds to tell me he’d play something I know, and plays Fly Me To the Moon. He’s introducing a different rhythm to the chords in my left. This time there are sections I will be playing on the “and” count. So we drill that for a little bit. So for instance the chord is Am7, but he is just having me play A and G on count 1, skip 2, play again on “and,” and hold over to 4. So this week it will just be LH only playing the chords. He printed out both a lead sheet version and a version with both treble and bass clefs.

And final portion of the class I replayed the blues scale 1-2 octaves. Extending that this week, he now has me starting with C (5) Bb (1) LH as I start the blue scale, and every time before hitting C with the right hand I am swapping between C Bb and F (2) A (1). So this week I will practice this for an octave or 2.

Lesson 7 (45 min)

After meeting the requirements he set with the basic Hanon 1 exercise, I asked if I can now move onto the actual Hanon 1 exercise from the book he originally offered me. He said sure and proceeded to show me how to work the first exercise. Assignment: back to separate hands, 54-80bpm. 2/4 Since this was sixteenth notes, we spent some time working out the tempo a bit.

We then discussed Major Seventh Chords. He explained the major chord stays the same except finger changes to 1 2 3, and I add the finger 5 on the note that is 1/2 step below root. And to use that to find the seventh chords. He showed me examples and advance formations of the seventh chords, explaining I probably won’t be touching what he called cowboy chords, the triads going forward. So he had me try to locate a few seventh chords on my own as he called out the major triad.

After performing Moon River with and without metronome, he added a new element of difficulty for me this week. I will be doing 3 chords to a bar. He also introduced the concept of target notes, which he denoted with red X on the sheet. I won’t be applying it to this week, but he said these are areas we can look to improvise. For example from the classical music world, we can do a quick 1/2 note below into the target note and proceeded to demonstrate. He mentioned we probably will start with a clean Moon River sheet to slowly plug in new concepts and filling out the piece to make it sound nicer. Told him that would be exciting as I can imagine going back to Speak Softly Love and adding new components to that.

I cheated during the week because I enjoyed March Slave so much, I started trying to tackle the rest of the piece on my own. So he only did a brief rundown on the remaining parts after the octave change. He also explained what a Fermata was as it was on the sheet. We once again practice drilling some tempo, as I still have those issues. He said if I complete the piece next week proficiently, then we can move onto the next classical piece.

I asked if I should continue with the C scale practice, he said I can try the G scale since there is only 1 sharp note.

Lesson 6 (45 min)

Today’s lesson was pretty straight forward. I demonstrated Spring Theme with a much improved tempo, which I credit with hearing his voice in the back of my head saying “squarely on the beat.” He then have me play it once more without the metronome and he was satisfied enough to move me onto my next classical piece. He chose out 2 songs and began playing them, and told me to choose between the two. One was Marche Slave – Tchaikovsky, and the other was a Mozart piece that I can’t recall the name to. He then explained Marche Slave is manageable, while the Mozart piece was shorter but a little bit more difficult. Given I am still working on the kinks of getting timing down and slowing down overall, I chose Marche Slave. So we began breaking down this piece. He mark the section where there is an octave change to be this week’s end point. We then tackled the triplets from the 2nd bar for some time, so that I could get used to it. He also explained what a crescendo was as it was on the sheet.

For Hanon, the new requirement for the week is to at least get to 92bpm hands together, 2 notes per tick.

We then worked out diminished chords. Again using the basis of what I previous learned with the major triads, he began to show me find the major and flatten the 3rd and 5th. For homework we would be doing the same, Circle of 5th LH and diminished chords on RH.

Moon River, I show butchering of speed with the eighths, so we work on that some. He tells me to practice counting out loud at home. And we work out the rest of the piece. Raising the difficulty, I was to add pedal on each chord change.

Lesson 5 (45 min)

Feels like I graduated slightly on the Hanon exercise 1. After showing I can do separate hands at over 70bpm, he asked if I wanted to go to real Hanon or continue with this one hands together. He showed me real Hanon exercise 1 from a book, I said let’s work on hands together with this basic one first. So this week begins getting both hands to cooperate together, and boy they did not want to even at 60bpm, 1 hand would slip. He introduced an isometric exercise I could do with my left hand to help with this. I was to push down all 5 fingers onto the piano, and lift 1 finger at a time while the other 4 were still pressing down, while not breaking form, I would hit down a note. And basically I would do each finger 5 times, starting with pinky and ending at the thumb.

Today we learn C scale and angling the hand during the ascending notes, and as soon as I play the 2nd finger, I should move my thumb under, getting ready to hit the 4th note in the scale. So we worked out 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5 for the scale: C D E F G A B C.

We then get a lesson on what Tetrachord is and the formation of a major scale being 2 tetrachords with Whole Steps (WS) and Half-Steps (HS). WS-WS-HS-WS-WS-WS-HS.

With major and minor triads done, I am now introduced to augmented chords. So we work out a few examples and he has me augmenting the previous major triads I learned, sharping the 5th.

After playing through Speak Softly Love for him, he says we can move onto the next piece, so he selects for me Moon River. Again, loving the selections, definitely helps learning when it’s songs you enjoy and want to learn. Again we begin breaking the song down and he pencils in some chords and fingers. He also breaks down the bar so I can see how the counting is done, since this is my first 3/4 song and he knows I have a propensity to speed eighth notes. We end up drilling this for a bit. We mark the cut off about 1/2 way on the song, and that would be what I am working on for the week.

We then finished working on the rest of Spring Theme. Speed is still a concern, while it is getting better, I still need to put in a lot of practice to get the timing down better.