learning the piano as an adult

The second in Dakota Gales series of guest articles, Notes from the Keyboard, aimed at adult amateur pianists

When my wife gifted me a smooth and shiny Yamaha keyboard for my birthday in 2020, I couldn’t play Chopsticks or even find middle C on it. As an adult learner, I also had limited time, so focused practice was of the essence.

After flailing about, I developed the most effective practice mindset and routine that I could. I’ll share it below.

Over the next four years, I dug into playing piano, but also into how to learn to play piano. Four years later, I’m playing pieces I thought were a decade out. Chopin. Beethoven. Debussy. I sometimes can’t believe my fingers can fly the way they do.

A portrait of Debussy I did while learning to draw people.

None of this magically arrived in a brain chip from Amazon. I didn’t buy Pianist Hands on Ebay and splice them onto my arms.

Nope. This progress was achieved through good old-fashioned dedication. *yawn* I know, I know…show me the TikTok video that has you playing 650 pieces in a week using JUST FOUR CHORDS!

Riiight. The faster success is gained, the shakier it is. Get Rich Quick with this money-making scheme! Learn a language in a week! Get a six pack sitting on the couch! Earn a college degree between episodes of your favorite Netflix series!

Hogwash. Easy come, easy go. There’s so much satisfaction to be found in the effort, the daily scales, the consistency. I’d wager that every pianist who continues to play must embrace the daily grind.

After years of doing this, I’ve realized something important: the toughest part of learning piano is… BEING PATIENT.

It takes as long as it takes. Want to learn a Beethoven sonata or Chopin etude in your first year? That’s nice. It’ll be built on a shaky foundation. Even pros like Andras Schiff didn’t even feel capable of tackling Beethoven’s sonatas until he was in his 40s!

However, if you create a smart practice routine and stick to it, you will improve. Not a matter of maybe: you will.

Ten minutes of practice per day is 60 hours per year. Thirty minutes is 180 hours! I’d wager that you can find 10-30 minutes each day to learn a new skill. Trade some social media or Netflix time for piano. Your future self will thank you.

That said, I’ve wasted plenty of time in the four years since a piano dropped in my lap. Since we’re adults and lack the time to futz about, we’ve gotta maximize our time at the piano!

Here are four key things that benefited me the most:

Learning about (and implementing) deliberate practice.
Learning basic music theory.
Hiring a piano teacher (and listening to them).
Not biting off too-difficult pieces.

Deliberate Practice

When I started playing piano, I’d do some scales, arpeggios, whatever to warm up. Then straight into repertoire, which consisted of just trying to play something, over and over. I had no plan, just “start at the beginning and wear this down via submission.”

Picture me with a catapult outside a Piano Piece Castle. If I lobbed enough rocks at the walls, eventually I could break it down! The problem: I wasn’t being thoughtful about where or when to throw the rocks. Sometimes I attacked Castles that were WAY too big for my artillery.

Since then, I’ve learned to use deliberate practice to simplify things and hammer concepts into my brain in smaller chunks.

I break pieces down into their smaller parts (e.g. only working on 2 bars at a time, or breaking an arpeggio into block chords, or an octave into only the root note). I slow pieces to 50% and only increase the tempo once I can lights-out play it. I might play the same bar 25 times in a row, firehosing it into my brain, coating that brain circuit in myelin so that it’s a superhighway, not a goat trail.

It feels slow in the moment, but I learn pieces not just better, but faster, one bar at a time. Deliberate practice builds a stronger structure, brick by brick, versus throwing up a stick built house that blows over in the wind of live performance.

Book recommendations: The Musician’s Way by Gerald Klickstein, Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner, and The Art of Practicing by Deline Bruser. These have helped me dial in my practice routine and develop a different mindset around performing (and mistakes—they’re just feedback!).

Scoring a couple hours of piano in a friend’s studio on a sweet grand piano.

Learning music theory

BLERGH. Music theory, the Brussels sprouts of learning piano. Give me the repertoire, the chocolate cake!

Well, I quickly realized that trying to learn pieces without knowing the basics of theory meant it took forever to figure out a piece. If we compare it to reading, I was basically sounding out letters vs. reading sentences. Th…e. THE. C…aaaa CAT.

Painful. By learning key signatures and basics like major and minor triads (and then their inversions), I made much faster progress. I also developed the ability to memorize pieces quite well because I was thinking in chords and chord progressions instead of individual notes. Now I play all my pieces from memory.

In my experience, spending some time on music theory will drastically speed up your learning progress. I’ve grown to enjoy the analysis that I do with pieces before even putting my hands on the keys. Brussels sprouts as the appetizer, thank you very much.

Resource: This Skillshare course by professor Jason Allen is fantastic.

Hiring a teacher

There are SO many resources for online self-paced piano lessons. They’re affordable and easy to use. They help. I still occasionally do.

Let me encourage you to also hire a teacher, local or online. I cast about for nine months before starting lessons and am so so so glad I didn’t wait longer.

Mine, a Brazilian named Antonio, offers me feedback and insight on my playing a video course could never provide. “Hey, what if you shifted your wrist 10 degrees? In most renditions, pros play that piece like ____. Perhaps this fingering for that passage works better for your hand?”

I’ll write more about my experience with online lessons, but real quick… Not only are online lessons more affordable, they offer the benefit of being portable. When I travel, I can bring my keyboard and still take lessons.

My progress accelerated dramatically when I hired Antonio for a weekly lesson. He corrected things I’d never even considered (like pivoting on my 3rd finger for big left hand arpeggios, not the 2nd finger). If almost every pro had a teacher when they were learning, it’s probably worth it for us amateurs!

Resource: Just search “online piano teacher.” Many popular YouTube pianists also teach lessons.

Piano with a view in my camper van.

Don’t get too big for your britches

Many intro piano pieces felt too simple or boring for me. Right out of the gate, I wanted to play the beautiful pieces.

When the Saint’s Come Marching In? HAH. March on OUTTA here: give me Chopin’s Nocturne in Eb, baby!

The problem: I had zero piano skills. I couldn’t even read music or play a scale!

I was learning how to bungee jump by wingsuit jumping. Less risky on a piano (no bridges to smash into), but certainly a waste of time.

I spent HOURS learning the melody line to the Chopin nocturne…with zeroooo chance I’d be able to actually play it with the left hand added in. I didn’t even know what the key of Eb meant.

My teacher helped me understand which pieces would push me vs. shut me down. Instead of expending hours on a piece I had no chance of playing, I started grabbing achievable pieces. They still took work (I’m looking at you, Consolation No. 3 and your mind-bending triplets), but I could do it!

But I still dream, keeping a list of “goal” pieces. These are pieces that I really want to be able to play that are too difficult for me to learn efficiently at this time. This gives me a long-term set of goal trajectories, which helps me focus on what to work on now. (I’ll also work hard sections of pieces slowly, over months, such as the fast cadenzas in Liszt’s Liebestraum #3 or Chopin’s Db nocturne.)

To keep track of pieces, I created a spreadsheet that I update regularly. I also have an ongoing Spotify playlist to which I add pieces that catch my fancy. (After four years, it’s a tour of my listening.) I listen broadly to different eras of piano music as well as different continents. Albeniz from Spain, Villa Lobos from Argentina, Copland from America, and of course the core canon from Western Europe.

Keep dreaming, but stay reasonable! No wingsuiting just yet…

Your future self will thank you

In college, on a whim I test drove a Lexus I had zero chance of affording. The sound system was top-notch, crystal silky magic.

Later, I chatted with a friend about how I couldn’t wait to own a car like that and listen to classical music while I drove.

“Don’t turn into an old man TOO fast,” she cautioned.

Now I’m an almost-old man at the ripe age of 42. I get to listen to classical music while I drive…but I can also PLAY a bunch of it!

Sure, it took focused work and required shifting time from other activities.

It was worth it. I’ve launched a ship I can sail on for the rest of my life, a journey into a whole new language—nah, world— I hadn’t visited before.

A gift my younger self forwarded to future me that I gratefully accept.

When he isn’t playing piano, Dakota Gale enjoys learning languages (especially Italian) and drawing. He also writes about reclaiming creativity as an adult and ditching tired personal paradigms in his newsletter, Traipsing About. He can often be spotted camping and exploring mountain bike trails around the Pacific Northwest.

This site is free to access and ad-free, and takes many hours to research and maintain. If you find joy and value in what I do, why not

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Following one of those wonderfully serendipitous encounters on the internet, I am delighted to present “Notes from the Keyboard”, a series of articles for adult amateur pianists, by Dakota Gale, chronicling his own experiences of learning the piano as an adult.

Four years ago, my wife surprised me with a digital piano for my birthday. I’d mentioned my desire to learn a few times and, ever the muse, she called my bluff.

I couldn’t read music. Finding middle C was a quest. I was a B-E-G-I-N-N-E-R.

And yet…she was right. At 38 years old, I tumbled rapturously into the world of piano.

Four years later, the honeymoon phase is over, and yet I remain motivated to play every day and am still loving the journey. (<–understatement: I’m head-over-heels for it.)

**I even do stuff like learning to do portraits by drawing musicians! (My wife tells me that’s eccentric…)**

I’m playing pieces by Chopin, Debussy, Beethoven, Liszt, and other famous composers that I thought were a decade off. Even facing the inevitable frustrations of piano study, I’m finding joy in piano every.single.day.

Learning piano transcends fun – I feel like I’ve unearthed a gift, a path to access some of the most beautiful music ever written. Accessing the pieces revealed a fountain of satisfaction that isn’t tied to money or achievement, a much-needed oasis of play as an adult.

In fact, I’ll often drop into a flow state for 30 minutes and be surprised when my timer goes off. Where else do we get that feeling once we’re done playing with Legos or mud pies?

You, mega-savvy adult reader, can do it too!

Adults CAN learn to play piano

I share my achievements not to brag (many pianists young and old far outshine my abilities), but to offer hope to adult learners. If you’re telling yourself, “Oh, I could never learn to play” or “I’m not musical” or “only kids can learn piano,” let me persuade you otherwise.

I’m shocked how many people tell me only children can learn. Well, kids are “naturals” at learning because:

They don’t over-complicate things, focusing on foundational blocks that are small and approachable. (Be it music, language, or other skills.)
Kids are able to practice more undistracted hours because an adult provides housing, food, and does their laundry. Their job is to be curious sponges; our Adult Role is often yawn-tastic Tuesdays, repeated.

Adults lack those luxuries. We put pressure on ourselves, try to play songs that are too hard for us, question if the time investment is worth it, and simply don’t have as much time to practice.

I’m an adult. (It snuck up on me.) On top of all the typical adult stuff, I have far too many hobbies. Sometimes friends do annoying things like interrupt my piano reverie to invite me to dinner or on bike rides. *sigh* The inconsiderate louts, I must practice!

And yet by carving out time each day to study piano, in a few months I reached a deeply satisfying level of proficiency that kept me coming back. After four years, I’m frankly astonished sometimes at what my fingers can do.

As a bonus, it’s beautiful for people to listen to (or so they pretend). A skill I’ll enjoy and develop for a lifetime, long after I’m done taking irresponsible risks on my mountain bike.

Beyond that, I’m fired up! I look forward to enjoying creating music the rest of my life and only wish I’d started earlier.

Dear reader, welcome to “Notes from the Keyboard: Adult Piano Chronicles” on The Cross-Eyed Pianist. This will be an ongoing series about my journey learning piano as an adult. I’ll share my journey (ups and downs!) and headaches with pieces and how I resolve them. I promise to absolutely not take myself too seriously—after all this is a hobby, not a vocation.

If you have ideas for topics you’d like to hear about from a dedicated amateur student of classical piano such as myself, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m looking forward to sharing this journey with you!

This site is free to access and ad-free, and takes many hours to research, write, and maintain. If you find joy and value in what I do, why not

BUY ME A COFFEE

The Cross-Eyed Pianist