Self-Learning the Piano

I started playing the piano when I was 10. Sadly, I didn’t have a lot of interest in it at that time, and stopped taking lessons shortly after passing grade 5. However, I do like to occasionally play the pieces I like, mostly theme songs from movies, animes and games. It feels different than simply listening. It feels more personal. When listening to music, I’m receiving whatever the composer is trying to communicate. I feel the sorrow, the joy and the enthusiasm experienced by the protagonist. However, when I play it by myself, it feels like I am the protagonist.

As a working adult now, I want to re-learn the piano and be able to play it right - with the correct techniques, postures and the ability to accurately expressing my thoughts and emotions through my playing. As a starter, I invested in a beginner digital piano, the Casio CDP-S150. While I understand that a digital piano may limit the development of certain techniques, I think it should be fine to move on to a better piano after I have mastered the basic techniques. For lessons, I use Youtube. I will search for “How to play Arpeggios” or “How to play fast and evenly” and learn from the videos. Through this process, I found Josh Wright, a pianist Youtuber, and try to consistently learn from him ever since. He recommended several ways to self-learn the piano, and I bought one of the recommended technique books and get started! Now, here comes the problem…

Even though I come from a Computer Science background, I am quite confident that I am able to learn subjects like physics, finance, psychology or history without a personal tutor. However, learning the piano is very different from these subjects. An important aspect of learning is to know that we are understanding the materials right. Studying is to receive information. It may be the case that we misunderstood what the author is trying to convey. Therefore we should confirm our understanding, by doing tests or experiments. That completes the learning process. To summarize, learning is roughly a two-part process - receiving information from the outside, and confirming understanding on the inside.

Coincidentally, I have a recent example of learning the wrong thing. When I was researching how ginger milk curd forms, I came across this sentence: 蛋白酶在使牛奶蛋白质凝固之后，会继续催化蛋白质分解，而形成带有苦味的肽 (translate: After milk curds are formed, the enzymes continue reacting with protein to form peptides, which is where the bitterness came from). My takeaway includes: all peptides are bitter. However, after consulting a friend, they corrected me - only some peptides are bitter, and it is that the hydrolysis process produces that kind of peptide.

Now, when self-learning the piano, the first part is trivial. There are so many Youtube tutorials out there where I can see their hand positions. I can see that their fingers are relaxed when playing light and fast pieces. They look effortless. But when I try it, I couldn’t know whether I am doing it correctly. Am I using too much of my wrist? Is my left hand too loud? Is my tempo correct? These are the questions in my mind that I don’t have an answer for, and I think that’s what slowing me down. I couldn’t complete the second part of the learning process. Currently, I can play with the correct notes and somewhat resembling the piece, but I think self-learning the piano can only bring you this far. If I do want to bring my piano skills to a higher level, I think a teacher is necessary, since they can confirm that we are doing it right.

Thanks for reading. If you have other tips on self-learning the piano, do let me know!