My daughter showed interest in piano so we got her an electronic keyboard and she loves it. Now she is asking about online lessons and I thought I'd ask the community here.
Any recommendations for some free lessons online? Would prefer something structured rather than just the odd YouTube etc.
What constitutes decent?
By an actual person
Well, if you have a Mac, garageband has good piano tutorials
PC and android here.
It didn't work out with the guitar?
Maybe find her a tutor for a few lessons. This way she can build some good foundations and correct techniques, then see if she is still interested to continue on.
Guitar is going great, she loves online lessons and is super interested to learn more. So much so that she requested online lessons for piano. Not sure why some struggle with this. Oh well lets hope they recover from shallow thought processes…
I don’t think anyone knew the context of your daughter’s current level of music abilities. If you had included it with your opening post, then most of us wouldn’t have assumed the worst and might have given you suggestions at the level you have now described :)
Sounds like your daughter has a knack for learning musical instruments.
Simply Piano and Melodics have free trials but then you have to pay.
Also don’t forget your local library for books and dvds. You can get the basics in terms of fingering and hand position etc as well as different songs, scales etc.
If she can’t already read music this is a good skill to learn along with learning the keyboard.
You could also spend time learning with her if you can’t get lessons. I always remember my parents would just give me an instrument and a book and leave me to my own devices when I was a kid, I learned so much more any chance I had to learn with someone - so if you’re not doing lessons with a teacher maybe look at other ways to help her.
Invest in real lessons, if she doesn't get the fundamentals she won't progress and will get frustrated and quit. This may put her off future musical endeavours too. If she enjoys it and wants to continue you'll have to consider getting a real piano too (unless this keyboard is a very good one with proper weighted keys etc).
Download App "Simply Piano" by Joytunes author: Levi via App Store or Android Google Play.
I agree worthwhile to get some formal lessons with a piano teacher.
Sometimes on Gumtree people with piano ability have no charge provided you can in exchange give services like lawnmowing, painting maintenance etc
Not sure if I made it clear. I understand that people are married to the idea of one-on-one (in person lessons) are the best and I'm sure it is (no doubt), however online works just fine for us so if you have any suggestions for the OP I'm really interested to hear them. She currently learns guitar online and is not struggling or bored with the process. Cheers for the help!
If she just wants to mess around sure. Otherwise she won't get the fundamentals, and she could develop bad technique, which is hard to reverse once she's used to doing it. With the bad technique she won't be able to progress. Like imagine a kid is learning to write - with no outside influence they'll probably pick up the pencil in their fist. After a long time they might figure out how to copy a letter that they can see printed in a book. But there's no way they could figure out cursive on their own - they can't see the page under their first and they don't have the control of the pencil that a pencil grip gives. But they won't have any idea why they don't seem capable of writing cursive because nobody was there to show them the pencil grip at the point where they were experimenting with picking up the pencil. Even if someone shows them later, with a few years of using their fist they're used to it and it will be very difficult to change. Much more effort than learning the right thing at the beginning.
Anyway I have experience with this - I learned guitar on my own for about four years before I decided to get lessons. Within 2 months I was playing pieces more advanced than what learned on my own and within a year and a half I passed the 2nd grade AMEB exam. A little while later I got a cello. Same deal. Learned on my own for about 3 years and then took lessons. It took 3 months before I was playing pieces more advanced than I was playing on my own because I developed such terrible technique by playing on my own without lessons which needed to be corrected. My teacher says I could take the grade 1 exam now if I wanted but I am going to wait until I can take grade 2. I also play on my trumpet from time to time but can't play anything better than nursery rhymes (really badly, sounds like a dying elephant). Maybe I'll get lessons in trumpet one day too.
Great points and I get it. It was my first consideration as is expected as her parent. I am not willing to do formal lessons, that decision has been made and it involved a lot more thought than the words posted here.
So her options are learn online and possibly adopt some bad habits that she may or may not find easy to break, or not learn at all. She can pursue any formal lessons she chooses on her own in later life.
I haven't found any good free ones so far. Most seem to be paid. As someone who was taught through DVDs and mostly self taught, in between her learning the basics of notes on a piano but before she gets too far ahead I strongly suggest just one in person or Skype lesson to check she's holding her hand correctly and moving it right with scales, as it's really hard to unlearn and it limited progression as I got older and I ended up with RSI in my wrist due to playing technique. Otherwise I hope other people can weigh in cause I've been searching too. Just please take my warning as it meant I was in imense pain and couldn't play and write for a long time
She is not on it regularly enough to get RSI lol. If she were taking it that seriously I would likely get someone over here once a week to tutor her.
With kids most pursuits are a miss. I'm not about to push her. I don't care either way if she learns instruments. I love and am proud of her in every failed endeavour and fleeting success.
you're not going to find a decent free online piano lesson. Either suck it up and pay for lessons, or let her learn stuff off youtube