4 months in: Academic approach vs. YouTube method (and a huge speed gap)
Hi! My girlfriend and I bought a piano and we've been playing for fun.
We’ve been playing for 4 months now and we can see the results.
She chose to watch YouTube videos of her favorite songs and play them. No theory, no exercises—just sitting down and playing, which fits her personality well.
I, on the other hand, prefer/need a more academic approach with a clearer structure. I have an online teacher once a week and combine it with a paid learning method.
We both play for the same amount of time: 1 hour a day, without fail.
After 4 months, I have slightly more theoretical knowledge than she does, but in everything else she seems to be much better. Her songs sound more impressive, and she definitely learns things that seem super complicated from my perspective. She says I’m exaggerating.
We decided to put it to the test.
We started learning the same piece at the same time, putting in the same amount of practice hours, using the sheet music my piano teacher recommended as my next challenge:
Kabalevsky — Waltz, Op. 39 No. 13
It took her 4 days to learn it from scratch (4 hours), without dynamics and with staccato still needing work.
It took me 12 days (12 hours) to achieve the exact same result, without dynamics and with staccato needing work.
I’m sharing this because, even though it’s not a competition and my enthusiasm for the piano hasn't changed, it does make me wonder. My ego could have accepted her learning twice as fast, but four times as fast seems crazy to me.
In general, she is pretty smart, but I consider myself someone who picks up new things relatively easily as well.
Quick side note: she has a slight background in drums and I have a slight background in guitar.
What do you think? Is it normal to see such a big difference among adult piano students?
Edit 1:
I think I didn't explain myself well. With the post, I wasn't trying to conclude that watching YouTube videos is better than getting a teacher. Quite the opposite—the discussion was aimed at how someone can learn the same things as you three times faster even with worse learning tools.
Also, I wanted to tell you that she doesn't use apps. She does know how to read sheet music. When I say she learns from YouTube videos, I mean she searches for simplified Adele songs and watches a video of someone explaining how to play them, then downloads the sheet music and starts learning it. On the other hand, my teacher gives me sheet music adapted to my level—initially with just a few notes to help me get familiar with the piano and the music progressively.
I think the difference is that she memorizes the sheet music way too fast. She can play a system a couple of times and already have it memorized, whereas I absolutely have to read the sheet music; it takes me several days to learn it by heart.