r/piano

I’ve been playing piano for over a decade (currently Grade 8, preparing for ATCL). Yet, nobody ever told me how important humming is!

For years, I struggled with holding my breath while playing. Combined with hours of sitting, it gave me a weak core and bad posture that followed me off the bench.

After a random chat with an AI, I tried humming along while playing. The difference was immediate:

1. It forces me to breathe properly instead of freezing up during hard passages.
2. My deep core is actively engaged to support the humming, preventing the weak core muscles common in musicians.
3. If I can’t hum the melody while playing, it instantly exposes sections I haven't mastered yet.

TL;DR: Humming while practicing fixed my breathing/posture and tests my musical familiarity. Give it a shot.

I mean the kind of empathy that is required when attending to someone and relating to what they really mean. In the subtext so to speak.

This is often very evident on this subreddit.

I had a lesson a couple hours ago on Movement 3 of Beethoven Op. 110. There’s a lot that went well with it, including my memorization for the fugues, but damn I am finally understanding why this sonata is perceived to be as difficult as it is. There’s no insane runs, massive jumps or difficult arpeggios, but it felt IMPOSSIBLE to match my teacher’s expectations for the introduction and coda today. She’s extremely supportive of me and a very positive influence, but I just left the lesson today feeling so inadequate.

While I’m entering only year 4 of piano, I’ve been a classical musician for about a decade, and I couldn’t find myself being able to follow the way she decides the phrasing, how long a line continues or the way it moves, my voicing of the melody and over reliance on the pedal causing problems, I felt so overloaded and incapable for someone who’s spent several months on the sonata at this point, even if I’m only now getting into the meat of it with her.

Every now and then I have a lesson that just humbles me and sits me on my ass, and today felt like that. I’m supposed to perform it in masterclass next Thursday and now I’m distraught that it’s going to be very under-standards musically (and even technically in some places) and the faculty will be disappointed in my attempts.

The whole process of learning a piece is so exhausting sometimes, and I feel like I get stuck no matter how much I practice or the way I practice. I sometimes spend upwards of 8 hours a day playing during the summer and I’m not improving how I think I should be. I know it’s a long game, but damn it’s eating me alive.

I’m grateful for and so lucky having music as a hobby I’m so passionate about instead of a career I’m stressing over (I’m pursuing my nursing degree along with music), but I can’t bear slowing down. I have my Junior recital in December. My Senior recital in December 2027, and I want to share masterful works of art with my family and friends, my fraternity, my teachers etc, it consumes me. Some days it’s just hard to think I’ll ever meet my goals or have healthy expectations for myself. Thanks for listening to the rant, I’m just struggling right now.

Hi, probably you remember me as the guy with the singing video over one fantastic rendition of the Revolutionary Etude from another very talented colleague. As I have listened to several performances randomly in the span of 2-3 days of different Chopin etudes, I have noticed one major issue which had to do with attention and musicality, so I felt it would be nice and helpful to share words I have learned from my teachers:

„The hand which is not having the technical task, is the one which the etude was written for and needs your utmost attention“.

Whoever understands this, is at a big musical and technical advantage.

EDIT: Added a reference link from which post you might know me. But this is not an example of something done wrongly, this to be super clear!!! My colleague is a very good and refined musician and this post is based on many observations from many videos of different Redditors: https://www.reddit.com/r/piano/s/OavZVtgKQO

Hi, this is a genuine question. I’ve been starting to play and learn the Faber book and so far it’s fun learning about the staff and notes. However, I just want to know the difference between learning and playing the sheet music and piano chords. I personally would love to play songs that I like and that I can sing to.

As a beginner, would there be any problem if I jump into learning the chords and chord progression and scales? Or should I have to learn the sheet music? I’ve heard and known some people who know how to play chords but not read the notes. I feel like there are some difference in which way you play each of them.

Do they differ on the genre you play? Like if classical, ofc it’s sheet music, and if pop or any with lyrics, go with either? I feel like each of them has some difference in playing and dynamics?

I would appreciate the responses.

I've been playing on a Yamaha G2 (Nippon Gakki) Baby grand Piano for almost 20 years.

I have been dealing with classical music for a long time and was satisfied with my instrument. Now I play more jazz, blues, etc. And I'm missing something. The sound is typical of Yamaha. Of course, it doesn't sound like a Steinway. But also the mechanics and the keystroke are regularly...uh...imcomplete? I don't know how to describe it, especially since I've never asked myself until now whether I need another instrument. So I ask you: Have you ever been in this situation?

And along with that: What new instrument makes sense at all? A newer Yamaha grand piano? Kawai? I'm not wealthy enough for a Steinway, but I don't earn badly either. A budget of approx. 30.000€ would be possible. Yes, I would have to try pianos, but maybe you have tips for a pre-selection?

I’m a guitarist who is in that limbo between intermediate and advanced so my fingers have some dexterity to them and was wondering how hard is it to play some piano backing tracks and accompaniments to jazz tracks. Think Bill Evans in Kind of Blue level of skill.

What are the majority of people playing nowadays in their auditions for bachelor of music performance for conservatories such as RCM, RAM, sydney, HKAPA, Trinity Laban, Guildhall, YST conservatory, and other top schools? Not what the audition requirements are, but the caliber of pieces that successful candidates usually present? What is overplayed, what are risky choices, etc?

I am asking as a prospective audition student, and want to know what my chances are of getting into these conservatories and what my competition is like. My current pieces I am thinking to audition with include appassionata, prokofiev sonata 1 and ravel jeux d’eau amongst others. I’ve heard that people are showing up with feux follets but also that some are showing up with moonlight sonata.

Another thing that has been really eating at me is the financial situation as I am not rich and have to rely on myself for funding, and I am unfamiliar with how bank loans/government loans work. Scholarships are not guaranteed, I can try for them, but should assume that I need to be able to afford without. Most likely I will study overseas but schools like Germany etc need you to do live auditions. I don’t have 7k to spend on plane tickets to maybeee get accepted there. Most important to me is actually learning from a school of high standards and having reputable teachers who have lots of experience so I can improve my playing. So I know schools like RNCM are ranked highly but for essay writing rather than teaching performance really well, but that’s not my interest. My interest is competitive performance, so I want to go somewhere that is known for producing top tier students. Just wondering if anybody has any ideas!! Thanks!!

p.s please be nice! I genuinely just want advice that is all.

15 years of self-taught piano has left me with very uneven skills. How would you approach becoming a more complete musician from here?

TL;DR: I've played piano on and off for about 15 years, entirely self-taught and mostly through Synthesia. I can learn and perform most intermediate repertoire reasonably well and some more advanced music in styles I'm familiar with, and I think I've developed fairly strong technique and pattern recognition. However, I barely sight-read, have never seriously practiced scales, have major gaps in theory, and have only recently started improvising. I feel like I've spent 15 years learning songs rather than learning music. I want to become a much more complete pianist/musician—comfortable with sheet music, theory, improvisation, composition, accompaniment/collaboration, and eventually music software—but I'm having trouble figuring out where someone with such uneven skills should start.

I've been playing piano on and off for around 15 years, but I've never had formal lessons. Most of what I've learned has been through Synthesia/videos and simply grinding away at pieces until they become internalized.

Because of that, my skill set is extremely lopsided.

On the performance/technical side, I can learn most intermediate pieces that I take on reasonably well and can sometimes get into slightly more advanced territory if the style is familiar to me, although those pieces obviously take considerably longer. I've developed a lot of pattern recognition and technical familiarity, particularly with the neoclassical/cinematic piano music I've spent the most time playing.

The problem is that much of this pattern recognition exists almost independently of my theoretical understanding of what I'm doing.

I know basic music theory conceptually, but I don't feel like I have it internalized at the keyboard. I haven't systematically learned or practiced my scales. I don't naturally think, "I'm in this key, this is the IV chord, here are my available scale degrees, here's why this progression works," etc. I can sometimes recognize things after the fact, but that isn't how I currently experience the instrument while playing.

Sheet music is probably my strangest weakness. I was in choir throughout school, so I understand notation and know how to read music in theory. But I cannot really sight-read piano music. If you put an individual note in front of me, I may still need a moment to translate the note on the staff into its location on the keyboard. For repertoire, I've overwhelmingly relied on memorization instead.

I've also only recently started experimenting with improvisation. At the moment it's extremely rudimentary. I can stumble onto things I like, and I think I've developed a reasonably strong sense of what sounds beautiful or emotionally interesting to me, but I don't yet have the musical vocabulary to intentionally reproduce those sounds. If I sit at the piano and try to create something from nothing, I'm generally working with very basic chords and a fairly simple right hand.

That's one of the things that has become increasingly frustrating: I know what I like when I hear it, but I often don't know why I like it. I haven't spent much time analyzing the music I love, figuring out what harmonies, voicings, borrowed chords, melodic devices, rhythms, etc. are creating the effect, and then learning how to use those ideas elsewhere or transpose them into other keys.

So I've reached a point where I feel like I've spent a long time becoming relatively good at playing piano pieces, without becoming nearly as good at understanding and speaking the language of music.

My long-term goals are pretty broad. I'd eventually like to:

Become comfortable enough with notation that I can sit down with unfamiliar sheet music and begin playing rather than having to decode and memorize everything.

Become fluent in scales, keys, chords, inversions, arpeggios, harmony, and functional theory at the keyboard rather than only knowing these concepts abstractly.

Improvise in a way that feels intentional and musically interesting.

Understand the music I love well enough to borrow its vocabulary and create similar effects myself.

Become better at accompaniment and playing with other musicians rather than functioning almost exclusively as a solo repertoire pianist.

Compose my own music, both for piano and beyond it.

Eventually become comfortable with a DAW/MIDI/software side of composition and arranging.

Ultimately become a genuinely well-rounded and highly capable pianist rather than someone with a collection of difficult pieces under his fingers and large holes everywhere else.

I'm very interested in finding a teacher who can meet me where I am rather than simply treating me as either an advanced pianist because of the repertoire I can play or a beginner because I can't sight-read a basic piece fluently. Ideally I'd like somebody comfortable with theory, improvisation, composition, lead sheets/chord charts, accompaniment, and contemporary/jazz/pop harmony in addition to traditional technique.

The difficulty is figuring out how to organize the remedial work. Sitting down and playing extremely easy sheet music or basic scales can feel bizarrely unsatisfying when I can then turn around and play repertoire that is technically much harder, even though I understand that those basic skills are exactly what I'm missing.

For people who teach piano, have been in a similar position, or developed these skills later:

How would you prioritize my next year or two of practice?

How much time would you put into sight-reading vs. scales/key fluency vs. theory vs. repertoire vs. improvisation?

Are there particular books/methods/exercises that work especially well for an experienced but uneven self-taught pianist?

And when looking for a teacher, what terminology or qualities should I be looking for so that I find someone interested in developing musicianship rather than simply assigning me progressively harder classical repertoire?

I'm very willing to go backward and fill in fundamentals. I just want to do it intelligently enough that the work actually connects to the musician I'm trying to become.

Yes I used AI to format all the gobbledygook in my brain. Apologies

Hi y’all. Absolute beginner on piano, but I have some experience on other (snare) instruments. I noticed at practice that I have a pinkie that won’t stay down. Points upwards. On one hand, the other not so much. Is there a fix? Thanks in advance.

Hi folks, I'm an adult hobbyist but I've been playing for about 30 years and I did ABRSM grade 8 when I was 18 but I'm not a professional and that's ok with me. However, throughout my adult life I feel I've kept it quite "safe/familiar" when it comes to choosing what to play next. I inherited a bunch of piano music from my grandma but it's almost all Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart ... (You get the gist). I've played pretty broadly around most of the big names and now I really want to expand my exposure to composers perhaps from other parts of the world (I live in northern Europe and I'd say I have mostly played European/North American, male composers). I have already bought a couple of anthologies of female composers which I'm really enjoying.

I'm mostly looking for baroque/classical/romantic but would look at some more modern if it's more in the impressionist space.

So, for those of you with a broad repertoire - who are your favourite composers - what can you recommend for someone with a fair amount of experience who has about an hour a day to dedicate to practice (alongside work and studying!)?

So, I’m looking to upgrade my digital piano and could really use some advice from people who have actually spent a decent amount of time with some of these models.

For context, I’m currently working on Grade 8 piano and play pretty much every day. At the moment I have a Casio CDP-S360. It’s done the job perfectly well, but I’m at the point now where I’d really like something that feels a lot closer to an acoustic piano, especially when it comes to the action.

The main ones I’ve been looking at are the Roland FP-90X, Yamaha P-525 and Kawai ES920. I’ve also had a look at the Kawai MP11SE.

The action is definitely the biggest thing for me. Sound and features are obviously important too, but I practise mostly with headphones anyway, so I’m much more interested in how the piano actually feels to play.

I recently went to a music shop and spent about an hour playing the FP-90X and P-525. I quite liked the Roland, although the action definitely felt on the heavier side. The other thing I noticed was how far down the black keys seemed to travel when I pressed them. It felt a bit strange and wasn’t something I was used to.

The Yamaha surprised me in the opposite way. It felt really light to me, almost as light as my much cheaper Casio. I know the P-525 is really highly regarded, so I wasn’t expecting that.

I haven’t managed to try the ES920 yet, although a friend of mine has an ES520, and I actually quite liked the action on that.

I’m going to head back to the shop and try a few more before I make any decisions, but I’d love to hear from people who actually own or regularly play these pianos. Playing something for an hour in a shop is one thing, but living with it and practising on it every day is obviously another.

Are there any other slab digital pianos I should be looking at if getting a really good, realistic action is my main priority? I’m also happy to spend more than the FP-90X, P-525 or ES920 if there’s something more expensive that’s genuinely a step up.

The only real limitation is that it needs to be a slab piano. I have a small home studio with a Wavebone desk and a separate rolling keyboard desk underneath it, so I need something I can keep on that rather than a console-style digital piano.

Would really appreciate any recommendations or experiences. Thanks!