How Long Does it REALLY Take to Learn Piano As An Adult?

Today, we’re going to tackle a question that I get asked all the time. How long does it really take for an adult beginner to learn the piano? Today, I’m going to give you three paths that you could take as an adult beginner to learn the piano, and I’m going to cover how long they will take you and which one is the best. I recommend staying to the end because the final path is the fastest one. And if you’d like to get more videos on how to go from zero to playing your favorite songs on the piano in months, not years, be sure to hit the bell and subscribe because I post new videos every week. I have witnessed all of these paths as a piano teacher. I have taught piano for over a decade and I have a music school of hundreds of students. I’ve taught private lessons, group classes in the public school system and all kinds of different ways.

So I feel like I’m very familiar with how many paths you can take and which ones are going to be the fastest. But if you’d like a really clear roadmap on exactly what steps to take, I highly recommend taking my free training. In this training, I show you the exact steps that I take my students through that help them go from zero to playing their favorite songs in just a few months. The link is in the description below. Okay, path number one. You guessed it. Traditional private piano lessons. You potentially have tried this already in the past and there’s a reason why it didn’t work. This path is going to take you tons of years, and if you’re starting as an adult, you may never get to where you want to be. Private lessons will typically use method books that are designed for adults, but they still teach you as if you’re a child.

So you’re going to start those lessons off playing Mary Had a Little Lamb and all kinds of silly songs, and you’re going to be stuck in those silly songs for a really long time. All of these method books start you off from reading music on the grand staff. So because of this, students end up struggling to read music the entire time and just get really stuck playing all of these silly songs, trying to learn how to read music. This really, really slows down their actual ability to play the piano. With traditional private piano lessons, they have to learn how to read music with both hands. Learn how to play with both hands, learn how to then add the sustained pedal, learn how to keep rhythm and the exact perfect timing. Learn how to be expressive and not sound like a robot. Learn a lot of music theory all while playing songs they hate.

This is a complete recipe for a disaster. It’s no wonder why so many people quit. Like I said, a lot of piano teachers will teach these adults just like their children. The difference is that adult students just have a lot less time than children, and children are very used to learning how to read, write, and all kinds of very simple things. So learning how to play Mary Had a Little Lamb as a child is not going to be quite as frustrating as it is for an adult. I know that the adult learner, you are wanting to play the piano because you want a personal outlet. You want to play for fun. You’ve always wanted to play. So why do so many piano teachers teach you as if you’re a child and make it where you’re never going to be able to play your favorite songs? I have no idea.

The only time that I would recommend this is if you are wanting to get into the nitty-gritty and you want to learn classical music and you truly do want to read music so well and so perfectly, but prepare to be in lessons for basically the rest of your life. This method is going to look a lot like this.

All right, now let’s get to the second way you can learn the piano, and that is on YouTube. Now, I have to be honest with you here, although I obviously have a YouTube channel, I do not believe that learning from YouTube is the only way to learn the piano. It’s going to be really confusing if you’re looking at all these different teachers with all these different methods and you have no roadmap at all. You’re just going to be really lost for a really long time. And as you can imagine, if you’re learning on YouTube, but you’re going to spend a life lifetime just watching these videos and getting nowhere. I promise you, if you have no roadmap and you don’t know anything about music or the piano, it’s going to be really hard. I do think YouTube is a fantastic way to figure out if you love the piano.

So playing some of my exercises, learning from some of my videos and getting started to really see if you really do love it. I think YouTube is great for that, but I don’t think you should stay there. Before we get to the next way to learn the piano, let me know in the comments, have you done any of the methods I’ve listed so far? You’ve obviously done YouTube. Have you taken some private lessons? Let me know in the comments and let me know how that went for you.

Okay. The third way that you could learn the piano is by finding a program where the teacher teaches you chords first. Why do I recommend this approach? If you learn chords first, you can play your favorite songs from the very beginning. You can go to websites like ultimateguitar.com and search your favorite songs and play them almost immediately. This way you can actually start learning real songs and play your favorite songs immediately. You won’t have to be stuck with Mary Had a Little Lamb, so that way you always enjoy learning the piano and it doesn’t feel like a big stress and overwhelming feeling. So here’s an example of what you could do with just chords. The beginning of the Adele song, Easy On Me is really pretty, and it’s just chords.

I’m not saying that you have to work with me, but in my program, the Piano Accelerator, I start my students off with learning all about all the different types of chords, how to find your favorite chords online and how to play them really quickly. Once you’ve got those chords really good, I start teaching my students how to improvise on those chords because let’s be honest, sometimes chords can sound boring on their own, right? So by this point in their journey, they become really awesome accompanists. And if they want, they can even sing and play too. So here’s an example of something if they knew how to jazz up those chords a little bit. If I only played the chords of Clocks by Coldplay, it would kind of sound like this, but of course you can jazz it up and play it like Coldplay and play it with arpeggios.

But of course, there’s tons of ways you can jazz up your chords with improvisation, and in my online program, I give my students tons of cool ways to do that. The last step in my students’ journey is learning how to read music from lead sheets. So yes, I do teach my students how to read music, but I teach them with something called lead sheets. If you don’t know what a lead sheet is, it’s kind of like a cheat sheet to reading music. All you have to do is learn how to read the right hand or treble clef. That is the melody of the song. And then since my students have already learned about chords, they input those chords that they’ve already learned and they play that with their left hand. And since they have already learned how to improvise, they can jazz up their song with the melody and make it their own. And it sounds really cool and nice. So here’s an example of me jazzing up the song Piano Man with a lead sheet.

So they learn the melody, the chords, they jazz it up. It’s just great. And in my opinion, this is the fastest way to learn the piano, and it’s also the least miserable way to learn the piano. Let’s be real. If all of this sounds really cool, but you feel like you need a little bit more, you want to learn more about all of these steps to learning the piano fast, I highly recommend watching my free training. The link is in the description. It shows you the exact roadmap that I take my students on that helps them go from zero to playing their favorite songs in months, not years. And before we go, be sure to hit the bell and subscribe for more videos on how to learn the piano fast, and I will see you next time.