I saw a very interesting video on YouTube called “13 Years of Advice in 11 Minutes” by a channel called Easy Fast Piano. Basically, the premise for this video is what this person wished he had known when he started to learn to play the piano.
In the video, the presenter makes 5 main points.. The first point is ‘play more, think less’. What he means by this is to not worry about what you can’t play, but focus more on what you can play. This is good advice because there is no point about focusing on what you can’t do as it will steal your joy of being able to play what you can already play.
The second piece of advice is that “only notes make music”. To me this doesn’t make sense, but what the presenter goes on to explain is that if you play a piece of music without any sort of dynamics, then your playing is going to sound boring. This creator is correct as music needs to have variety of loud parts and soft parts to bring a piece of music alive.
“Yes, sustain pedal” is the third point the creator makes. Again, I don’t think it is worded wonderfully well, but what he is trying to get at is that you shouldn’t hold back in using the sustain pedal, as it can really enhance your playing. I think that it is appropriate advice, except for classical music. With classical music, you do get introduced to pedaling fairly quickly, but you do not use it because you feel like it – it is like every other element in classical music, that it is prescribed when to play it, according to the written notation. If you are not a classical player, I would advise some caution because you can over-use the sustain pedal.
The fourth point in the video is “motivation is fake”. What the presenter means is that motivation cannot be at a high point all the time. What you need to do is have goals and then a plan to reach those goals. This is good advice because motivation is not going to keep you learning and practicing, but having goals and a plan, together with commitment, will get you achieving those goals.
The final point is “time is not an issue”. By this he means that if something is taking a long time to learn, then you are doing something that needs to be corrected. I don’t agree with this. Sometimes, pieces of music can take ages to learn, even when you are doing everything right. I would prefer to think that time is not an issue means it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to reach your goals, as long as you keep learning and practicing. Once you have learned something, you are not going to care if it took you a short time or a long time.
Even though I disagree with one of his points, I mostly agree with the presenter and as a result, I think that his YouTube channel, Easy Fast Piano, would have decent quality information. I encourage you to check it out to see if you like his videos and you think you can learn from them.