Ask HN: How to learn to play piano? (kids and adults)

I use Anki to memorise scales and arpeggios. I have decks with all the scales and arpeggios, then for example it asks me to play "A major scale". If I play it right on first try I press Good, and the scale will be shown less often, and if I got it wrong I press Bad and it will be shown more frequently. It's a good way to filter the scales and spend more time on those you know less.

Caveat, I'm an adult.

I just bought scores... traditional/folk tunes tend to have easy melodies, then they have books of sheet music for beginner/intermediate levels at most stores that sell music books. Sightreading books once you get to that level -- I found playing "new stuff" motivating and there are beginner ones.

There's software (like Synthesia) but I didn't find it that useful. If you get a digital keyboard they sometimes have tutorial modes that include interfaces to show you what to play -- didn't find that super useful either once I could read sheet music, which was very fast. Yousician is an alternative which does present sheet music and it's super gamified. However, in my experience, it was hard to translate the game to playing independently; I had no memory of any of the notes I played, and I would play them fast, but it would be hard to rewind and redo a section if I made a mistake. Fun game though.

You'd need to play scales and chords every day -- probably a motivation app can help with that. One thing I do is mix it with improvisation -- I practice 4-5 scales and chords in them and afterwards it gives me new ideas to improvise. I don't know if your teacher encourages improvisation since it's not targeted practice though. I don't have a teacher and I'm not planning to ever play at a concert level, but do want to get better composing, so for me it's more important. If for a child, place the piano or keyboard someplace in the house the child can just sit and play, and never, ever tell them they are making too much noise (or buy them headphones).

There are ear training apps, they actually work, and I think ear training is pretty much always useful, so it could be a 5min "workout" in between practices. I don't do it myself I just listen to music I like and try to reproduce sounds without the sheet music, but I do listen to a lot of piano music for fun, so the app may be easier for directed practice.

A piano + an iPad with access to YouTube is all my son needed. He worked his way through the "Free Piano Lessons for Kids" channel, just one of many channels like it.

Just amazing what can be self-taught via YouTube these days.

I took piano in college...and failed to learn it. Because I failed to practice, the root cause of which (in my mind) was the utterly uninteresting and unfamiliar drills.

Now drills are going to be boring, but when there wasn't a single piece I recognized, your 10th time through "Turkey in the hay" is both uninteresting and hard to know how your screwing up. I made more progress when I spent two weeks on my own trying moonlight sonata.

I dont recommend that piece to start with, and I do recommend a diversity to practice on, but finding tunes at a suitable difficulty that you KNOW can make a big difference - hearing what's wrong, getting a thrill when it sounds close enough to recognizable - these were completely missing in my class, and while I likely still wouldn't have put in enough practice time (dating had more thrills) it would have been much easier.

I've been kicking around the idea of taking it up again for 20 years, and this is the one change I would make.

I have had amazing results using the Simply Music course teaching my two children starting at 3 and 6 years of age. They have introduced a new free online program:

https://pianoonline.com/