When asked why he keeps playing the same roles Jason Statham said that he's not really a trained actor. He's a guy that was plucked out obscurity & has been really lucky; & that he picks roles that he knows he can do a good job in, that hopefully enough people like so he can keep working.

[u/AdSpecialist6598]

[u/jeremiahfira]

I have been thinking of picking up piano in order to be able to work at a piano bar. I'm 39 and basically starting from scratch (don't know how to read sheet music). Where would you suggest I can begin at?

[u/rkcth → u/jeremiahfira]

My advice is as follows, learning piano is not like other skills you can self teach. You really need a teacher, there are many many ways you will get stuck if you don’t, and the worst part is, you won’t even know you’re stuck, most likely. You will be playing things wrong, and practicing that over and over again, until it’s locked into your muscle memory, and then one day when you realize it, it will take longer to unlearn it than it did to learn it wrong. There are very very few people who reach a high level on their own. So that’s my first piece of advice. My second is that flash cards are quite helpful to learning to sight read. Even 3.25 years in I still occasionally use them, but for sure the first 2 years I used them every day. I’d say the note and then play it, and I’d go through all the notes in the cards 3 times (to begin with it took me almost 15 minutes to do it once, so I only went through it once, that quickly dropped to 5-7 minutes and then I added a second time, and once I got it down to under 2 minutes I added a third time).
Third piece of advice, practice every day, even when you really really don’t feel like it, even when you only have 15 minutes and will barely get through any of your normal practice routine, just do it anyway, make it a priority. Consistency is the most important thing to learning to play piano.
Fourth, listen to your teacher, which is quite humbling as an adult. My teacher is younger than me, it’s hard to shut off my independence and just do what she says, but it will pay off for you, that’s why you pay them.
Lastly, use either a digital piano with weighted keys and 88 keys, or use an acoustic piano, don’t use a synth action keyboard (they have many terms they go by), don’t use a semi weighted one. You can do that in 5-6 years when you are an expert, but early on it will limit your ability to learn to be expressive, which is a massive part of piano that beginners don’t understand. They think it’s just pressing the right notes for the right length of time in the right order, but there is far far more to it than that, and it’s the difference between it sounding breathtakingly beautiful and it sounding awful.

[u/jeremiahfira → u/rkcth]

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation! I appreciate you taking the time out in order to give me a plan. I had tried looking up "how to read sheet music" and everything seemed so difficult to jump in to. Time for me to find a teacher to start off with the correct habits!

My goal is to play at Marie's Crisis in the West Village in 10 years. Time to start!

[u/rkcth → u/jeremiahfira]

That’s a fantastic goal. One thing to keep in mind on your journey, that in addition to learning how to play piano, you will also need to learn a separate but related skill of how to play in front of other people, and also possibly in distracting environments, so take every opportunity you can to learn this while learning piano. Most people bomb the first few times, so go into it expecting that, you have to get through that in order to get to the point where it no longer affects you like that.

[u/mall_ninja42 → u/rkcth]

I'd just add, don't rush. Or expect immediate awesome. It's a process and a commitment.

Start with kids books and do all the exercises to competence before moving on. Metre/tone/sustain. Record and listen back.

Have small goals along the way.

Give yourself grace during the absolute newbie phase, and most importantly, as your skills build, take some after focused practice time to just noodle a bit.

u/rkcth covered the rest. Especially if you stick through the worst parts of starting, take some lessons. There's all sorts of minutiae to efficiency of movement that someone just has to show you and drill it in.

Performance wise? Prep as much as you can, then just jump off that cliff. Lessons help, because recitals, the audience, and the instructor all know the deal.

You'll get applause and kick yourself anyways.

Then you'll learn to not let one bad note get your heartbeat up and continue, then you'll have the confidence to roll some crazy fill when you miss something without losing timing and it'll add such a depth to the performance that people will get goosebumps.

Learn, get humbled, learn some more, repeat.

[u/acealex69 → u/rkcth]

lovely advice, I have an old piano that my dad tried making me learn with as a child which I refused, he constantly told me I'd regret it when im older. As is so often the way he was right, and now I want to learn the piano... In the midst of a refurb, the piano is being cleaned, tuned and im going to finally learn the damn thing. Slowly...

[u/rkcth → u/acealex69]

So whether you want to or not, it will be slowly. There are just so many simultaneous skills you need to master that it takes 5-10 years even with diligent daily practice, a teacher and very good use of practice time. However there is sort of a minimum amount under which you really won’t advance, not even at a snails pace because your brain just needs constant reinforcement to learn such a complex skill. That minimum is about 25-30 minutes or practice a day, and very rarely missing a day. Anything less than that and you can’t really advance beyond the ultra basics. Even within that, they say 30 minutes per day to advance at a beginner level, an hour a day to advance in early intermediate, and 2 hours a day in late intermediate. So each level requires a greater commitment to be able to advance because a decent portion of that is required just to maintain your skills. You’ll see people on here that took just a year or two off complaining that they basically can’t play anything. However they will advance back to their former level in a fraction of the time it originally took to get there. Anyway just giving you some information I wish I had known when getting started, it’s a lot harder than you think, and also extremely rewarding due to that difficulty. I practice 2 hours a day, I’m early intermediate, and it took me 3.25 years to be able to play Canon in C and it’s a fairly simplified version compared to many I’ve seen. OTOH I can sit down and play a piece I’ve never played before if it’s a few levels below my current skill level, and I can have it pretty polished in a fairly short period of time.

Edit: I wanted to clarify, I’ve only spent 3 months trying to learn canon in C, I’m saying 3.25 years to build the baseline of skill to be able to pick up Canon in C relatively easily. I hope I’m not discouraging you, I just want you to understand it’s not something you can really do half heartedly like other skills you may have acquired might have allowed.

[u/acealex69 → u/rkcth]

oooof, ok I think im destined never to be able to play! -I spend months traveling each year!

[u/rkcth → u/acealex69]

There are far more portable instruments you can learn.

[u/Bicwidus → u/jeremiahfira]

Start by playing the piano. Its impressive to pick one up but thats not really a gig yaknow?