Do you take lessons or are you learning on your own?

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Permalink Reply by Don on September 3, 2008 at 10:07am

I'm learning on my own. I've picked up a few books and also found some great video tutorials online. Let's start collection a list of great books and videos to learn from here!

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Permalink Reply by Don on October 4, 2008 at 9:40am

I've been learning a ton from Willie Myette's Jazz Piano Lessons. He has some excellent instructional videos where he literally walks you through things step by step. Highly recommended!

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Permalink Reply by cfish on February 26, 2009 at 10:57am

I'm just starting to learn. Right now I'm trying some ragtime. I download the midi file, and split the track into left and right hand, and slow it down so that I can play the other hand. So far, I got elite syncopation almost full speed. But I just started left hand and it's slow... and matching them is difficult.

So my question is, should I have learned both hands slowly before I speed it up instead?

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Permalink Reply by Don on February 26, 2009 at 11:16am

Hi, yes I'm learning on my own. I've found Willie Myette's Jazz Piano lessons to be really helpful. I also look for songs I want to learn on YouTube and see how people play them. And I buy sheet music for songs I want to learn. I'm starting to get better at learning new songs, it used to take me a very long time.

I would have to write the notes in all over the sheet music to learn to play the song at first. Now I'm moving away from that and can read without writing the notes in. I still learn right-hand and left-hand separately, and then put them together once I know how to play each staff independently.

I hope this is helpful!

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