So, it’s the new year resolutions and guess what? You decided to play piano…………… yes! Playing piano is one of my favorite things in this world and of course I would encourage anyone to do it.

So, you’ve just decided that you wanted to play piano and you live in Los Angeles. You have no idea “how many hours should I practice” or “what does a piano practice consists of?”

The first thing I usually say is this: remember when you made the decision to play piano. Ok. Now, what didn’t you envision at that time.

If you decided that you want to play pop songs on the piano for fun without becoming a virtuoso, then that demonstrates quite a big gap in terms of hours of practice.

Is there a minimum commitment for taking piano lessons? Not really. It’s better if you show up to the piano lesson rehersed that way the piano teacher can show the next steps.

There’s a lot of doingness in piano. And there’s a lot of mental activity.

So depending on your purpose and the amount of time you’re willing to invest, you’ll have a good idea of how much energy you’ll be investing.

So let’s say you want to play piano for fun no stress and you are will to practice piano about 3-4 times a week for about 25 minutes each time.

I would say that’s a pretty good investment and will get you somewhere.

There’s a lot of distractions in Los Angeles… movies, beach, etc… so you have to have some kind of discipline to do that.

Now you might say “yes, but I have zero discipline” so piano is not for me.

Negative. Just like building your piano abilities, you can build your discipline “muscle.”

So, I live in Los Angeles and give piano lessons. And if you have any questions, please email me at info@lapianolessons.com. (Los Angeles Piano Lessons)

Piano practice can be real fun with a good goal and playing piano is totally achievable…. probably faster than you would have thought you could!

Happy New Year and hope to see you playing piano in 2010.

los angeles · piano lessons · piano practice

How do you choose your music keyboard?

That is a question that is consistently asked by students wanting to upgrade from they current keyboard or by people inquiring for piano lessons.

Two main things to consider:

• piano and musical goals
• budget

Piano Goals

Big question. And if you don’t have an answer to that one yet, fine. You can work on your piano goals as you progress. But for now, let’s say, you need a keyboard and you know that you want to play just for fun and you don’t care if you have loads of sounds and you don’t care if you can do all these fancy electronic tricks. Well that means you probably don’t need a synthesizer (a musical instrument that can make all sorts of sounds and can do other tricks to0). You probably just need a simple keyboard with only a few sounds. If you buy a synthesizer, you might never even touch all of these buttons… it might be cool to show your friends though or just to play around for fun. So if a synthesizer is not for you, concentrate your shopping time on finding the keyboard that has a nice feel, a good touch and most probably one having weighted keys.

So my point is to really look at what you think you’ll be doing with you keyboard in the next 2 years (or something like that).

Budget

Keyboard are quite cheap today. You can buy a Yamaha with weighted keys for under a $1000. A big cheaper quality but pretty good is Casio with weighted keys. Casio really improved their 88-key weighted keyboards and they are selling cheap. You can find some for about $650.

Hopefully this can help you choose the right music keyboard for your piano goals. If you have any questions, you can always contact me at info@lapianolessons.com

music keyboard · piano practice