1 year of piano progress (400 hours, self-taught)

Here’s my one year of piano progress. When learning, I didn’t really use any books (but I definitely should have and I practice with Hanon now), but I watched lots of YouTube videos. I studied a 3-hour music theory course by Marcs Piano where it taught all kinds of different chords, scales, and some arpeggios I believe, and I practiced them all. I also watched beginner practice videos by Pianote and Jazer Lee and did some of that.

To address many comments about pedalling, I do have a sustain pedal and I tried incorporating it, but my first year it just didn’t sound right and my hands would start playing the wrong keys, so I thought I’d hold off for a while. I do practice with the pedal now and it’s working.

I have to admit that most practicing I did last year was just rehearsing those pieces. I didn’t have a very structured practice plan, I just wanted to learn new songs. I would divide each piece into 15-20 (sometimes more) parts and just work on one part a day. I did lots of repetitions, and wouldn’t skip to the next part until I was confident in the current part.

I learned to read sheet music at 6 months (Just the Two of Us at 8 months was the first piece I learned by reading sheet music), and before that I learned with the help of online tutorials.

I should have practiced different exercises and learned new pieces simultaneously, but now I’m doing all kinds of exercises and I see that at least learning those pieces my first year helped, so the exercises I’m doing now (chord inversions, octaves, arpeggios) aren’t too overwhelming.

Looking back, my main regret is that I learned lots of fairly difficult pieces but perfected none of them. My timing was all over the place in all of the recordings. So this year I started to practice with a metronome daily and I prioritise quality over how many pieces I learn and how difficult they are.