Top 3 Courses for 2010 to Teach Yourself Piano

Learning the piano is a very enjoyable journey, it’s even more satisfying if you teach yourself piano. It used to be that private instruction was the only viable method of learning piano but thanks to online lessons and piano lesson dvds today you have teach yourself to play the piano from home.

We’ve compared and reviewed the top 3 courses available to teach yourself piano. These are all video based courses taught by top notch instructors. While these courses aren’t the same as taking private lessons they are pretty darn close and offer you a lot more convenience and save you about 90% of what private lessons would cost for a year.

#1 Learn and Master Piano

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Legacy Learning Systems, the creators of the Learn & Master series of music instruction programs, is the company all other self study piano lessons courses try to measure up to.

Their Learn & Master Piano course was authored and taught by Grammy award winning pianist Will Barrow. Will (read his bio here) has played and toured with many artists, played everything from Jazz to blues and is currently a professional studio session musician and instructor in Nashville TN. You won’t find a better instructor to teach yourself piano.

The course uses a mixture of resources to teach you from home:

• 14 DVDs
• Jam Along Cds
• Workbook/Lesson Book
• Online Support and Community Website

To make it easy for you to learn the course uses popular songs you’ll be familiar with to teach you how to play by ear and notation.

A virtual on screen keyboard lights up to let you know exactly what keys are being played through out each lesson, and the videos blend well with the lesson book and jam Cds helping you to fully understand each new concept.

Once you finish watching one of the video lessons you can refer to the lesson book, which is divided into one section for each lesson on the dvds. The book will provide a review of what you learned in the video as well as some additional practice exercises.

In each section of the book you will also be referred to songs on the Jam Along Cds (take a listen to some sample tracks) to use for this particular section.

Over all the Learn & Master Course is the most complete piano course available and it’s backed by their 60 day satisfaction guarantee. If you’re not completely satisfied Legacy Learning will offer you a full refund up to 60 days after your purchase date.

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#2 Piano System

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The Piano System, created by Rail Road Media Inc, a newer self study music instruction company, targets beginners wanting to learn to play piano by ear.

This course is probably the best out there if you’re looking to learn to play popular songs in a hurry. The concepts are all geared towards getting up to speed with your left and right hands quickly and then teaching you some popular songs you’ll be familiar with.

The instructor, Nate Bosch, doesn’t have the long impressive Resume that Will Barrow of Learn and Master Piano, but he has been playing and teaching piano for about a decade.

I believe this piano course is best for those who have tried to learn piano before and have left it for a while.

The Piano System comes with 3 DVDs (beginner, intermediate and advanced) a Jam along CD and work book which you use to teach yourself to play piano.

Depending on what your learning goals are this could be a great program for you. If you want to learn to play by ear and are interested in playing songs you know then the Piano System is good value, how ever if you’re interested in learn more theory and a variety of playing styles then Learn & Master Piano for $50 more is a better course.

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#3 Rocket Piano

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This program isn’t a DVD teach yourself course like Learn and Master Piano and the Piano System. Rocket Piano is a downloaded course that consists of several workbooks, video clips and audio clips.

In comparison to the Piano System or Learn and Master Piano, Rocket Piano doesn’t even compete on any level except for price.

Rocket Piano sells for $40 if you buy the online download version

The course is taught by a well respected Australian pianist Ruth Searle. They boast that over 80,000 people have used it to teach themselves piano from home.

Rocket Piano does the bulk of it’s teaching through workbooks and then refers you to video and audio clips to help strengthen points and techniques as you progress.

This is a good course if you’re not sure how much you’ll enjoy teaching yourself the piano, but I believe it’s limited in how far you can progress with it.

If you want to just get your feet wet and see if you enjoy learning piano then by all means give it a shot, but if you’re pretty sure you want to teach yourself how to play piano then I’d opt for either Learn & Master Piano or the Piano System.

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