If you're interested in learning to play the piano or have already been looking into lessons, you'll have likely noticed that the piano can very easily become an expensive hobby if you're not careful.
Whether you're on a budget or just don't want to spend too much money, here are some of the best ways to learn how to play the piano for free or on a budget.
Teach Yourself to Play the Piano
Firstly, pretty much every “free” piano lesson will involve you teaching yourself to some extent. Teachers and tutors rarely work for free so when you're not paying for piano lessons, you're unlikely to also have a professional pianist on hand to help you.
Any time you sit down at your piano or keyboard and practise, it'll be free. Practice makes perfect, after all. Sitting down regularly at a piano, often with a goal in mind, is a great and free way to improve your playing.
Scales, Exercises, Etc.
One way to have a “free” piano lesson is to look up a series of exercises and scales for you to practise. Set aside some time and sit down at your piano. Practise playing a particular scale or piano-playing exercise.
With these, it's often a case of starting off slowly, doing the exercise or scale until you can play it fairly fluidly at a decent pace.
Rehearsing a Song or Piece
While practising scales or piano exercises is good for your piano playing, you'll probably want to learn how to play some songs, too. Different people can learn the piano in different ways, but a common way is to take the component parts of a song, practise how to play them until you've mastered them, and then bring everything together to play the piece in its entirety.
Putting Together a Lesson
If you like structure, you can always plan your own piano lessons. A good structure includes going back over the content from your previous lesson to make sure you've remembered it, studying some music theory, introducing a new technique, song, or scale using said theory, and practising until you've got it. Just remember to stick at it and remember there are plenty of benefits to playing the piano to keep you motivated.
Usually, a teacher or tutor will correct you throughout this process, but if you're doing it all yourself, you have to be your own harshest critic. It makes sense to film or record yourself so you can see where you're going wrong.
Certain concepts, techniques, and pieces will take several sessions to learn, but you can always break them down. Make sure that you check that you remember what you did last time, keep things varied so that you don't get bored, and focus on having regular lessons rather than long lessons.
With Books and Guides
While not technically free, there are plenty of books and guides that can show you how to play the piano and they can work out way cheaper than a lesson with a piano teacher or tutor. You can buy these books and guides from music stores, bookshops, or online versions of both of these.
Music Theory Books
For many pianists, especially classically trained pianists, music theory is the cornerstone of their education in music. For others, music theory is barely used. A good understanding of music theory can greatly improve your playing so studying it through books is a cost-effective way to improve your piano playing.
Piano Playing Guides
There are books solely dedicated to playing the piano. You can find plenty of books that guide the reader through activities and exercises to try at the keyboard and by working through them, you can get better. These are useful if you're the kind of person who enjoys structured lessons or having something to do every time you sit down at the piano.
It's quite common for these books to come with a CD (or links to audio or videos) that you can access and play along to.
Sheet Music and Songbooks
If there's a certain genre you enjoy or a particular artist, there are plenty of book series out there dedicated to different artists and genres.
These books are often divided into levels so you can get a version appropriate to you. While the beginners' series won't have you playing the piano parts as they appear on recorded performances. Instead, they'll show you how to play simplified versions of songs so that you can play along to your favourite song or at least play a version that people will recognise.
Websites
A lot of the information found in books can also be found online. There are plenty of websites with lessons, activities, guides, and multimedia content for pianists of all levels.
There are plenty of completely free websites, but the best content is usually the stuff that you have to pay for.
There are far too many piano websites out there to start talking about all of them, but here are a few that are worth checking out.
Some are fully free, some you have to pay for, and a lot of the latter have free trials so try them all out and see what works for you, all of them come highly recommended.
- Flowkey
- HearandPlay
- Piano Lessons
- Piano Nanny
- Pianu
- Plern Piano
- Skillshare
- Skoove
- TakeLessons
- Zebra Keys
YouTube
YouTube is a goldmine when it comes to learning new skills. For everything from fixing your plumbing to playing the piano, you can find it on YouTube.
If you want to learn a particular song, you can search for a piano tutorial version on YouTube and you'll likely find a karaoke-style video of the keyboard from above with bars indicating when to play each of the keys so that you can play along to your favourite songs.
There are also plenty of channels with guided lessons, activities, exercises, and theory that you can follow and the great thing about YouTube channels is that they are completely free, though you may have to watch a few ads.
Apps and Programs
There are a few free apps and programs out there for learning how to play the piano, but for a lot of them, you'll either have to pay once or consider getting a subscription.
Either way, apps and programs are an excellent way to learn, especially if you have a piano or a keyboard with a midi or USB connection as they can see what you're playing and let you know when you make mistakes, which is essential when it comes to learning anything, not just how to play the piano.
Much like with piano websites, a lot of the apps out there offer a free trial so you can try out all your different options and see which one is right for you, your budget, and how you like to learn.
Popular apps include:
- Flowkey (which we mentioned earlier)
- Online Pianist
- Piano Companion
- Piano HD
- Piano Maestro
- Pianote
- Simply Piano-playing
- Yokee Piano
Can You Learn Piano for Free?
Learning to play the piano can take years of study and practice and there's no reason that you can't do all of this using exclusively free resources. Naturally, there are unavoidable expenses (you'll need a piano, for one!) and the best tools and resources will likely come at a price.
The good thing is that for anybody new to the piano and wanting to see if it's right for them, there are many free and inexpensive ways to try it out, meaning that if it's not for you, you won't have spent too much money on it. The piano has been popular for several centuries so there are lots of materials on how to learn to play it.
For those who fall in love with playing the piano, there are ways to take your playing further with cheap and free resources, but for those who want to take their piano playing to the very top, you'll probably want to invest in lessons from a piano teacher or piano tutor because you can learn far more and far more quickly with a professional by your side.
Platforms such as Superprof allow students to find a piano tutor anywhere in Australia with just one click.
Are Tutors or Teachers Expensive?
The good news is that the world of tutoring is democratised. While music and piano tutors were once only accessible to wealthy families, there are now piano tutors for all budgets. If you've tried out a few free resources and are willing to invest in your piano playing, you can find piano tutors without having to break the bank.
Similarly, some tutors offer taster sessions or the first lesson for free. You wouldn't ever be able to become an expert pianist by going from free lesson to free lesson, but you can try a few tutors out that are within your budget before settling on the one that's right for you, your bank account, and how you like to learn.
Finally, online piano lessons can be a great alternative when searching for low-cost alternatives. Lessons online have become more and more popular and thanks to websites like Superprof, you can search anywhere in Australia since proximity is not a factor.
Visit Superprof and find online and local piano tutors. You just need to search on your browser for "piano lessons sydney," for example, or any city in Australia, and you will have access to Superprof and its platform that connects students with local tutors.
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