Last Updated on July 10, 2022 by Rebecca
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If you're learning piano as an adult (and especially if you're learning without a teacher), there's a good chance you're making more than one of these 19 piano mistakes.
Trust me when I say these piano mistakes are incredibly common!
Since there's so much to learn when it comes to piano, it's really easy to inadvertently develop some bad habits and bad thought patterns simply because you don't know any better.
The good news is that these mistakes are all really easy to fix! You just need to be informed and aware enough to realize they need fixing.
And please know that if you're making any of these mistakes, you are not alone! Most adult piano learners makes these mistakes. In fact, it's not uncommon for one adult piano learner to make all these mistakes.
So don't get discouraged!
Rather, take comfort in knowing you're just like everyone else, and you do have what it take to fix these mistakes… once you learn what they are!
So let's dive in and take a look at 19 of the most common mistakes adult piano learners make.
1. Sitting too close to the piano, and on the wrong part of the bench.
The piano bench is not a chair, and it's not meant to be sat on like a chair. (Although you could sit on a chair to play piano, as long as you don't sit on it the way you normally would.)
Similarly, the piano is not a table, and it's not meant to be sat at like a table.
You're not supposed to sit all the way back on the bench (like you would on a chair), and you're not supposed to cram your legs way under the keys of the piano (like you would at a table).
You're meant to sit on the front half of your bench, with your sits bones near the front edge of the bench, so that your legs are free of the bench and your weight is supported by your legs and feet.
Try to lift your feet off the ground while you're playing piano.
If you can do so comfortably without feeling like you need to lean your body backwards to prevent your face from smashing forward into the keys… you're sitting too far back on the bench and/or you're not distributing enough of your weight into your feet.
As for the bench itself, position it far enough away from the piano so that if you sit straight and extend your arms straight out in front of you with your hands in fists, your knuckles just reach the fallboard behind the keys.
2. Using the wrong bench.
It wasn't until early 2020 that learned that a standard piano bench is not high enough for me.
When you position yourself at the piano with your fingers on the keys, your elbows should be hanging loose beside you, and they should be level with, or slightly higher than the tops of the keys. They should not be lower than the keys.
I've known this forever, but it never occurred to me to actually set a mirror beside my piano and check if my bench was the right height for my body. I just assumed that since I was a full-grown adult, the bench would magically be the perfect height for me.
I was wrong.
I've since invested in an adjustable piano bench (like this one, which you can find on Amazon), and it makes a world of difference in my playing! I was really happy when I discovered adjustable piano benches are not as expensive as I thought.
But if you're not prepared to spend money on an adjustable bench, you can achieve the same results at home for free! Before I bought the adjustable bench, I just shimmed up my bench with planks of wood under the feet of the bench. (You'll find this feels a lot more stable than putting books or pillows on top of your bench and sitting on them.)
So if you're not sure whether or not your bench is the ideal height for you… prop a mirror beside your piano so you can get a good look from the side.
Related post: How to Buy the Right Piano Bench So You Can Play Piano Better
3. Not relaxing your fingers.
This is one of the most common mistakes I see in beginner adult piano learners. Fingers sticking up all over the place like porcupine quills when they're not playing notes.
This is just going to create tension and give you achy hands. Not to mention make it difficult to get your fingers to find their next note.
The shape of your fingers when you let your arms and hands hang limp at your sides like spaghetti arms? That's the neutral shape you want for your fingers at the piano.
It's challenging to learn how to get your fingers to relax as a beginner, but it's so worth the time and effort. You want to keep them curled down towards the keys at all times.
Pentascales are a really effective way to practice this. Once you've figured out the notes of a pentascale, it becomes a pretty mindless exercise. Which means your brain is now free to focus on making sure your fingers are relaxed.
4. Playing too fast.
For the love of hot, melty, chocolate lava cakes and ice cream… slow down!
You're not supposed to play a song at full speed the first time.
Honestly, you're probably not supposed to play a song at full speed the 100th time either.
There's no magic number, but the point is, you're supposed to start by playing the song slowly!
And you're not supposed to play at full tempo (speed) until you're ready to do so with accuracy.
The fastest way to get to the place where you are ready to play at full tempo without sacrificing accuracy, is to practice slowly with accuracy.
And when I say slowly, I mean slowly.
Like, take the speed you're thinking of in your head right now… the speed you think I mean when I say slowly…
I mean slower than that!
When you're learning a new piece of music, play it as slowly as you need to in order to be able to play every note correctly, every time.
If this means you need to pause for a full 10 seconds after each note while you determine what your next note is, which finger is meant to play it, and how your finger needs to move to get there… then that's what it means!
If you practice in this way, you'll be able to increase your speed in a much shorter time-frame than you will if you stubbornly insist on trying to practice too fast because you think slow is “boring” and “frustrating” and “annoying” and “not exciting.”
5. Practicing a whole song at once.
Do not–I repeat, do not–practice by playing through a whole song from the beginning to the end.
This is the absolute least effective and efficient way you could ever approach a piece of music. It's a waste of time and you might as well not even bother.
You'll just get frustrated by your lack of progress.
What you need to do is pick one measure to work on–maybe up to a full line of music if it's a very simple piece like what you might find in a primer level method book.
And you need to practice that section several times in a row so that your brain and your muscles get enough repetitions to figure out what's happening in the music.
Then you need to repeat this process with the next small section.
Once you've got a few sections down, you can combine them to create a larger (but still small) section.
Once you've got the whole piece of music going pretty well in these small sections, then you can start practicing it from start to finish.
But what you should do at this point, is start your practice session by playing through the whole piece once and identifying tricky spots as you go. Then you should go back and practice each tricky spot slowly and repeatedly to work it out.
6. Binge practicing.
I go into this idea much more in depth here, but the short version is that when you sleep, your brain retraces its steps and relearns everything you learned during the day (and not just the piano stuff!).
So if you practice for a very long time one day a week, you only sleep on it once. Whereas if you practice every day for a week (even if it's for shorter time periods) you get to sleep on it 7 times. Which multiplies your learning.
So spread out your practice sessions instead of bingeing them!
7. Inconsistent fingering.
Which fingers you use matters!
There's no “right” fingering for any given piece of music. The appropriate fingering will depend on the unique hand structure of the person playing the piece.
But, you need to take the time from the very beginning to work out what the best fingering is for you in any new piece of music you study.
And you need to make sure you use this exact same fingering every time you practice that piece.
Your hands are like dogs. You're training them to understand what you want them to do in a piece of music.
If you aren't consistent with them, if you keep giving them mixed signals, they will just get confused and they will have no idea what you want from them.
And if your hands don't know what you want… you can't trust them to do what you want when you start playing your music.
8. Putting stickers on the piano keys.
Just don't.
I'm literally begging you not to do this.
Every time a student puts stickers on their piano keys, and angel loses it's wings.
Please, please, just take the time to master the layout of the keys before you start playing anything.
I won't get into it here, but if you're interested in learning why I'm so strongly against the stickers you can go read my original rant.
Or, if you have kids around the house and you'd enjoy learning the piano keys while having some fun with one of your kiddos, this game by Susan Paradis is a huge hit with the young ones in my studio!
9. Writing letters on music sheets.
Why?
Why!?!
I'm going to be brutally honest with you….
If you're writing the letters on your sheet music, it's because you're feeling impatient and you're choosing to be lazy.
Yes, it is hard to figure out sheet music.
Especially if, like many adult beginners, you've unwisely bitten off more than you can chew and chosen an intermediate or advanced piece to be the first piece you ever learn.
So if you're writing letters on your sheet music, I've got 4 tips for you:
Tip 1: Challenge Your Brain Now So It Can Relax Later
Commit to slowing down and taking the time to think through the difficulty while you practice a new piece, and figure out the notes every time.
By doing this, you allow your brain the repetition it needs in order to learn the notes.
If you write the letters, you're removing the opportunity for your brain to get the repetitions it needs, and you'll never actually learn the notes with the confidence you need.
So you have a choice. You can feel very frustrated now, and confident later. Or you can feel moderately frustrated forever (or for a very, very long time anyway).
Tip 2: Try Some Easier Music
If the idea of taking the time to think as I've mentioned above literally makes you want to cry, or throw things at your piano, or give up altogether… then you've chosen a piece that is too difficult for you at this time.
If you pick up a beginner method book, you'll notice that the first few songs usually have only 1 or 2 different notes in them. And new notes are introduced gradually with each new piece.
This is not an accident!
It's a teaching technique called scaffolding, where you're given the time to develop a new skill one small step at a time, with each new step building on the one before it.
Do yourself a favour and start with a piece that is easy enough for you to handle without needing to write in the notes.
Tip 3: Drills
If you want to speed the process along a bit, drill yourself with some note-reading flashcards and/or some fun note-reading apps on your phone or tablet.
Tip 4: Learn the Guide Notes
I strongly recommend you research the guide notes system for note reading (also called “landmark notes” or sometimes “signpost notes”). Google will tell you all about it, but I'll give you the basic idea here…
Basically, you start by mastering middle C. Then you can figure out nearby notes relative to this first guide note.
Then you master Bass F and Treble G. Now you can figure out other nearby notes relative to these 2 new guide notes.
Your next 2 guide notes are Bass C and Treble C.
And then you can add Low G and High F.
Related Post: Learn to Read Music: Introduction to Guide Notes Level 1
10. Not focusing on rhythm.
Getting the rhythm right is more important than getting the notes right!
Don't believe me? Ask a piano player to play all the right notes for Twinkle, Twinkle, but mess up the rhythm a lot. I promise you, the song will be unrecognizable.
Then ask them to play it again, this time with perfect rhythm, but mess up a lot of the notes. You'll probably find the tune recognizable despite all the wrong notes.
Heck, if I played a scale to the rhythm of Twinkle, Twinkle, you'd probably recognize the tune.
The moral of the story?
Pay attention to rhythm!
This is so important, in fact, that when a beginner student in my studio starts learning a new piece, I almost never let them try playing it until after they can correctly tap track it.
And when you're performing a piece, if you make a mistake and hit a wrong note, just keep going and do everything you can to preserve the correct rhythm until you reorient yourself and get back to the right notes.
Related Post: How to Practice Rhythm for Piano Without Dying of Boredom
11. Rushing into hands together.
If you're working on a new piece of music that is at or above your current level, you should always learn it hands separately first.
Do not attempt to play it hands together until you are completely confident playing it hands separate.
You should be able to play each separate hand flawlessly… while blindfolded… while a monkey beats you with a banana… before you ever try to play it hands together.
However, do this in sections, as mentioned above in mistake #5.
You don't need to have the whole song flawless hands separate before you can do any parts of it hands together.
Once you have a small section flawless hands separate, you can start practicing that small section hands together.
On the flip side…
If you're working on pieces that are a few levels below your current level, you can (and should) feel free to practice these pieces hands together on your first try. This is excellent practice for developing your sight-reading skills.
Just don't expect to get it right on the first try. (If you do, that's great, but don't expect it!)
And keep in mind, if you identify trouble spots when you play these easier pieces, you should then go back and tackle the trouble spots hands separately to get them smoothed out.
12. Not enough repetitions.
“I practiced this small section 10 times today. That's enough, right?”
No.
No, it is not.
Not unless it's an easy section for you.
If you're working on a piece that is challenging enough to help you grow and push you to a new level, you will need more than 10 repetitions.
Aim for closer to 100 repetitions.
And before you go telling me I'm crazy, take a minute to think about this. How many notes are there in one small section of music? Usually around 1-8, depending on how busy the section is.
How long will it take to you play a series of 1-8 notes 100 times in a row?
Probably about 2-3 minutes.
2-3 minutes is not a long time.
So just take the time to do it.
But also, don't overdo it. Once you've had your 2-3 minutes, give it a rest and move onto a new section of music. You don't want to give yourself a repetitive stress injury.
13. Not creating your own music.
If you can't create your own music, can you really play music?
Imagine a world where you can only speak to others using movie quotes.
If you can't think of a quote from a movie that accurately expresses what you want to say, you're not allowed to say it.
You're only allowed to say things that have been said before, and you must say them exactly as they were said before.
Sounds like torture, right?
(Honestly, the very thought is giving me creepy Stepford Wives vibes.)
Music is a language. It's meant to be used to express and communicate ideas.
And if you never learn to express and communicate your own ideas, you're really limiting yourself and caging yourself in a tiny box.
But even if you'd rather just play music written by other people, you should still learn to create your own music.
Why?
Because learning to create your own music enables you to play other people's music more effectively.
It's like empathy.
If you want to develop your ability to empathize with others, you have to start by developing your own self-awareness. Because you can't relate to and understand the emotions of others if you don't understand your own emotions.
Music is the same.
How can you ever expect to understand and communicate the emotions of someone else's piece of music if you've never learned to understand and communicate the emotions of your own music?
And in my opinion, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are actually several reasons why I believe creating your own music is crucial to an effective music education.
14. Focusing too much on what to play, and not enough on how to play.
As a teenager, I made the mistake of believing technique was not that important.
I mean, I learned some decent technique. I wasn't atrocious and oblivious. And my teacher wasn't going to let me completely ignore technique.
But I didn't value it. I didn't understand how important technique was.
I thought all that mattered was that I played the right notes, with the right rhythm, with the right dynamics and expressiveness.
And because of my bad attitude, I developed a few bad habits.
As an adult, I learned how very, very wrong I was.
Related Post: 5-Finger Methods: The BIGGEST Mistake I Made When I Started Teaching Piano
The more I learn to improve my technique, the more I focus on learning how to move my body when playing piano, the more my playing improves.
Proper technique makes it easier to hit the right notes.
Proper technique makes it easier to play the right rhythm.
Proper technique increases your dynamic range and your ability to voice and phrase the music, therefore making it possible for you to play music much more expressively.
If you don't take the time to learn proper technique, the quality of your playing will suffer.
Period.
15. Starting with pieces that are too difficult.
I touched on this a bit in mistake #9, above.
I'm not saying you have to start with the easiest of the easiest pieces if you don't want to.
And I'm not saying you can't decide to dive into a piece that's a bit too hard for you, if you're absolutely determined and you have the dedication to put in the (significantly) extra work required and deal with the frustration this will entail.
But if you've never touched a piano before and you decide you're going to start with Liszt's La Campanella… you might as well put on some gloves and go walk into a UFC Cage Match on your lunch break tomorrow.
You're going to cry the same amount of tears in either situation. (And you'll probably also do the same amount of damage to your hands.)
Do yourself a favour and start with something easier. Start with something you can handle right now, and gradually increase the difficulty of your new pieces as you progress.
(Remember the scaffolding technique I mentioned earlier in this post?)
This will make learning piano a lot more enjoyable for you. You'll feel less stressed out and less discouraged, because you'll be experiencing more successes along the way.
16. Trying to do it all alone.
One of the biggest struggles adult piano learners face is the lack of support from their friends and family.
If you play a simple piece for your friends and family as an adult, they might not understand how hard you had to work to be able to play that simple piece.
If you talk to your friends and family about the struggles you're facing in learning to play piano… they probably won't understand what you're going through, and they probably won't be able to relate.
As humans, we're social beings. (Yes, even the introverts!)
Find a way to connect with other adult piano learners, so you don't have to feel so alone in your learning journey.
Find a friend who is also learning, find a group in your community, find a group on Facebook, or start a YouTube channel to document your progress and engage with other YouTubers who are doing the same.
Just find some people who understand your piano struggles and triumphs.
17. Unrealistic expectations about sight-reading.
Sight-reading means being able to pick up a piece of music you've never seen before, and play through it beautifully on your first try.
Stop expecting to be able to do this any time soon!
Typically, a musician who has put in the work to develop good sight-reading skills can effectively sight-read any piece of music that is at least 3 levels below their current level.
So, let's say you're working through a series of leveled books.
A reasonable expectation is that if you've put a lot of effort into developing your sight reading skills, then by the time you're working through Book 4 of the series, you will be able to confidently sight-read any piece that is at the level of Book 1 of the series.
And I'll be honest with you, my own sight-reading skills are not that good.
It takes a lot of very deliberate practice to develop your sight-reading skills.
You have to continually expose yourself to unfamiliar pieces of music. You have to learn to analyze a score and play through it in your mind before you start playing it with your fingers. And you have to advance your playing ability in general.
So if you haven't successfully worked through at least 3 different books of music (and I mean every piece of music in those books) then it's completely unrealistic to expect that you'll be able to feel comfortable sight-reading anything.
Just stop putting so much pressure on yourself. Stop holding onto these unrealistic expectations.
You absolutely can become an excellent sight-reader if you want to. If you put in the work.
But stop expecting it to happen now, or any time soon.
My advice? For now, just focus on learning as many new songs as you can. Don't worry about sight-reading just yet.
Give yourself time to get there. There are several other piano milestones you need to reach first before you'll be able to sight-read well, and you should celebrate and appreciate every one of those milestones.
18. Only practicing at the piano.
Believe it or not, you don't actually need to be anywhere near a piano to practice piano!
Obviously, you do need to spend a lot of time practicing at a piano. But there are also several other things that good piano learners do to improve their skills and knowledge.
Some extremely beneficial off-bench practice exercises include:
- drilling with flashcards
- drilling with piano-related apps
- theory worksheets
- score analysis
- listening to a piece of music
- visualizing your hands playing the piece of music you're currently learning
- singing the piece of music you're currently learning
- researching music history to understand the context of the music
19. Focusing on the product rather than the process.
I would argue that the single most important factor that determines whether a person will succeed at piano is whether or not they value the process.
If you only care about the product, you will give up and quit. It's only a matter of time.
Yes, it's wonderful to be able to play a beautiful piece of music.
Yes, there is such an incredibly rewarding feeling when you finally master a piece you've been working so hard on.
But if that's all you care about, you're not going to make it.
Because when it comes to learning piano, progress is always slower than adults think it's going to be.
So if all you care about is reaching a certain goal, you'll quickly become overwhelmed by frustration, overwhelm, and discouragement… and you will quit.
To make it in piano, you have to love the process just as much as you love the product.
You have to find a twisted pleasure in each of the countless unexpected struggles and obstacles you will encounter.
You have to revel in the thrill of doggedly tackling these struggles with the knowledge that you will overcome them, one by one.
You have to find joy in the way practicing things that are difficult for you engages your mind and makes you feel alert and alive and vibrant.
This idea of product vs. process perfectly describes the difference between my teenage piano years and my adult piano years.
As a teenager, I only cared about the finished piece.
So practicing felt like a chore. And a frustrating one at that.
It was something I had to do in order to master a piece.
Now, as an adult, I feel a little sad when I master a challenging piece.
I'll spend a few months working on an advanced piece, and in that time, the piece becomes a part of my life. Like a companion, or a friend, with whom I get to spend so much of my time.
So when I finally complete the piece, it's a very bittersweet feeling.
Because, yes, I've accomplished something wonderful and I'm proud of that… but now this particular piece can never again be my companion in quite the same way it was while I was learning it.
And this attitude, this feeling, is what makes all the difference when learning piano.
You have to learn to love the process.
Which of these beginner piano mistakes are you guilty of?
The most important part of any learning process is the application. Knowledge will only get you so far if you never act on it.
So I challenge you to pick at least 1 of the mistakes above that you might be making, and take the time to correct it.
Right now.
You'll be glad you did.
Related Posts:
- 15 Reasons Why the Best Piano Lessons for Adult Learners Should Focus on Improvisation
- 9 EASY Steps to Create Your First Piano Improvisation Right Now!
- How to Practice Piano Chords [5 EASY Techniques + 3 FREE Resources]
- 4 Life-Changing Piano Mindset Shifts: How to Learn Piano with More Joy, Satisfaction, and Success