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For the tick of doom, I was taught something like 20 years ago: have six-sided dice on the piano. When I think I've mastered something, I test myself: put a die on 1. If you play it correctly, tick it up to 2. If you play it correctly, put it up to 3. If you play it incorrectly, put it down to 2. If you're truly committed to this, then you're going to feel pressure and nervousness when you get up to 4 and 5, because you don't want to go backward. Being able to execute the passage up to 6 under this pressure and enough times in a row is a better indication of mastery than just "it feels pretty good." If you find yourself bobbling up and down in the 3-5 range, it's probably not as solid as you think.

Tick of doom: Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong.

You are never too old to learn to play an instrument. I had never played a reed woodwind until I was 44 when I picked up an inexpensive clarinet, and it changed my life. I practiced 30, sometimes 40 hours a week and within a year I was better at it than I was on guitar which I had played for 20 years. The keys to success are passion, practice, and patience. The nice thing about being over 40 when you're learning something new, is that you probably realized by now that talent isn't just something you're born with. Talent is the result of practice and when you hear somebody with amazing talent, what you're really hearing is their hard work.

One nuance I would add to “The Tick of Doom” is that self-learners are generally more driven to learn a piece that inspires them, and they might show more vigilance and patience in getting it right. Whereas the guided learner is more at the whim of a course or objective-based approach to getting a project done. Most people have the tendency to expedite the finish, but the desire to not be rushed is an important key to avoiding the Tick of Doom.

As a keyboard player, this popped up in my feed... But as a martial arts instructor, I realised that almost all of these tips apply to my students! So thanks very much, this is a useful list for both arts 🙂

They say It isn't easy to teach an old dog new tricks. I'm over 60 and it's even more challenging when you have an old dog trying to teach an old dog new tricks! I've been using your tutorials for over two years and they have been so helpful. You are a clever guy and an excellent teacher and I greatly appreciate having free access to such high quality instruction

I am almost 63 years of age and I started learning piano just two months ago. I am not self-taught; I have a teacher and I regularly take classes, but I can immediately relate to every one of your points. Thank you for making this video, it makes me aware of 10 potential pitfalls in my piano journey.

This is insightful and has many parallels to teaching oneself a foreign language (I'm a linguist and have studied and also experienced this). In particular, one has to avoid the "tick of doom" and continue practicing on easy material (we call it "comprehensible input") to reinforce the foundations while also pressing on to new material. And I suppose grammar study is the equivalent of scales -- can't do without it!

You have nailed the essence here. I've been recording my self-learning progress for 4 years now and I can say with confidence - EVERYTHING you say is true and I think it is just happening to everyone. When I started I assumed I would be playing "decent simple jazz" in 2 years. Well, I'm into 4th year now and I know I still need some 2 years to reduce tensions feel comfortable and not think about "theory" while playing. Kudos to everyone who starts after 40! I have utmost respect for such people because I understand what it takes. Thanks Bill for all the hard work you are doing!

I was getting frustrated with my progress on piano, so I took a break and found this video - which made me realize that I'd jumped ahead much too far without properly honing the essentials. I've now settled down to working through lesson two of your course, and already feel like I have a better understanding of where my skills are really at, and what I need to focus on to get better. Thanks for helping set me straight, and for the incredibly useful course you've put up!

Number 8 and 9 put me in a spell of depression for the past months. I'm finally out of it before new years and I've gotten more consistency with my playing since then. So now I run into your video and it's all of the things I needed to hear. I'm thankful for the algorithm god for making your video pop up. I'm even more determined this year to finally be back to an energized state of wanting to further my piano skills.

Amazing video, and amazing tips! Fascinating that the non-piano specific tips seem to be nice advice when extrapolated to approaching learning most skills in life.

I love the fact that I stumbled upon your channel! I have been playing guitar for decades. After getting a piano for my son, I started building chords on the piano myself and it "clicked" for me how they are actually built. After some contact with the piano, I can look at a chord name and immediately play it, even a complicated chord is fine. I was thinking of learning it even more deeply and am really glad that someone is giving us so much insight into this learning experience.

You are never too old to fail, and learning to play piano is a great way to remind you

I started your beginner course two weeks ago, now im in ep 7, thank you for doing these free lessons, it is helping me a lot. Im from Brazil and learning english and music at the same time is such a great experience, thank you so much Bill Hilton 🙏🇧🇷.

I just want to say THANK YOU ! I don't think people, including myself, thank people like you enough for taking of their precious time to share their knowledge with us. Thanks so much again!

brilliant, thank you! you are talking not mere about the piano playing, but talks about the much wider picture of learning in general.

Incredible tips!! This is quite the goldmine ahah! Thank you so much!

A really excellent video. As a lifetime learner of a number of musical instruments (and many other things) this has application across all learning. It's also really well edited and presented.

This the first video I’ve seen of yours and this is completely correct. I’ve taught myself piano and I think for just random UKposts videos (goal-write music) and i have done pretty well but then I reached a wall where there was nothing else I could teach myself and there was other things I wanted to learn but I couldn’t find. It was such a rough time for me because I knew what I thought I needed to get better but there was nothing for me to learn it. Eventually I decided to get a piano teacher in the area and it’s been amazing and my creative flow is in full gear but feedback is something I need so bad I realized. I think you should definitely try piano lessons having that other person is has works wonders for me but good luck on your piano journey

As a decent guitar player who started playing piano 14 years ago at age 55, I am pretty much familiar with your suggestions. Another thing that has cost me a lot of time on the piano however is that when I started, knowing a lot of music, I decided I would play only what I wanted to play. I started with Maple Leaf Rag and taught myself to read the sheet music. I got the notes under my fingers in a couple of months but I had problems getting a good sound. But I persevered. And persevered. And persevered. What I should have done was to also study other things. When I finally started doing that the Maple Leaf Rag actually got better. Eventually I finally got books to learn scales. When I don't feel like attacking the fine points of music, I can always plug myself into scales. And finally, metronome, metronome, metronome. Wish I would have started all those things sooner!

All so true Bill. As a selfteaching pianoplayer I recognize everything you say so I wrote down all 10 problems and printed them as a reminder. Many thanks!

Great advice, even for advanced players who are inevitably self-teaching much of the time! We still have unknown unknowns.

Thank you, Bill! Lots of wisdom in here.

Thanks very much for your video and advices. What you are sharing with us pretty much applies for every endeavor we start ❤

Excellent.. very helpful and insightful..you know us well.

Thanks for the encouragement!

Wonderful video! Very encouraging Sir! Such insight and truth packed into this short video! Thanks very much!

Big thanks! Very practical advises!

Hi Bill. I finally managed to hook things up to be able to play my piano and have started playing it. Just yesterday I started going through your beginner's course and I must say, it is fantastic. However, as a someone who is self taught, my biggest fear is that I might make mistakes, be they in how I play, or I how I look at things related to playing and not even know I am wrong. I genuinely cannot put into words how invaluable this video has been, as basically every point hit home for me. Your course is amazing, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have stumbled on this video before I got too far into it. Thank you very much, the way you explain things motivates me to continue learning. Also, not only have you earned yourself a new subscriber, but also a new patron. I look forward to getting to know more from your content ❤

This is valuable regardless of the domain you're learning, it's Learning how to learn! So often it is the foundation that is lacking and thank you for that "reinforcement" because there's a difference between what is basic and what is foundational... I just discovered you on UKposts and subscribed. I will be checking out your course. I took piano lessons when I was a child and I still play today as a hobby. I want to sharpen up my skills again, so I look forward to seeing your course.

Yes, it helped a lot. Thank you.

Great video! Appreciate the new style of video Bill! Been watching your stuff almost since the beginning of my piano playing like 8 years ago. I loved all of the points you made, especially the last problem of not listening while your playing, which you added your piano playing to, hammering home the point even better.

Regarding number 3, I've heard the difference between amateur and professional musicians is that amateurs will practice until they get a piece correct, while professionals will practice until they can't get a piece wrong.

Excellent point about the tick of doom! I had a drum teacher who told me that the brain commits things to long-term and muscle memory by doing things correctly repeatedly - lots of times, over a long time period. Therefore, that one iteration of playing something perfectly really should be the beginning of the final step towards mastery (and might be somewhat of an accident).

THANK YOU! This video is gold because most of it's applicable to problems self teaching guitar and singing as well. Loved the BBC documentary vibes with the camera garden walk and talk🤣 ❤

Bill, you are the best. Thank you for everything you do! I look forward to finishing the course and continuing my learning with you after!

Ive done a lot of learning about learning. And this might be the single greatest quick resource for an overview of common pitfalls Ive ever come across. This stuff applies across the board, and thats exactly the sort of body of knowledge I'm looking to identify and compile right now. This is damn near 10 commandments level.. Bravo!

very helpful. thanks Bill

This is REALLY good! Thank you!

Merci for your words of advice.

I love you Bill!!! This is brilliant, advice! Greetings from Ghana!

Very interesting video and there are certainly a lot of gold nuggets if you watch this through the end. Personally I found the better way to get past 'the tick of doom' is to practice differently. So as an example: You know a lick or riff, now play it backwards, play it in groups of 3 or more notes, play it slower, play it to another meter, transpose it, and so on. This is method is better than, practice it another 30 times, and you internalize the lick or riff much better, plus it's more challenging and fun!

This was great thank you. I’ve been teaching myself piano and felt in a rut lately, all of your points were on the mark.

This is really great advice, you've obviously spent a good amount of time researching the topic learning in general and we appreciate it. I hadn't played for 25 years until early last year and watching videos and taking advice from you and people like you has accelerated my abilities hugely. Thank you.

Thank you for this video!

I’m so glad I found this. I’m on lesson 2 of the beginners course and this advice will be helpful.

You just popped up on my homepage, ive been thinking about getting back to learning the piano. Ive tried an online course that skipped a lot of the basics i feel like i want to learn. Your course seems very interesting and i cant wait to start with it! Thanks for offering this!!

As a 63 year old trying to learn to play the piano, I've found your advice extremely helpful. I can relate to everyone of the points you've mentioned and those points are probably the reason why I didn't succeed in my two previous attempts. I'll try your free course for a start... Thank you very much for your videos

Thank you for helping me straighten my goals for learning the piano. Have a wonderful day sir.

So many of these mistakes resonated! I am self teaching and I have gone 3 weeks now. Reinforcement is my issue and many times I simply focus on getting the note correct that I ignore the tempo. My son, Alex, has gone off to university and I have always wanted to learn and play the piano and it's great company. You are an excellent teacher. Thank you.

I am currently running through the beginner course. After over 35 years of messing around with synthesizers I finally decided to learn how to play properly. It is excellent. Your advice is spot on.

I just started using the course and I'm so thankful and I love your content!! And I'm super excited to continue learning!

Thanks very much! Good tips. Adult learner here working through Alfred's with a teacher but glad to have come across this video and will definitely check out your other content. Cheers

Great tips! Thank you!

You have given some real solid advice and provided some helpful and directional content. Unlike many other piano channels that feed you a lot of unstructured information keeping your progress un-evolving and inefficient. Thank you.

Really good points, especially the ones that aren't often focused on by many teachers. The "how adults learn" aspect of all this is huuge, and your recommendations are spot on. Very well done video!

Im a beginner that uses your piano course, thank you very much for that! My mom got used to play piano and it might be I took something from that in my childhood. Right now, at the same time with your lesson course, I am learning 'my heart will go on' using a simple 'push-to-play' visual guide that are a lot on UKposts and when I play I actually listen to the sound and notice things that sound 'not right' (mainly because of my piano is pretty old and might not be in the best condition since it was never maintained).

Bill... you are pressing some of my buttons here. Even though I started learning the piano when I was 8, I have picked up some bad habits. The lack of Path you mention, is spot on. I have so many songs I'd like to learn, but so little time. I also have been "depressing" myself about the learning curve as I get older. But again you nailed it, because the maturity and self discipline that I have now, is nothing compared to when I was a kid. So you just made my day Bill! Thanks! Much love from Denmark :-)

Thank you, Bill, it rang every bell. I am a teacher myself and the more I teach, the more I wish my piano teachers from the past had taught me about good practice technique. I now find that more and more of the lessons I give are about the exact things you talk about. And I try to make sure that when I am practising myself, I don't fall back into the (bad) habits of the past. I am going to share your video with my teenage and adult students - thank you so much for your clear exposition and your intelligent solutions.

This is brilliant! Thanks for articulating my thoughts all proper.

Thank you for the information in this video. Playing for

Taking a video of oneself practicing was a great idea! Immediately spotted a postural error that is most likely behind the ache that I keep getting in my right arm after practicing a little while. Thank you!

Definitely something I needed to hear. Thank you!

Great list! I’ve been playing for about 5 months and have learned many pop and rock songs. I definitely feel a lack of knowledge with keys and scales that I will continue to hammer in as I play more. Loved your beginner course as well!

This is all very good advice. Easy to understand and applies to more than just piano!

Thank you, thank you! I’m 76 and have decided to be serious about actually learning how to play. It’s more difficult than I’d anticipated it being and I often forget what I had just done well yesterday. Your tips and words of encouragement couldn’t have come at a better time! Thanks again!

Most important message about learning piano I've seen. Having been taught properly and now recapping in later life all these issues ring true. Feel like I have a teacher again. Thank you. I'm not convinced you can learn piano alone or online at all. There are a lot of used digital pianos for sale in barely played condition. It's tough.

This is great- thank you! I just started sharing videos on my UKposts channel in the hope of making music literacy accessible to all. Learning to read music opens up a whole new world for musicians.

You are awesome Bill, thank you so much 👌

The ‘hitting buttons’ thing kinda hit home, I’ve been using synthesia videos these last few months to play pieces I like, as I kinda just played casually. I’m gonna take it more serious and I’ll check out your guide. Great video 👍

A year and a half ago I used your beginner tutorials to get into the basics. I still play one of the basic pieces. However I realized I was getting bored with the path. I took time to learn some basic music theory which helped immensely. I also began allotting time to improvisation: thoughful play where I chose a key and played whatever chords/melodies while focusing on what I was doing, and then creative play where I just played what sounded nice without worrying about what or why I was doing things. Combined with more practical lessons, I found myself becoming more attuned to the instrument and enjoying the sounds and pattern I was discovering. Thank you for helping me learn enough to enjoy the piano. Now is a good time to revisit your videos and fill in some gaps in my current knowledge and technique.

I am a beginner (a week) and this is great information for me to keep in mind. Thank you!

Great list! This covers a bunch of the issues that have contributed to my 'fits-and-starts' (lack of) progress on all the instruments I play... almost none of them well. Biggest one for me is the pathway. Never found solid mentorship early on and that led to a seat-of-the-pants approach to learning pretty much everything I've done, i.e., kind of wandering from one aspect and/or piece to another, not really knowing what to do first, next, etc. A good course is pretty much the only solution (for me).

Great video, can really relate with a lot of it. Self taught but got Bach as my teacher (through books)

This is wonderful advice. I know multiple instruments and each instrument I still have a different song for each to warm up. 30 minutes and if I get it wrong well it's time to see what's going on lol. It's cool how you can just choose any note and make a scale then chords from that scale. Music feels free emotionally but the time is never free.

Great video. The Tick of death: Remembering something and internalizing it are too different things. Stopping after a mistake and starting over again: Wait till you train yourself and do that live, in front of people. You also have to learn how to roll through mistakes and keep going.

Great advice. Thank you.

I've been playing piano (badly) for around 40 years and this is the first time I've heard of the "push past" / tick of doom thing, which makes perfect sense to me. Thanks, great video.

I'm a self taught guitar player of almost 20 years but ive always been more captivated by piano music and get the best advice from piano players like in this video. I think I will join you goobers very soon.

Really good points. Thank you!

Just found out about your channel with this video (YT suggestion). I love how you explain every scenario, and I'm definitely going to check out your videos!

Thank you!

Not learning piano, here; just picking up the guitar after decades of not playing, and your insights have given me some valuable lessons on moving forward when I thought I hit a wall. Thank you!

Thanks for all this information! I have gone through all the shortcuts you mentioned and am stuck. Now Imknow how to proceed.

A little tip for anyone searching for a good pathway after finishing the Beginner's course: There are several certified piano courses that have downloadable pdfs for their syllabus. In this way, you can progress through certain 'levels' of skill, by learning pieces, etudes, rhythm exercises, musical hearing exercises, etc. These levels of course prepare you for some form of official examination, but nothing is stopping you for using these syllabuses(syllabi?) as clear milestones for your own progression. I went with the Canadian standard (RCM), but there are several others (ABRSM, Henle).

I've been self-teaching since late 2020, with about a year of in-person lessons from a teacher sprinkled throughout. There are many great points in this video, but I'd also like to share some of my own experiences and what really helped me. The biggest piece of advice I can offer to any beginner is to _be consistent._ There's a reason piano teachers often tell you to practice 15 or 30 minutes every single day. It's easy to maybe think "oh, well if I just practice for 2.5 hours once a week that's just as good." No, no it isn't. Long practice is fine! You should do long practice if you believe it will help you! But you also need to have consistent reinforcement, every single day, of things you've learned. There would be times where I'd be trying to pick up something new one day, probably before even going to bed, and after 30 or so minutes I just can't wrap my head around it, can't get my hands or fingers to listen to me. No matter what I do I just can't seem to get it down. I could sit there for another hour until I get it, but that doesn't mean I've even learned it. So after that half hour, I just say screw it, and go to sleep. The very next morning, I go to practice that, and suddenly it is much easier. It's still not perfect, but I can _hear and tell and feel_ that it is beginning to make sense. Consistency is super important. It's not so much about how _long_ you practice, but how often you reinforce that. Some days when I have nothing going on, I may practice something for half an hour, go do something else for several more hours, then go back to the piano and try it again. The point is, you need to be consistently learning, and this doesn't necessarily mean playing stuff you can _already_ play. It just means focusing on the things you know you struggle with. Additionally, in terms of scales and exercises, I ended up developing many of my own inventions and exercises. I mostly did this by taking things I could already play, and coming up with new ways to play them. A very common thing I like to do is try combining left hand chords or arpeggios from one piece, and figuring out how to combine it with a right hand melody for something entirely different. This takes awhile, and often requires me to figure out (by ear) how to transpose the different parts into different keys so they work together harmonically. But this specific approach to traditional exercises trains _many different aspects all at once._ You should still absolutely play scales, go through the traditional exercises too. But don't be afraid to get creative and noodle around. The exercises I developed is what actually helped me develop my ear, I also developed a very good sense of rhythm (as I often had to mish mash things of different rhythms together), and I learned of intervals long before I even knew what they were. I started to notice loads of patterns, the relationships between notes, etc and realized I can use that to figure out how to play things by ear. By the time I started taking lessons, there was a surprising amount of beginner stuff I already knew. And what's crazy is, this even translated to learning sheet music. I was sitting there painfully trying to read things note for note, and then I said to my teacher "wait a minute, it's not really about the notes, it's more about the gaps between them, right? that's how people get really fast at reading music, isn't it?" and she said "yeah actually, you can just see the gaps and know how far apart they are." Another very important thing is to break the stuff you learn down into chunks. Before I even knew what phrases were, I was already doing this instinctively. When learning something new, whether by ear or by following sheet music, I would always chunk it by phrases. By doing this, you can break away from the habit of playing from the top when you hit a mistake. I would learn a phrase, then learn the next phrase, and then play just a bit of the end of the first phrase to get used to transitioning into the next one. Instead of hitting a spot that might be hard and force me to restart, I would just instinctively restart on where that error occurred. Surprise surprise, this was almost always in the transitions between phrases. This was also something my piano teacher was surprised I had no trouble with. When I would hit an error, when I'd anticipate I was just about to hit the wrong note, I'd stop and hit the right note. If the timing was off, I'd start over that one singular bar and repeat it until the timing was right, etc.

A bit of an odd comparison maybe but: I used to record some of my matches from an online shooter game I play, and rewatching them actually really helped me get better and understand what I could improve and why. Like he said about recording yourself play to later look it over and learn from it.

I got this randomly recommended and boy am I happy for it. Needed the advice.

Tendancy to race ...... my biggest sin! 🙂Great video you did!

so good. thanks!

Great video, I need time to assimilate each point you mentioned. Thanks!!!

lol I’m mostly self taught but I did go for a career as a keyboardist and educator. This validated a lot of the findings I had in my journey. Thanks for sharing!

Yes, it definitely rang bells for me, some of which I came up with on my own, especially if you read my comment about avoiding quitting, and that sort of parallels what you said about grit. You just have to be willing to sit down at the instrument at least once every day and do something with it. You can’t let a day go by where you don’t touch it. When I started a few years ago, I downloaded a transcription of Joni Mitchell’s “River,” which was way, way, way out of my league at the time….but I loved the piece and I thought if I could just play part of it, it would give me a real boost…. so note by note, I decoded what the transcription said on the first page, and taught myself my very first left hand arpeggio, and having learned a little bit of theory, realized that I was just playing sixths with the right hand, and ever since I got to the point where I could play all the way through, I have used it as my warm-up piece……every single day. So, even when I have a day where the last thing that I want to do is sit down and play, I make myself sit down and play that 90 seconds of Joni Mitchell…and this way, my brain realizes that there is no way out of this……except becoming a good player.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge! I've just started trying to learn how to play piano, and these definitely resonate. I have been trying to find UKposts videos to watch to learn how to learn basically lol, because it feels like I am doing the button mentality just memorizing notes to a song but I dont feel productive in my learning. Ive been trying to figure out how to find the "path" to learn well, I'm glad this video popped up on my feed because all I usually see are videos that basically suggest the button pushing mentality. Im definitely going to check out your course. Many thanks for putting up a course for free!!

Okay. I’m convinced. Now 78 years old and totally back to basics after starting out many decades ago. A lot of what you say is me…I have drifted from to many tube lessons and never settled on one. Thing is I don’t have a piano as such. It’s an organ.. a real nice vintage sit up and beg with all the bells and whistles. Love it. Technique I’m sure will be different but the basics the same. I shall join your classes Bill but there will be a break as I’m off on some travels.

This is very helpful thank you.❤

This is great Bill, thanks. It also makes me think it can help in my painting - I have relooked back at a painting after a while and seen it for what it is, but especially the things I'd do better. This has made me demoralised, whereas you've made me see it as a positive, it's learning. Ta mate.

Hello Bill and thank you for this video , every point you made my head was nodding , " yep that's me " ..... maybe now you've highlighted it I will be more aware and thoughtful in my daily practice routine, again thank you . 🤔😊