I'd advocate for the occasional review by a teacher to see whether you are picking up any bad habits but to most importantly focus on having fun so that you stay motivated. Nothing will kill interest in an instrument in the early stages of learning as much as drilling boring stuff, even if that has long term advantages, after all if there is no long term because of that then what's the point?
Also, you can have a teacher where the focus is to have fun with it and not drilling boring stuff. That's precisely the conversation I had with my current clarinet teacher. We still do boring stuff but he also brings me jazz songs and classical duets to play according to my level. It's a matter of establishing your goals with the teacher the same way you put them with yourself.
- Teachers can not give you motivation but they can sure kill it.
- An app that keeps people motivated is better than nothing at all.
- Horses for courses (not everybody is the same, and equally affluent, what works for you may not work for someone else) and if people are on a budget and they find a way that can make them enjoy what they are doing without breaking the bank on teachers and piano tuners then that's a benefit.
- With what is available online + a $400 digital piano you can get surprisingly far if you are self motivated, and occasionally spending an hour or two with a teacher (or simply a better pianist) will stretch your abilities further.
- if you feel that you are not comfortable or maybe even are injuring yourself then stop whatever you are doing and ask an expert.
- If you have a goal and/or want to be able to perform and value your time over your cash then a good teacher is the way to go but beware, not all teachers are good.
- if you can afford it, want it and you can find a good teacher definitely go for that.
- An acoustic piano is not a 'must' to be able to learn and practice, in fact, a digital has some advantages (the ability to practice with headphones). Silent pianos exist but are usually quite pricey.
Finally, I'd like to plug http://forum.pianoworld.com/ which is an excellent resource for people interested in playing and teaching piano.
Nice point.
As a teenager, I took piano lessons for several years from two good teachers. Nearly fifty years later, I still enjoy playing the piano every day, so lessons obviously worked for me.
But if I were starting out to learn to play the piano now, I probably wouldn't go the teacher route at first. Rather, I would sample various apps, method books, websites, and, especially, YouTube videos and see what I could learn from each of them. I expect some would be too hard, some too easy, and some focused on styles of music I'm not interested in. But in the process of sampling various approaches, I would be able to find out what benefits and motivates me and what doesn't. I suspect that I would end up at least as satisfied with the results as I am now.
> their goals may not overlap with mine.
That's a matter of talking with the teacher and setting down the goals.
> Finally, not everybody learns in the same way and not everybody has your budget.
My point is not "I did classes and I'm good now", is "I didn't do enough classes and now I see how that wasn't the best".
> I don't like the way you are all over this thread proclaiming the 'one true way'
If that's the way I'm coming across I'm sorry. My point is that there's more to music learning that people think (specially in HN, where I've seen really bad takes in some posts), and that they should be mindful that an app will not be a magic method. I've seen friends that had very high expectations and then got discouraged quickly. I prefer that people know what's ahead, and align the method to use with the expectations they have.