Board 8 > Music topic - learning piano and need some tips

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Hey guys, I recently decided to try learning a musical instrument and settled on the piano/keyboard. I know we have some musical people here so maybe somebody will be able to give me some advice.

I think it will be an uphill battle as I've always struggled to understand anything about music or what terms mean and don't really intuitively grasp the beat or melody of a song the way other people seem to. I'm not even sure what beat or melody even really mean! That may mean I'm hopeless. But I think it would be fun to be able to play some sort of music even if I never become "good" so I've decided to give this a shot. I've bought a basic keyboard and have started trying to learn. I have a weeks worth of trying about 15-30 minutes a day at this point. This may sound silly, but my goal in general is to some day be able to play To Zanarkand. If I ever reach that point I'll be very proud of myself. For right now, that seems miles and miles away.

I've tried watching youtube tutorials but they all move VERY fast and demonstrate pressing a lot of keys together quickly which is miles miles beyond where I am so I bought this very beginner guidebook off amazon on to start with. Basically, I need get very basic familiarity with what keys are which and how pressing them feels like. This book is doing a very good job of doing that.

It's walking me through basic concepts like the middle C and the few notes around it, how to place my hands, explaining the treble clef being for the right hand and the bass clef being for the left hand. What bars are and what the time signature is for dictating speed, like 4/4. And then has walked me through a number of examples of playing a few bars with a few notes with full notes, half notes, and quarter notes.

One thing this book is emphasizing is counting in your head how long each note should be to match the time signature. But I'm struggling with this. I don't think I'm able to really evenly count in my head 1 2 3 4 perfectly to hold a full note, or to time each quarternote. I tend to speed up or slow down randomly for no reason. Some of the examples I play just sound like random unrelated sounds, but there are a couple I play intuitively at the speed I think they should be played at... and it sounds like music. I found that really neat. But if I try to play those same notes again while trying to count them out in my head it kinda goes back to sounding like random unrelated sounds. To me, this seems like I'm not using the time signature right, and so for some of these "songs" I'm playing I'm just not timing them right so it doesn't sound good, and some I just happen to be stumbling onto the right pace to play them at. I could keep going ahead just trying to "feel it out" but I think this means that I'm skipping over a fundamental step of learning to read the time signature right and time my "beats".

So I'm not sure what I should do at this stage. I think if I had a teacher this would be the point where they correct my timings, but I'm a lot more comfortable doing this on my own at my own pace.

One thing I'm wondering - is this what a metronome is for? An external device for setting the pace of the beat, and so I can time my key presses in time with the metronome? If I practice that enough, I might be able to internalize that pace to be able to intuitively know how fast 4/4 or 3/4 should be played. Right now I have no idea. Or is that just a piece of junk that I'll buy and have cluttering things up for no reason.

So right now I'm thinking either I just keep trying what I'm doing, or buying a metronome. What would any of you suggest?

Thanks!

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There's almost no reason to buy a metronome, you can just google one! (some people do swear by the visual indication of the pendulum but at the early stages of learning piano you'll probably benefit more from looking at your hands)

But keeping count is important in any case, at first it will seem unnatural and probably force you to think/play slowly but after a while it becomes second nature
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I'd say to think of a simple song you like a lot and try to count the time (just try counting along with the song, 1 2 3 4. you'll see what I mean when you try). Pretty much any example you're likely to think of will be in 4/4, and you should naturally be able to find the beat. Do this with any song you hear when you get the hang of it to start to intuit how the time signature works with the song. I'll also suggest learning how to play something like Hot Cross Buns specifically to practice with something like this early, playing along with the metronome and trying to internalize how long the beat is for a given song

This will also be helpful in showing you what a time signature *is*, because it doesn't (directly) specify how fast the song should be played like you seem to think. A 4/4 song can be faster or slower than a 3/4 song. They're pretty unrelated metrics. Time sigs as a concept is kind of hard to explain in a vacuum, but when it clicks, it makes a lot of sense
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