One month. Playing every day. What have I learned?

• Pianos have 72 keys. That might sound obvious. But it’s more complicated that it sounds. Pianos have 72 keys but I only play 17 of them. 8 white keys to the right of ‘middle C’ – the middle key of the piano. And the 8 white keys to the left of them. And one black key (as part of a D chord). I don’t play the keys at the bottom of the piano and I don’t play the keys at the top. The reason for this is that the eight keys repeat. As do the black keys (of which there are seven). But in order to learn I’ve started with 16 and my muscle memory is starting to learn how to shape my fingers and move my arm for those 16 keys. Maybe by the end of the year, I’ll have played one of the other keys. But, for the moment, 16 keys is a lot less intimidating than 72. But if I want to stretch myself when learning, then I will have to… stretch myself and reach further.
• Chords are easy and hard. Just as you master one chord, you add a second and try and move between them. Then add a third and watch your coordination fly out of the window. But practice helps, and soon you’ve learned to move between three chords – and then you add a fourth and it takes even longer to practice as there’s a lot more movements between all four. There is a reason it takes a long time to master a piano and it’s entirely down to having too many chords. If we had fewer fingers it would be easier to learn as we’d have less chords.
• I’m not interested in classical pieces. Chopin? Borin’, more like…! But I do like film music and playing along with soundtracks.
• I’m left handed – but not what it comes to playing the piano. I’m still learning how to use my left hand, it’s not as instinctive as my right.
• There’s no one way to learn. I started the same day as my wife but we’ve both learnt how to play in different ways by following different training paths on the Simple Piano app. She’s now playing classical pieces, I’m playing along to pop songs. Neither approach is wrong but it does show how encouraging it is to be able to learn in a way that interests you. If I’ve followed her path, I might not have loved learning as much as I did. Same for her. The fact we can choose our own way to learn is a great feature of Simply Piano and one I would recommend to others.
• Most of all, I’ve learned I love playing the piano and want to try now and learn something from a soundtrack which will starts to challenge me to use both hands and which should be within my reach after one month. Something like this…