Year after year, we see how the education of the children and youth all around the world evolves. The classic format of teaching and instructing people how to do things has been proven to be considerably improvable in every aspect and area of learning. If we speak of music, and particularly, piano teaching, we see how the methods used in most music schools, academies, and conservatories are from more than 100 years ago!
Clearly, the world we live in is very different than what it was a century ago, and so are the people. Using teaching methods that are so antique and not adapted to this day and time can be a very big barrier to the learning process of piano students. Seeing and realizing this, professionals decided to start developing new methodologies and types of teaching, with online piano classes and apps being the most innovative and apparently effective. In this article, we are going to be going over the pros and cons of learning piano via online lessons.
Online lessons: The Origins
As we mentioned above, online lessons originate from a need to adapt the piano teaching methods widely accepted and used by most academies, music schools, and conservatories to the current world and the needs of students nowadays. We have to understand that it is simply not effective to try to teach people with a method that was developed 100 years ago, as the learning curve is obviously going to be affected negatively by the usage of outdated techniques and methods. Two very clear examples of this are the most conventional piano teaching methods:
- Implicate long and tedious weekly/biweekly classes with a professor (which usually last more than 1 or 2 hours). This is not an effective way of teaching as the human brain can not remain active for sessions of instruction that are so long, therefore there is a considerable amount of time that is being wasted.
- Are very memorization heavy. This might arguably not be something as negative in a lot of other areas, however, in music, it can have a very negative influence on the learners. The reason is that having the pressure of having to memorize a certain musical piece or song and playing it without access to any sheet music, tablatures, or written indications can cause a student to get overwhelmed, which can lead to limiting their expressivity or affect their ability to focus on the artistic part of the performance, causing them to not properly develop their artistic skills.
What are the pros of Online Lessons?
Having understood some of the core issues and problems that conventional teaching methods suppose we can move on to discussing how more innovative approaches such as online piano lessons help solve all the challenges that conventional methods present. We are going to focus on elaborating on the main pros of online piano lessons, which are depicted in the table below:
| Pros of Online Piano Lessons |
| Saving time and investing it effectively |
| Avoiding overwhelming students by making them memorize |
| Inclusivity to users with no musical background |
| It is so much cheaper! |
To start with, conventional in-person piano lessons usually consist of weekly or even biweekly 1-2 hour(s) sessions, which -as we explained earlier- is not effective as the human brain can not be active and functioning effectively during modules of learning that are so long. On top of that, with the lessons being in-person most of the time students have to commute to the location where their academy or instructor is located, which can take up to 1 hour in some cases.
If we add up we see how for a 1 hour and 30 minute lesson (from which most people are going to actively learn for 45 to 50 minutes) the time spent can go up to 3 hours and 30 minutes! Online piano lessons solve all these time related problems, allowing us to study, take lessons, and practice all from home, without having to worry about wasting time and money commuting or having to sit through lessons that are longer than we are actually able to take and synthesize effectively.
To continue, who said that to learn how to play the piano it is necessary to memorize every single piece and song we play and perform it without any physical support? This is something that even though it is widely accepted among the classical music world has no actual basis. It might be true that memorizing helps a very select group of people that have over-average memorization abilities and task management issues to focus on other technical aspects, however, for the common student, it can lead to stressing and wasting a lot of brain power in the retrieval of the memorized information, which causes to leave aside aspects that are even more important in a performance.
Online piano classes have a completely renewed approach and do not focus on making students learn by heart what they are playing and not allowing them to have any support or indications. They rather focus on more important elements such as technical issues and interpretative factors such as dynamics, expressivity, or delivery, which make way more of an impact on the way someone’s playing improves.
In third place, online piano lessons present a way more inclusive approach. With conventional teaching methods, students are expected to follow a determined learning path and learn certain things about musical theory, harmony, sheet music interpretation, etc. This supposes an issue for many students who have no background in these more theoretical areas or have learned using another methodology that for example does not implicate learning how to read sheet music.
Online piano lessons allow for people who have never had any contact with a musical instrument before to learn how to play at a pace that is similar to those who with a conventional approach spend multiple years learning musical concepts that they do not need to achieve an acceptable level of piano performance.
And last but not least, and one of the determinant factors for most people, MONEY! Learning how to play piano through a conventional approach means spending insanely high amounts of money, which can reach thousands of dollars per year!
Online piano learning platforms offer the clear advantage that they usually only require for the payment of a relatively cheap monthly flat rate. One thing to keep in mind is the fact that by using online piano learning platforms users have the freedom of accessing it at any time for as long as they want, which allows them to progress at their own pace and learn as fast as they want.
Are there many cons to Online Lessons?
The fact is, even though online piano lessons are a very interesting option nowadays, they do present some limitations. The main issues related to this teaching format are the following:
| Cons of Online Piano Lessons |
| No professor than can physically give us indications |
| Limitations in terms of improving playing sound quality |
| Need of access to a device with access to the internet |
| Easier to get distracted during lessons |
First off, posture is very important for piano. Everything from the way we sit to the posture of our hands makes a difference in the quality of the sound we produce and prevents us from developing wrong habits that can lead to joint issues or inability to progress past a certain level. Having a class session with an instructor so that students can get indications in person and be helped physically to improve and correct their postural issues can be very helpful.
In second place, even though online piano lessons give feedback that includes aspects related to sound quality, the feedback is gonna be highly conditioned by the quality of sound recording of the device being used for the online piano lessons.
The simplest of all cons is the following, learning piano through online lessons requires the person who wants to learn to (besides access to a piano) have access to a mobile or desktop device with internet access, and an integrated or external (if not included) microphone and camera, which allows the platform to register their playing to be able to provide feedback, teach, and help them improve.
Lastly, even though online piano lessons have the pro of allowing us to learn from anywhere we want without having to commute to a defined location for an in-person class, this also means that it is much easier to get distracted during lessons if we are not disciplined enough or have the self-control to keep ourselves from falling to external disturbances that can obstruct the learning process.
Final thoughts
In conclusion, online piano lessons open the door to significant advantages over traditional methods, aligning better with the modern world and its students’ needs. They help save time, reduce the overwhelming cause of having to memorize everything and allow for a more varied profile of students to learn piano (and all of that at a much lower cost). It is true there are some limitations, such as the lack of physical guidance and the need for internet access, but we think that the overall benefits of online piano lessons, which range from convenience to accessibility and cost-effectiveness, make them a very appealing option for learning how to play piano.