If you want to learn to play the piano, you can go to a piano teacher or teach yourself. If you're going to teach yourself how to play the piano then you have to decide whether to use piano software courses or tuition books.

Let's look at the benefits and drawbacks of both methods of teaching yourself to play the piano. Both methods will help you to learn to play the piano, Both will provide you with songs to play on the piano and both will include the necessary music theory required to play the piano. So which method is best?

The benefits of tuition books

The obvious benefit of using tuition books is the cost. When you buy a beginners tuition book for example "The Complete Piano Player" or if you're using a Yamaha keyboard "The Complete Keyboard Player". They are normally sold as part of a series, for example, book 1 to book 4 and each book costs about six to ten pounds. You just buy the book you need, which means it's incredibly cheap to get started. Each book contains about twelve songs and each song will introduce something new to learn.

The drawbacks of tuition books

The main drawback of these books are not the books themselves but the fact that they are designed to be used with a piano teacher. If there is something you can't quite grasp then a piano teacher would have many ways to explain things. Without that help, your task can become overwhelming and many people will give up within the first three months.

The other main drawback is that tuition books dont teach you what you need to know before you start using the books. That is, the basics, what the notes are called on a keyboard, what are the notes called on sheet music, time signatures and time values. These are the basics that apply to all musical instruments and you must learn this first.

Find out more about piano software courses in part two of this article.