If you're about to start piano, you have a decision to make before you learn a single note — and almost nobody tells beginners how to make it well. Who are you going to learn from?
There has never been more piano teaching available. Some of it is excellent. A lot of it is made by people who are, honestly, only a little further along the road than you are. I want to help you tell the difference — kindly, and without any drama.
Why this matters more in piano than you'd think
Piano is a physical skill. What you do in your first months — how you sit, how your hand is shaped, how you use your arm weight, how you count — becomes automatic very quickly. That's wonderful when the habits are good. It's genuinely difficult when they aren't.
Un-learning a collapsed wrist or a flat-fingered touch takes far longer than learning it correctly the first time. I've taught many adults who arrived after a year of well-meant online videos and had to spend months undoing things. They weren't lazy or untalented. They were simply never shown the right thing.
So the question isn't "can I find someone who will teach me?" There are thousands. The question is: will this person see what I'm doing wrong, and know how to fix it?
Three things to look for
1. Can they actually play?
This sounds obvious, but it's the most-skipped check. Look for video of your teacher playing — not just talking over a keyboard, but performing real repertoire. A teacher who plays well hears things a non-player simply cannot hear: uneven tone, a rushed phrase, tension in your hand, a pedal change a fraction late.
You don't need them to be a famous soloist. You do need evidence that they command the instrument they're teaching you.
2. Do they have real training?
Formal education matters, and I say that as someone who spent many years getting it. A degree isn't a certificate of niceness — it's years of being corrected, daily, by people who knew more, in an environment where "close enough" was never accepted. That process is what teaches you to diagnose. It's the difference between "that didn't sound right, try again" and "your fourth finger is collapsing on the way down, so the phrase loses its line — here's the exercise that fixes it."
Look for: where they studied, what they studied, and who they studied with.
3. Have they taught before — people like you?
Playing and teaching are different skills. A great player who has never taught may not know how to break a motion into steps you can actually do this week. Ask how long they've taught, and whether they've taught adult beginners specifically. Adults learn differently from children: we analyse more, we're more self-critical, and we have less time. A teacher who understands that will get you much further.
The gentle honest part
I want to say this warmly, because I know how much courage it takes to start: learning from someone who is at roughly your own level — no training, no teaching experience, not really able to play — usually doesn't work. Not because they aren't sincere. Most are lovely, enthusiastic people who genuinely want to help.
But they can only take you as far as they've been. They can't hear the problem you can't hear, because they haven't been trained to hear it either. So you both end up in the same place, and you spend a year getting somewhere you could have reached in three months — with habits you'll later have to unpick.
Your time is the expensive part. Not the lessons. Spend it with someone who can see further down the road than you can.
Why classical training is the highest standard
Whatever music you eventually want to play — pop, jazz, film music, worship, your grandmother's favourite waltz — there's a practical reason to learn from someone with a classical background.
Classical repertoire is simply the most demanding music written for the instrument. Playing Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or Chopin properly requires a level of precision, control and attention to detail that no other style asks for in the same way: every voice audible and balanced, every phrase shaped, dynamics graded across a whole page, pedalling changed cleanly with each harmony, rhythm exact but never mechanical, and all of it from memory, under pressure, with no room to improvise past a mistake.
Training to that standard takes years, and it builds a complete technical and musical toolkit. A pianist who has done it can teach you to play anything, because everything else is, technically speaking, a subset of what they've already had to master. It rarely works the other way round.
This is why a classically trained teacher is such good value — you're not signing up to play only Chopin. You're getting the person with the most complete training, applied to whatever you want to play.
A short checklist
Before you commit to a teacher, a course, or a channel, look for:
✓ Video of them performing real repertoire
✓ A clear, checkable education — where and with whom they trained
✓ Teaching experience, ideally with adult beginners
✓ Reviews or testimonials from actual students
✓ Teaching that explains why, not just what — the reason behind the hand shape, the fingering, the count
That last one is the quickest test of all. Watch two minutes of anyone's teaching. If they tell you what to do but never why it works, they may be repeating something they were told rather than something they understand.
And be a little demanding
You're allowed to expect a lot from whoever teaches you — that's not arrogance, it's just good sense. You're giving this real time and real attention. Give it to someone who can take you somewhere.
Everything I teach on this channel is the same material I taught for years in a university classroom, given free, in order — and you can watch me play before you decide whether to trust me with your hands. I'd suggest applying exactly that test to everyone, including me.