For my birthday last year,  my wife bought me a keyboard. It’s a Yamaha EW400, so it’s a very good keyboard for a beginner. Although I played it a a fair bit, I didn’t really make the progress I wanted to and in the end I felt frustrated by the whole thing.

One of my goals was to become competent enough, not only yo be able to play the songs I’d written, but also be be able to produce lead sheets and piano arrangements. This was one of the reasons I was frustrated by it all because I didn’t get anywhere near this.

So this year I decided that a fresh approach was needed and 4 weeks ago I started to have lessons. I agreed with the teacher that we should start at the very beginning so that is what we did.

This is the course that I started and I’ve been making steady progress and can now proudly say I’ve made it to book two.

To give you some idea of where that puts me in terms of ability; by the end of book three I would be ready to take my grade 1 exam. So lots of progress to be made.

In addition to the lessons,  I’ve carried on learning to play my songs and other songs using simple chords and left hand patterns. The main source of tuition has been YouTube videos, but, as with all things YouTube, the quality varies from channel to channel. I will be sharing more on this including the channels I’ve found useful in future posts.

So I’ve still a way to go to reach my goals but I’m enjoying the journey and that, for me, is the most important thing.