How long will it take me to learn piano?

[BoringSilentHill]

Weekly lessons and daily practice. AIBU to think I could be playing decent by Christmas? Enough to be able to play Christmas songs properly?

I can recommend Carol Barratt’s books, 1 and 2. They’re called A Feast of Easy Carols.

Pianote is brill!

Hey, piano teacher here. How long is a piece of string?! I've been playing for 35 years and I'm still learning 🙂

Depends on your goals. Want to play pop music with chords? Not very long to start sounding like something recognisable. Classical music? Longer. With regular practice and weekly lessons I'd expect you to get to grade 1 in a year which means you could comfortably play easy versions of Christmas songs.

Happy learning. I love teaching adults 🙂

About a decade. No, I'm not joking.

But if you mean you just want to be able to play a few simple pieces - and you practise a decent amount - then your goal sounds realistic.

I spent a while learning piano from an app, aiming to play classical music, then switched to wind synth. Based on my experience, I would say piano is ten times as hard as learning a wind instrument. I chose wind synth because I can practise with headphones, but if I had to go analog, I'd probably now choose a clarinet.

Sorry slightly off topic but can you recommend a piano for a total beginner? I’m interested in learning and maybe teaching my kids alongside myself - just basics really!

"playing Christmas songs properly" is still a piece of string question.

Within a year of lessons and not heaps of practice I was able to play an easy piano version of various carols. I wouldn't call this playing properly, but as I said, piece of string. Maybe grade 2 level ish? Not really sure. I could already read treble clef before I started but was (and remain TBH) pretty dodgy on bass clef.

Have DMd you