Can You Learn Piano without a Piano?

I know it seems bizarre to ask, “Can you learn piano without a piano?” Even if you could, what's the point of learning how to play piano if you don't have an instrument to play it on?

There are a lot of benefits to learning piano even if you don't have one. Learning how to play piano is a great starting place for deepening your relationship with music, for developing your musical skills, and for expanding what you already know. Playing piano can help you become a better karaoke singer or can connect the dots between everything you've been learning in guitar lessons. Learning how to play piano will help you make sense of how to mix beats, or write your own songs. Learning piano is also a way to understand the music that you're already listening to.

By learning piano you can develop a more personal relationship and deeper understanding of the music you already listen to and love.

Okay, first step: how can you learn piano without a piano?

I'm going to start by advising you to learn piano if you don’t have one with what one piano student lovingly calls, “Jedi mind tricks.” Recently, this awesome student tuned in to a piano class even though she was feeling sick. Instead of sitting at the piano and playing the material along with us, she opted to watch the video away from the piano and to visualize the movements instead. She reported later that by listening and watching the class while visualizing her own physical movements, that she actually found she absorbed the material better than when she was following along at the piano. That's not to say that following along at the piano isn't a wonderful way for you to be taking piano classes and piano lessons, but it's a testament to the power of learning piano without physically sitting at a piano during that time. It shows that there is a way for you to know how can you learn piano without a piano.

This isn't the first time that I've taught piano this way. When I was teaching a large group piano class to middle school students years ago, most middle schoolers had iPad with piano apps to play along with the lesson during the class. Occasionally though, we would always have a student that forgot their iPad, or forgot to charge it, anyway. Classic. Those students would be handed a printed copy of a piano keyboard- the same size and same shape as the piano keys. They would then “play” the piano along with the lesson. By putting their hands on the printout of the keyboard, and moving their fingers along with the lesson they were viewing and listening to they were often able to internalize the lesson as successfully as the students surrounding them playing on the digital keyboards. If you think this sounds ridiculous, I’d like to send you to this story detailing a similar experience that lead to a career of piano playing.

My first exposure to other people using these “jedi mind tricks,” or simply, mental practice on piano, outside of my own experience was a professor of mine who swore up and down that he learned a new piano piece from beginning to end while flying to Japan. He said that he hadn't planned to learn this repertoire, and that during the flight he visualized the piece, audiated the music (maybe he listened to the piece on cassette too) and imagined himself physically enacting the movements required to play this piece. He claims that by the time he landed in Japan, he had the completely learned and memorized this piece, and his first time playing the piece on the piano was for a full concert hall at the venue!

It’s possible that my professor exaggerated this story, but the thing is- I believe him. I believe that it is possible to learn piano from mental practice, audiation (the process of hearing the music in your head) and visualization. I have found this type of practice one of the most powerful ways to deeply internalize new music, and I can only imagine the kind of focus and intention that is being cultivated if this is how you start to answer how you can learn piano without a piano.

Use what you have with Mobile Keyboards

One amazing to learn piano without a piano is to download a piano app onto your phone or tablet. This is a great solution because you not only get to see the piano keyboard and learn how to navigate the layout of the piano keys, you also get the experience of pressing down your finger on the correct key and hearing the sound of that key. Or the wrong key, and hearing the sound of that key- there’s a valuable lesson there, too.

I'm pretty impressed with all of the things that you can actually do on a piano app! You can play chords, you can play melodies with each hand, and you can even play both hands together if you're on a large enough device or you adjust the settings and the key size. Because you can adjust the key size, you can also emulate the size of a real piano's keys to help prepare yourself for playing a different instrument in the future.

The best thing about these piano apps is that you can access a piano using the tools that you already have. This perk is two-fold: If you’re trying to learn piano for the first time, then you might not feel ready to buy a piano. It also means that once you’ve downloaded a piano app, you can truly play piano anywhere that you might bring a phone or tablet! You can truly play piano anywhere. That’s the beauty of figuring out how you can learn piano without a piano.

I Want to feel like I’m playing piano

Of course there have always been different variations of pianos. Even before we had an app for that, we had roll-out pianos as an option. I want to love the roll out piano, but all of the ones that I've played so far make it difficult to press several notes at the same time. Maybe I should try again- I might have better luck with a newer model. There are also melodicas which are wind powered keyboards. These are keyboards that you hold like a saxophone and blow into in order to press the notes down, or you can use the tube attached and play it like a regular piano with two hands together. An accordion is another type of wind powered piano. The accordion has more intricacies and details, along with cultural context that characterizes it as its own instrumental category entirely- a keyboard instrument and more.

There are truly classic examples of piano alternatives including synthesizer, organ and electric piano keyboards. While there may be adjustments to make in order to connect these instruments to amplification, or to best know how to navigate the full range of the instrument, I would consider all of these keyboard options as equivalents to playing a piano itself.

Anywhere is a good place to start

This seems like a good time to say that playing any instrument is going to be more fruitful than playing no instrument at all. I know that may sound obvious, but there was a point in time when I was having a lot of trouble finding a healthy and regular practice routine. When I was in college studying piano, I had professors talk me out of using my keyboard-which was a full sized weighted key piano keyboard equivalent, because they said that it wouldn't give me the same experiences playing a grand piano.

They were right that the keyboard is different from playing an acoustic piano and the quality of sound and the touch sensation are different. However-

I was still better off practicing my my electric keyboard at home and spending more time making music than I was waiting until I had opportunities to play acoustic pianos.

In that context I think that I was best served by practicing on the acoustic pianos to prepare for performances on similar pianos. What I mean by that if I as if I had a performance coming up, then each week I would structure my time at an acoustic piano in preparation for playing that. That's how I structure my practice time now, actually. I regret letting that professor's feedback influence the way that I practiced on my own. Had I thought long and hard about it, I would have realized that any piano player living in a major city or just getting out of college is of course going to be practicing on an electric keyboard, not a full sized piano.

How you can learn to Play Piano Anywhere

And you as a beginner piano player, as someone beginning their journey to deepen into relationship with music, you are going to learn more and learn better and have so much fun if you aren't stressing yourself out about whether you have space for a piano or if you have the money to spend on something or if you're willing to match the same amount of time that you would put in money or space in order to learn this.

You were gonna have the best experience right now if you aren't sitting around waiting for the perfect instrument or whether this is right timing and you just go ahead and get started playing and making music and having fun and enjoying it.

That's what the class Play Piano Anywhere is all about. It's a call, or an invitation, to bring you to the piano even if you feel like you're not ready. It’s a way to learn how to play piano even if you don't have a piano. Even if you don't expect to have a long relationship with playing the piano and. you just want to try piano out for the first time- you can learn piano without a piano. You can learn about music without sitting at an acoustic piano. You can still learn piano even if you live in a tiny apartment in NYC or LA. You can learn piano without a piano

The online beginner piano piano class for adults Play Piano Anywhere is a starting point for people to learn piano without a piano, but will also provide a guide for you if you are ready to try playing on a piano when you're ready to move from your entry level experience into a full sized instrument of some kind. Believe it or not, there are probably several pianos available to play for free around your community. I have had students take lessons from pianos at music stores, which sometimes have rent to own options or used and refurbished instruments. I've also seen folks learn piano at a church, or using neighbor's piano or even at the library. Major city public libraries and universities will often have pianos and music practice rooms available. This is the kind of sleuthing that will likely require you to ask around, you might not find the answer to this from a search on the Internet.

One of my favorite best kept secrets is the fact that you can get an acoustic piano for FREE! If you have the luxury of physical space, you will be amazed at the magic that is craigslist piano listings. There are always pianos listed for the cost of moving, or listed incredibly cheap. This is because a lot of people have never learned to play, and aren’t willing to pay for the cost of a piano tuning. You can find free pianos on craigslist, Facebook marketplace, and neighborhood groups.

That also goes for electric keyboards. You would be amazed at the amount of parents that buy electric keyboards for their kids, and when the kids give up on playing piano the parents give up the piano, families are quick to pass it on for free on community forums. I love Buy Nothing groups on Facebook, and I've helped many people get started finding their first keyboard or piano in these virtual community spaces.

So, yes: you can learn piano if you don’t have one

Can you learn piano without a piano? Yes! Can you make music for fun, to experience joy, and to learn more without the pressure that we’ve come to expect from music lessons and classes? Yes yes yes!

If you’re ready to learn piano without a piano, or take the plunge and take the first step to learning more about music, take this online beginner piano workshop Piano Explained, or head straight to Play Piano Anywhere to start your piano journey.