Hi Dave.
Youāve got a lead on most of us here with your experience. As Hayden has said, you surely will pick up the piano very quickly. I just wanted to second your choice of artists that youāre listening to. Iāve recently come to find Esbjorn Svensson (EST) and especially Marcin Wasilewski as āwonderful stuffā¦!!!ā
Hi Scott,
Great to hear from youā¦!! Glad to know that you also enjoy EST and Marcin Wasilewski. Have you heard Marcinās trio work on the albums they recorded with the trumpeter Tomasz Stanko (āSoul of Thingsā, āSuspended Nightā, and āLontanoā) - absolutely magicalā¦!!!
Great to know thereās another ākindred spiritā out thereā¦!!
Cheers, Dave
I messed up the last post, Hereās what I wanted to share. Dave mentioned Marcin Wasilewski, and I wanted to share a few videos. Sorry if I offend anyone for posting them here. First is a video that Wasilewski made in homage to Austin Peralta, who started touring internationally at 16. After that, I share a video of Peralta working in Mumbai with Bunny Brunel, and then his last performance. He died that night of an overdose aged 22.
Many thanks for your help and guidance, Hayden.
I will certainly follow it.
Hi Scott,
Thanks for sharing these links. I love the piece āAustinā by MW, but I wasnāt aware of the back-story about Austin Peralta - he was certainly an impressive playerā¦!!! What a sad lossā¦
I appreciate your earlier comment about my saxophone experience, but translating this to the piano will be a lot of work, but also lots of funā¦!! Itās good to have so many people in this community to share the experience with - Iām looking forward to the journeyā¦!!!
Cheers, Dave
Welcome Ivor,
We are all at various points in our music journey, and ironically that feeling that Iām not good enoughā¦ is a lifelong personal challenge
I am always fighting that. Learning to cherish my piano playing where it is NOWā¦ enjoy, savor this musical experience NOW.
Thanks, Lori. Thatās good advice.
Hi!
One year ago my new years resolution was to play the piano!
In my childhood my siblings had the opportunity to have piano lessons, but somehow I did not. I have always loved music an when someone plays it always gives me a magical feeling! And I must admit I envy people how does!
I remember in my 20ies i was convinced it was to late to start, i can laught at that now, and in the busy years with kids time just flew. All of my four kids have had the opportunity, and they all play. I just love to hear the work on their songs and fill the house with music.
I am 54 and finally made the decision, and realized that if i want to do it in this life I must start! I think it might have to do with the accessibility through the net and esp. youtube. I spent some time and followed some tutorials. This really gave me hope and lowered the threshold to start!
Looking through the stuff in youtube I think that the tutorials from Pianogroove stood out from the rest. You guys really do something very right! I took your advice to donĀ“t hop around on youtube, but concentrate on something. I also realized that commiting some minutes to playing gives so much more satisfaction compared to all the hours wasted surfing the web and watching TV or wathever. Compared to taking lessons The PianoGroove is both cheaper and more accessible for me.
I Joined this summer and work on the jazz piano basics. I keep the streak of practicing, and try to at least play for 10 min every day. But usually get a sitting of 30-60 min a day. Apart from playing the recorder in school i have no playing experience, so i really start from scratch. Sheet reading is a challenge , and so is time an rhythm! The chords and scales and inversions are overwhelming. I can feel god progress. I also of course feel frustration, but i manage to keep my motivation!
I have no problems understanding and following the theory, and i can learn the tunes and play them like a like a monkey from memory, but i feel its a long way to go to be able to combine those.
My goal is to be able to play a basic jazz standard repertoire from lead sheets and possibly jam.
My inspiration is the old masters like Bill Evans, Errol Garner, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington etc etc. but also Keith Jarret, Jan Johanson and Bugge Wesselftoft. I realy love the Nordic sound and listen a lot to things like Jan Lundgren and Tord Gustavsen.
So thank you guys!
Hi Gisle,
Welcome aboardā¦!!! Iām also new here (from 2 or 3 weeks) and Iām really enjoying this.
I also love the Nordic sound - great choices you mention Tord Gustavsen and Bugge Wesseltoft (I saw him live in concert some months back).
Greetings from the UKā¦!!
Dave
Welcome Gisle!
You are at the right place! All of it will start to meld over time. Just remember that it is a life time journey which can sometimes be frustrating, but for the most part provides more rewards than you could ever imagine.
Have fun!!!
Hi Gisle 
Welcome and thanks for sharing all of this.
Itās great that all of your kids play music. What a wonderful gift to give them!
Thatās great to hear that you have kept up a consistent practice routine and you are seeing progress.
I do recommend that students aim for at least an hour a day of practice. Using our PDF Practice Planners that will take you through 6 theory exercises and then 30 mins playing on jazz standards.
For working on your time and rhythm Iād recommend Steveās Chicago Blues Course:
Spend a little time each day, or every other day, following Steveās lessons and you will quickly develop a better sense of time and groove.
Thatās a very realistic goal Gisle.
Iād recommend spending the time to absorb the basics and work through our Beginner & Intermediate courses. That will equip you with the harmonic knowledge to play any jazz standard.
After that you might like the course I made on āHow To Play In A Jazz Bandā which outlines the different role we play as the pianist in a jazz jam setting:
Enjoy the lessons!
And a welcome from me as well, Gisle.
I had a bit of experience when I was younger, but then I had about 40 years of never touching an instrument. Iāve been with PianoGroove for over a year, and I can assure you that if you stick with it, you will definitely see progress. It may be frustrating at times, and the progress sometimes may not seem very muchābut it is there all the same. Most of all, relax and have fun with it. 
By the way, I recently discovered Jan Lundgren, and Iāve been listening to a lot of his work.
Welcome !!
@dave1 cool to have such experience with sax , coming into a polyphonic instrument as piano is so cool and exciting to play both . Hope hearing you on sax and piano soon 
@ivor welcome to this journey in learning piano . meditation is something i try to incorporate in my piano routine ā¦ spirit and music are never far from each other 
@gisle i am discovering the work of Jan Lundgren ā¦reallly interesting his work with european standards too.
Hello,
My name is Brian and pleased to be a new member of this community. I live in Auckland, New Zealand. Iām 71 years old
I am semi retired after being a qualified electrician since I started work. To keep active, I am a school bus driver working a 20 hour week.
I became interested in the piano at a very early age and started learning classical music at the age of 7, which I didnāt enjoy.
At the age of 10, I gave that up and started to learn contemporary music. I learned with a few teachers during my teen years, but over the years, I am self taught.
During my early years, I had a weekly job at an hotel where I played back ground music in the lounge. I can read music and also play from memory or by ear.
I have always wanted to have freedom of the keyboard and explore many avenues of music, but never achieved these goals. Music is my life.
Before I am too old, my dreams are to be able to sit at the piano and create my own music and to be able to play in a small restaurant or bar.
I have always had a passion for pianos and how they worked. During my early 40ās, I bought an old piano and learned how to restore it. I have also learned how to tune a piano. Many years ago, I had a small piano workshop where I used to buy old pianos and restore them to sell
Today, I have a Bluthner upright piano which I recently completely restored, its beautiful.
Besides the piano, I also love to play the pipe organ.
My aspirations are to learn Jazz, Blues and latin american style playing and be confident in all those areas of music
I hope to make friends and get support from this community. Any help is most welcome.
Hi Brian,
Welcome on board. Like a lot of us here, we began learning piano at a younger age and then for whatever reasons, there were patches (often years) that other events overtook our lives before returning once again to the keyboard.
Its a great community and lots to learn in different styles, and at your own pace
Enjoy the journey!
Paul
Welcome Brins,
With the talent you already have, Iām sure you will find what you need to really expand your repertoire and expression here in Pianogroove
Hi everyone! My name is Maria, Iām from Russia, currently based in China. I joined the community in September and Iāve learnt quite a lot since then. Iām a professional classic pianist with high education in this field. Iām an educator and a performer. Throughout my life I enjoyed playing classical music, however recently Iāve realised that my desire to play jazz is pretty intense too:). As you can imagine itās not easy to switch to another music language and for last 4 month Iāve been struggling to find right strategies for making good sound piano arrangements, improvising and etc.
My goal is to develop this skill and end up playing gigs even it seems as long-term goal.
Thank you Hayden for such a rich content here! And as a feedback about what Iād like to see here in the future will be more info about learning strategies!
All the best,
Maria
Hi Pierre,
Thank you for the welcome. Itās good to hear that you incorporate meditation in your piano routine.
I think music and meditation are intricately linked. Playing or listening to music can be a form of meditation in itself - especially if you are absorbed in it.
Hello eveyone!
My name is Jonathan Landon, and I just joined the community last night. Back n the 80s and 90s I was a professional musician here in the Los Angeles area (sang lead/background vocals and played a wide variety of keyboards - which I now own as VSTs while at the same time writing music for TV, films, and radio and playing live performances for a couple of decades).
My ex-wife and I started having kids back in 1988 (My oldest is going to turn 32 this year!!), and well the rest is probably a very common storyā¦I needed to get a day job in order to consistently pay for all of the expenses kids createā¦and here I am many years later STILL wanting to learn how to play jazz piano.
I have tried to learn jazz piano a few times over the years, but I was never able to apply the necessary practice time to āget itā. I am really hoping (and committed) that 2020 will be the year that this finally happens.
Well, I look forward to meeting many of you here in this community, and I wish you all blessings and great playing!
Jonathan
Hi @Brins, @mariya, and @jonathan1 
Welcome to the PianoGroove Community!
Here are some useful links and information to get you all off to a flying start 
All of the courses on PianoGroove can be found here on our course index page:
We recently launched syllabuses pages to add an extra layer of organisation to the growing lesson library. Our progress is saved onto our student dashboard and it is also reflected in the āCoursesā section of each syllabus page. Here is our syllabus index:
Our Theory Q&A section contains lots of common questions. It might be nice to browse through some of the threads:
In addition to watching the video tutorials, I recommend that students partake in the listening and transcription exercises which are designed to improve our improvisational skills. Spend a little time each day on transcribing and this is the most effective way to develop our improvisational abilities:
As a new jazz piano student a key goal is to build out a repertoire of tunes and standards . As we learn new theory, we use the standards as a vehicle to put the theory into practice. Here are all the jazz standard lessons grouped by genre, and by difficulty:
Finally, we have PDF practice plans available for the first 4 jazz courses. These 4 courses cover the bulk of beginner/intermediate jazz theory and once these courses have been completed you will be much more confident players. I recommend that students broadly split their practice time in half; the first covering theory drills, and then the second half playing through jazz standards. See our practice plan section here:
We should aim to spend a minimum of an hour a day practicing.
You will see that all the practice plans are 1 hour long. There are lots of additional tips and guidance in the practice plan threads so have a quick read through them.
I hope this helps and if you have any specific questions donāt hesitate to let us know.
Enjoy the lessons!
Hayden