Hey r/piano \- long time lurker, first time poster.

I started a 365-day challenge to learn piano after spending months trying to play pieces way over my level with Synthesia's falling-notes.

**The wake-up call:** I had my first formal lesson a few weeks ago and my teacher said I'd made less progress in months than someone would in a week with proper basics.

I've decided to commit the next 365 days to learning the piano and start from the absolute basics (scales, arpeggios & sight-reading). I'm a software engineer so I'm treating this like a training protocol: Piano Marvel courses & SASR (Standard Assessment Sight Reading Test), daily practice tracking, and building custom software to quantify progress.

Here's what my first 26 days/19h of practice looked like:

**Day 1-6 \[0h\]:** Didn't have a piano on hand (traveling) so downloaded a few mobile apps to learn sight-reading. Although I felt like I was learning, nothing beats actual piano practice. I learned more in the first 30m with a keyboard than doing 3h of sight-reading games on the apps. In hindsight, complete waste and I'd recommend getting a keyboard ASAP if you're serious about learning.

**Day 6-20 \[10h - 42m/d\]:** Went through the method and technique courses one by one on Piano Marvel while doing daily SASR tests. For the first few days, I was flying through the courses and my SASR went from 173 (Absolute Beginner) to 313 (Beginner) and I felt like a piano prodigy. But soon, I started having a harder and harder time finishing courses with passing grades and SASR was dead stuck on 300. I reached Level 3 in the methods and techniques and decided to stop tests and courses and focus on the basics.

**Day 20-26 \[9h - 1h30/d\]:** Picked up the Sight-Reading Samurai, Scale Ninja and Arpeggio Ninja Digital books - all beginner courses - and started hammering them every day. The first scales and arpeggios finger positions felt completely impractical and unintuitive. It took me about 2-3h of repetitive work to play the C-scale with both hands at horrendously slow tempo. Fortunately, the scales get exponentially easier as you go through them and I was able to go through all the Major Scales in the following 3h - still at slow tempo and taking a few seconds to think about fingers but, overall, solid start. Exact same experience with Arpeggios - impractical at first but became rapidly intuitive and redundant. I'm still going through the initial chapters of the sight-reading courses and I'm yet to be truly challenged as there are a LOT of pieces to go through. I'm also dedicating 30 minutes a day to play a piece and share it publicly (today's one actually took me about an hour thirty of practice).

**Here's my 2 cents as a Complete Beginner - please take this with a grain of salt as I know absolutely nothing!**

**I'm starting to get why Scales & Arpeggios are critical**

* My fingers flow way more naturally throughout the keys and I feel considerably less stiffness
* I don't need to read every finger indication - usually if you read the first one, the others automatically fall in place
* I've started to see certain patterns in pieces - C scale in River Flows in You - which basically saves you
* I read somewhere here that skipping them is like learning poems in a foreign language - you're parroting sounds, not understanding music. Incredibly apt analogy.

**Playing at tempo in low speed > Playing in Practice mode**

Even though it seems simpler to play at random speed to get used to notes, it seems like putting a melody around the notes acts as a lubricant on the prefrontal cortex and just makes things stick faster in my short term memory. Even excruciatingly slow is better than nothing.

**How you learn is just as important as what you learn**

I realize the biggest advantage of my neuro "static" adult brain - vs the super neuroplastic brain of a child - is threefold: Metacognition (how & why to learn), Discipline & Strategic learning. I wear a Whoop band that gives me fascinating insights about my training, recovery and more importantly my sleep. I noticed a direct correlation between the hours and quality of sleep I'm getting vs the progress I'm able to make in a session. I've also noticed a net improvement with a quick HIIT workout before my morning piano session.

**Here's my protocol as of now that I'm more or less following:**

06:00: Wake up

06:30 - 07:00: Quick Cardio Workout

07:30 - 09:00: 1h30 piano session

09:00 - 17:00: Work - 2nd workout after lunch if I have time

18:00 - 19:30: Reading about music theory and building practice software

I'm also seeing a teacher once a week and might ramp up to twice a week if it makes sense down the line.

Overall, I'm really excited about the progress I've made so far and I'm having a lot of fun learning everything from scratch and **actually** learning to read and hear music.

**Here's my Day 26 progress -** playing the easy version of River Flows in You (lots of stumbles, still learning!)

**Questions for the community:**

* What do you wish you'd known at week 3 of piano progress?
* I'm looking for a bedtime book to read before going to sleep - not a textbook but more about the theory or history of piano maybe?

Any feedback or suggestions on literally anything is absolutely welcome!!

365-Day Piano Challenge: Adult Learning From Scratch (Day 26 Update)