Day 48 of playing piano every day for a year: Adult Beginner Progress Update (with Stats)
Hey All! It's been about 3 weeks since my last update (Day 26) on playing piano every day for a year.
TL;DR: Still going strong and I seem to be getting better. I love it. It's hard but extremely rewarding.
Processing img zzzpy2ryfn4g1...
I'm a big data nerd and I wanted to track every piece (pun intended) of my journey and be able to have a more transparent assessment of how much progress a complete beginner can reasonably make over a year.
My current routine is as follows:
- Try to sight read 1 new short piece every day and play it at tempo with metronome and sheet and post to my youtube and tiktok
- I used to do a lot of scale & technique exercise early on but it might have been too soon and I thought I'd focus on sight-reading until I get to "decent" level.
- 1h weekly lesson - started last week
- I’m a software engineer so, naturally, I spend some (a lot) time over-engineering a personal software to track my progress and improve.
Processing img fhvrq56kfn4g1...
Some notes in no particular order:
- On average holding up strong at 62m/d practice!!
- I can now read (really) short Grade 1 (level 1-3 on PM) comfortably and play it at tempo in about an hour
- My SASR (Piano Marvel Sight Reading Test) score went from 173 (Below Early Beginner) to 362 (Late Beginner)! It does feel like it plateaued this last week though.
- I still mostly recognize chords through reading patterns but I wouldn’t be able to play them from name.
- Contrary to what I read here I found the skill of reading on digital sheet translates fine to reading actual physical paper
- I thought I could play major scales with both hands but my teacher challenged me to play at a different signature on 2 octaves and I was completely lost.
- I find the lesson to be a great/necessary complement to what you can possibly learn on your own - hand positioning, posture & learning strategy.
Processing img d6uhdzxrfn4g1...
I had a few questions for people here:
- My current French piano teacher is teaching me using Solfège. However, I'm mostly seeing alphabetical system and I'd love maybe one day sit the ABRSM - Could that be an issue? I do get confused and had to constantly translate from one system to the other on the fly during the lesson.
- I'd love any feedback or insight on what what you think I should focus on or I should do. Either on the current strategy or my positions and fingers.
Cheers!
P.S: This is FULLY written by me (a human). If it sounds robotic or overly structured, I'm sorry, I fully blame my 10 years experience of writing technical specs for my job.
Posted Dec 1, 2025, 8:19 PM UTC