Reddit mentions of Just Standards Real Book: C Edition (Just Real Books Series)

I'll tell you a little about how I approached it, including things I think went poorly and well. Hopefully it will be helpful as general advise on learning any skill (I spend a lot of time learning new skills, you could say it's a hobby). As a child (early teens) I wanted to learn an instrument (mostly as friends were) so I went for the piano. I took 1 hour weekly classes for about 4 months, but more than that I spent a lot of time practising, or rather what I'd call practising for about another 2 months (6 in total).

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What I was really doing was learning the mechanics of playing a range of songs and putting those into my muscle memory. I developed a repertoire and could play most of the songs in triple time. The problem was that I didn't have the inclination to study theory or practise scales: "too boring". This is effectively why I stopped, my ability to read music was relatively weak and my understanding of music wasn't great either. I learned a mechanical skill.

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So what did I do wrong? I learned play the things that would sound the most impressive as quickly as possible. It would impress my parents, friends and non-piano players everywhere. The problem was that I became good at one thing (learning to mechanically play a piece of music) and spent my time practising that one thing. So lesson 1: practising things you are already good at is a waste of time; unfortunately a lot of youtube videos "teaching you piano" are focused on this type of thing: how to play song X! The easy way!

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Fast forward 10 years and I'm in college. A room mate leaves and can't be bother to transport his cheap keyboard with him. I play a few things I played before and find it enjoyable so I pick up a cheap book on playing the piano (which it turns out was not very good). I spend a little more time on basics but got a point in the book covering some theory that I don't really progress past it. This represented about another 6 months. So what went wrong this time? The main problem here was that I didn't spend the time to critically analyze the resource I was using. So lesson 2: Really decide if you are using the correct resources to learn.

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Fast forward 10 more years. I decide I want to give the piano another try. I buy a digital piano (one that basically only makes piano sounds and no auto accompaniment and the like) with the intention of learning to play the piano. I spend several months learning music theory without really playing anything: https://www.musictheory.net/ . I made sure I understood what underpinned a lot of the music I hear. I also started ear training, in particular what is known as "functional ear training" where you learn to identify the musical function of a note in the context of a scale (rather than learning to hear an interval); there is an app you can get to do this now: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android . Ear training is very handy in jazz and improvisation in general.

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I developed an intellectual understanding of how scales and chords were constructed then I started practising scales and chords (diatonics). I'd play a certain tonality (e.g Major) in each key and then play all the diatonics on that scale in all inversions. If you go this route, I'd recommend a way to randomly select the key/tonality or you will always practise your "favourite" aka the one you find easiest.

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Once I was fairly comfortable doing this I started trying to play music. I bought a book of lead sheets: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Standards-Real-Book-Books/dp/073903944X . Initially I would play only the melody to get used to it, then I'd play the chords only as triads, then 7ths, then eventually adding the full extended chords they indicated. (It took about 6 months to be reasonably competent at playing most of the lead sheets by sight on 7ths chords).

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At this point I had enough musical vocabulary to really start improvising. I'd either play a chord sequence from the circle of fifths, or a jazz standard and improvise a melody over it. The background I'd worked on (at this point 1.5 years spread over 20 years) was enough to make this fairly natural for me. At this point, for the first time, I felt like I could "actually" play the piano.

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At this point I started watching a few videos online. I quite like the tutorial videos on: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClw8Huc_XZcz46GJh5Z0wuA/ (a lot of the new videos are very strange). He focuses a lot on improvisational basics like 12 bar blues which I found very helpful. I also quite liked some of the tutorials from: https://www.youtube.com/user/pianoologist more focused on how to approach a piano; how to sit, how to press the keys etc. Between those two I think I gained a better framework around how to sit at and play a piano, and approaches to improvisation and chord creation/extension. Be aware that video watching is no substitute for practise, and practising should be challenging; if it always sounds great you are probably working on skills you already have: push yourself.

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Fast forward 5 years to today. For the last 3 years I've been interested more in music production and synthesizers, but I have my digital piano in my living room and often sit down to improvise (jazz or otherwise) or play something from my "fake book". I also try and jam on occasion with work colleagues or friends (jamming is great for building improvisational and ear training skills).

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What I hope you get from this story is that you can learn to play at any age. A teacher can be very helpful at any stage in your music playing career if they are good at what they do. They can identify the things you are weakest at and push you to work on them. You can learn by self study but to do this you need to be honest with yourself. You need to be honest about what you do well and what you do badly and work on the things you do badly. There are a huge number of resources out there for you but be a little critical when looking at each one to ensure you get good information. Also try and avoid getting caught up in the desire to sound good from day 1.

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So anyway, I realise I've just written an essay here so I'll stop; I hope someone gets something out of this post. Good luck!