How the Amazing Brain Works to Learn Piano: My Favorite Video Runs 7 Seconds

May 31, 2021 Leslie Young

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I’ve talked about that video countless times in conversations with parents and students on how to learn piano. I drew a slanting line and several dots “bouncing” down the line. This is what it looks like when a memory is retrieved! Ever felt like “it’s coming, it’s coming” when trying to remember something that is taking a while to make itself known? It feels like it’s coming closer and closer before the memory is finally revealed!

That bouncing dot is what a mouse brain looks like when retrieving a memory, and you can actually see it here. When I first saw that video, I wondered how in the world it was visually recorded! It’s just amazing – yes, that’s what it feels like when trying to remember something! That’s what it looks like for the brain to learn piano and form a memory!

Why is This Useful to Know?

Teaching how to play piano is teaching the relationship between the written language of notation and the corresponding physical piano keys. The stronger the learning, the stronger the memory and retention of the information. The stronger memory comes from a stronger recognized relationship between the written notation and the piano keys. The most effective teaching method would be the one that produces that strong relationship. What’s the most effective way for the brain to learn piano? What would that look like?

A Thinking Approach to the Best Piano Lessons

This approach I call a “cognitive thinking” approach – like thinking through the sounds made by letters and combining them into syllables and then words. In The Revolutionary Piano Method, this thinking process has the student using the space letters and their keys to identify and locate the line letters and their keys. The very first lesson has the student saying the letter name of a treble space while playing its key on the piano.

In the first book, the student sees the staff, reads the circled space (shaped like a whole note), and plays its key while SAYING the letter name. This procedure pushes all this information into long-term memory, allowing the brain to learn piano very quickly. Skipping over the saying of the letter names will not produce the desired results – which will be apparent when playing more notes of the staff. Take a look at a first lesson in this very short video.

So what are the best piano lessons? In my opinion, the lesson must be based on an overarching plan. The plan is to teach the association between a particular piano key and its particular representation on paper (the line or space of the staff). This is very similar to teaching reading words by the phonetic approach (learning the sound each letter makes), rather than teaching whole words – which is really just memorizing what a word looks like. The phonetic approach enables someone to read ANY book. This approach in the best piano lessons allows someone to, over some time, PLAY ANY written piano music – because the brain has been given what it needs in order to learn piano.

Instructional Design Creates the Best Piano Lessons

This process has a name: Instructional Design. It’s the process of learning any skill or knowledge based on a sequential process. A learner must acquire underlying skills or information, called prerequisites, before advancing to more difficult levels. A baby rolls around before crawling; he crawls before walking. If an individual starts the learning process without the necessary prerequisites, the expected learning, usually done through memorization, will not be sustained. Short-cuts, like using finger numbers to play certain keys, will not produce true note-reading ability – because the step of identifying the letter name of the space or line has been removed. There’s no thinking-process at work to learn piano.

The process of Instructional Design is to identify the end result and working backward, first identifying the prerequisites or underlying skills and information essential to acquiring the end product.

Before a person can learn complicated knowledge or intricate skills, all of the prerequisite information and foundation skills must be in place for the learning to be most effective. In fact, once each subsequent skill or knowledge is mastered, the subsequent level is guaranteed. – Dr. Jon I. Young, PhD

The Revolutionary Piano Method

As an educator, a piano teacher can find the successfully proven way to give piano lessons in the books of The Revolutionary Piano Method. There are five levels for the very young student aged four and five. There are five levels for six-year-olds through adults. Each student goes at his/her individual pace. When not skipping over procedural steps, the educational theory of this instructionally-designed method allows the teacher to put into action the best piano lessons for individual students to learn piano.

What Would the First Lesson for a Young Student Look Like?

What Would the First Lesson for a 6 to Teen Look Like (video)?