Free stuff! We love it! I’m something of a serial bargain hunter myself, but some things are just not a good idea to get for free: tattoos, candy from strangers and… learning piano.

YouTube is a world of information, all free and all there for the taking.

It’s great for things like learning how to fold a fitted sheet, how to cook a lasagne or how to do a fab makeup contour. For a skill or anything that takes the time to learn, however, it gets tricky. You end up spending more time trying to find out which path to go down, or which topic you should learn next, than learning. It’s free, it’s abundant, but most of what you can piece together lacks direction and structure.

There are a lot of different paths, but you need what’s right for you.

If you find a teacher that understands your direction, they can put you on that path so that you don’t waste time with irrelevant information. A good teacher will provide the right resources at the right time to guide you toward what it is you want to achieve. A clear learning path is sadly lacking from the vast majority of free online material because it is either designed poorly or designed to be incomplete–leading you into a subscription plan for self-serve, randomised content.

If you spend the money, your will follows soon after.

When you get something for free you don’t value it. More often than not, if you find yourself a completely free method of learning piano or spend the time finding free videos on YT, will you take it to the end? Of course not. If you get halfway through and decide to give up because it’s more challenging than you thought, you haven’t spent any money so what’s the harm in quitting? When you pay for something you are more likely to follow through, no one likes to throw away money!

A tutor who charges for their services is saying “Hey, my experience and advice is worth something”.

This is why I work on my piano course full-time. All my time and effort goes into putting Piano Picnic together and making it completely effective and a worthwhile investment of your time. A free tattoo is not a great idea, like free surgery or free bungee jumping… you just don’t go there! The fact that it is free leads you to question the legitimacy of the service. The same principle applies to spending your precious time on a piano learning method, you get what you pay for.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a complete YouTube addict.

I use it for all sorts of things – scouring for new pianists to listen to, seeing which new metal song the pianist VK Goes Wild has decided to cover (love her!), I even have my own Piano Picnic channel. But I’m very careful to only put advice or discussion-led videos up and not actual piano lessons because the noise of 82 million other videos vying for your attention isn't a conducive learning environment.

Don’t become a statistic. Too many new pianists give up before they’ve really seen any reward for their efforts. It’s difficult to pick up any new skill! Much time and effort must be invested before you start to make real progress.

The three main reasons that students give up learning piano are a lack of motivation, lack of support and lack of structure. If you really want to learn the piano you shouldn’t risk learning from a source that isn’t tailored to these needs – you need support, encouragement and a clear learning path so there's no need to despair when you face a challenge.