Are you looking for the best YouTube channel to learn piano for beginners?
Live from Abbey Road Studios, Robert Emery gives a free online piano lesson on his 9ft Steinway Concert Grand Piano. Covering all the basics, from learning major and minor chords, how to play scales, the name of all the notes on a piano, which fingers to use, and the difference between a triad and a chord.
You can find some of the best piano lessons on YouTube. These piano tutorials are an excellent resource to piano piano online, but it’s not the only place on the net…
One of the most significant advantages of learning the piano is the availability of technologies to help you learn. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of piano practice apps, piano learning software and online piano lessons. Most can provide everything you need to get started and to grow as a player.
So, where can you find the best Youtube piano lessons? Here are some of our recommendations:
youtube channels
We might be biased a little here, but our Ted’s List YouTube Channel and website is growing by the day. And the most important thing is that brilliant, world-class professional musicians write ALL the content – they are professional instrumentalists who earn a living from their chosen instrument. This way, you know that any advice they offer isn’t scraped from another website or learned from Wikipedia – it’s honest advice that is proven and tested.
We are slowly but surely developing our YouTube Piano Tutorials channel to help people play piano online, learn music theory, help them read sheet music, and advise how to go about getting formal lessons.
Most of our content is filmed at the world-famous Abbey Road Studios, so once again, you know that whatever tutorials, tips and tricks are shown, you can trust in the teaching.
We don’t offer a paid online course – instead, all our content is free to use. These are the best free piano lessons on Youtube! Is it a replacement for private lessons? No. Absolutely not. But it’s a good starting point to playing piano.
Aside from Ted’s List Youtube Channel, this is also one of the best Youtube channels to learn piano.
Creative Piano Academy has over 100 video lessons, starting with vids for beginners and then heading into intermediate videos. They are organized into playlists with names like ‘Left Hand Piano – Videos to Improve Your Left Hand’ and ‘New Here? Check These Out First’.
With overhead keyboard views, displayed staff, and highlighted keys – just like in many paid online courses – this channel offers one of the best youtube piano lessons for beginners. The presenter has a precise, fun way of teaching, and the feedback is very positive.
In addition to the lessons, they have created free guides to playing piano to go along with some of the classes. Examples are a rhythm exercise sheet and a beginner finger exercise sheet. Creative Piano Academy also offers paid courses to play piano with more structured lessons.
But be careful, although I think it’s an excellent channel for more ‘traditional learning’ – reading music is not a focus of the Creative Piano Academy, nor is music theory. They concentrate more on how to play popular new songs and different piano concepts. For me, this is a bit of an issue and something to be wary of.
Piano Lessons on the Web is a great channel for beginner pianists. Helpful strategies and exercises are given, as well as pieces and, I’m pleased to say, music theory.
The piano tutorials are taught by the presenter, Tim, who does a great job explaining concepts in an easy-to-follow manner.
This channel is extensive, with hundreds of videos covering everything from rhythms, chord progressions, improvisation, sight reading, technical aspects like scales and arpeggios, and ear training.
Unlike Creative Piano Academy, the lessons focus heavily on theory, reading music, and piano playing technique. They won’t get you playing like a pro within the first few videos, but the channel does deliver a solid foundation in theory that will help in the longer term.
If you’re a fan of classical music or want to figure out how to read music, this channel is an excellent place to start.
The Hoffmann Academy YouTube channel is also excellent.
You’ll learn to play piano with a super fun, step-by-step method from pianist and educator Joseph Hoffman.
His video lessons guide you through each new song and concept. Designed for beginners with no prior experience, the lessons quickly enable you to play songs you’ll enjoy, starting with the very first lesson.
Piano instructor Joseph Hoffman is adept at making even the most tricky concepts simple, memorable, and fun.
Each lesson is between 5 and 15 minutes—easy to fit into any schedule, and the ideal length for keeping attention and focus high.
Piano Lessons Website
Ted’s List is a music tuition site like no other. We do not provide private piano lessons. We don’t specifically teach music students piano playing. And we don’t have paid piano classes. So what do we do?!
We are like a hybrid site, brimming with advice, tips, tricks and tutorials to help every true beginner get started on their instrument.
When you have decided that you’d like to become a piano player, we can help you from day one.
If you’re looking for your very first instrument to buy, we have many articles on that – including this great article called ‘Digital Piano Buyer’s Guide’. Or perhaps you’re looking to buy a real acoustic instrument, in which case read our ‘Best 11 Acoustic Pianos For Beginners’ guide.
Once you have purchased your instrument, you’ll need to figure out how to learn music theory and how to learn the piano. There are many different options for this, but I’d recommend reading our ‘Beginners’ Guide To Learning The Piano‘. It should help you kickstart your education with great free tutorials, including learning to read sheet music.
Once you’ve done all of this, you’ll know the basics, have a great instrument and be on your way to improving your skill levels. At this point, you’ll probably want to start private piano lessons.
You can check back again with Ted’s List every so often, reading valuable articles like ‘perfect piano posture’ or ‘how tall should a piano bench be. But predominantly, this is where your private teacher will take over.
As you can see, Ted’s List is a fantastic free resource for any musician and can help enormously right from the very start.
If you are looking for a more standard online platform, then MusicGurus is brilliant.
MusicGurus is an online platform that provides music education from first-class, passionate musicians worldwide.
They have courses for all instruments covering all styles and levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced). With instructions from professionals, the lessons on MusicGurus have been carefully crafted. Much attention to detail has gone into making each class, ensuring that anyone can use them.
If, for example, you want to learn to play the piano, and you choose a beginner piano tutorials course, you can be sure that nothing will be too difficult to grasp. If you’re looking to concentrate on music theory or how to improve your sight reading, they’ll have classes for that too.
The lessons are well-structured and contain very high-quality videos. This quality ensures that you don’t miss a thing, especially during the demonstrations. You’ll learn piano covers, popular songs, all whilst learning new piano concepts.
You can try any of the courses for free, and if you like what you see, you can commit by paying a fee.
Overall, it’s a great paid option and one that I’m thrilled to recommend.
MasterClass is a fantastic website coving many different hobbies and skills. The MasterClass that interests me here is the one by jazz legend, Herbie Hancock. His MasterClass is a lengthy but comprehensive course that consists of:
- Twenty-five classes that are between 5-15 minutes long. (around 4 hours and 23 minutes in total)
- An immense 164-page workbook, full of transcriptions, lessons, and assignments
Herbie Hancock is the most likeable teacher I’ve ever seen online. He is a joy to learn from, and as well as being a great storyteller, I found his personality encouraging throughout.
The production level is exceptional. The cinematography is a work of art by itself. The music studio and $300,000 Fazioli piano makes me wish I was there – and aside from the Ted’s List videos shot at Abbey Road Studios, it’s not something that you see every day on YouTube.
It’s not every day you get the opportunity to learn from someone who’s been at the top of the world for the last 60 years. And if you’ve only just started learning piano or have been a pro jazz musician for years, the ideas and concepts here are helpful for everyone.
But this MasterClass has drawbacks. For those wanting an in-depth technical lesson about jazz, you won’t find it here. So although I love the course and could recommend it, it is a ‘bonus add-on’ to private one-to-one lessons – not a replacement
Free Piano Apps
Flowkey is a multi-platform piano learning app that is geared towards beginners. It features songs from classical and jazz through to pop and rock.
Aimed at pianists who are not yet great at reading sheet music, Flowkey is a great way to learn. With a simplistic and intuitive user interface, it’s a great app to use.
At $120 for a 12-month subscription, it’s reasonably competitive on price.
Is there a downside? Well, I think it works best purely as a starting tool or as an addition to your private teacher. Anything other than that, and you’ll probably want to look at alternatives…
Skoove is very confident in its ability. It claims to be “the easiest way to learn piano”. And that’s no straightforward statement to make!
The web-based app uses popular music to teach the skills needed to play the piano. You’ll reasonably quickly learn all about chords and reading music as this app is very much geared towards popular and not classical.
Providing an excellent foundation for piano playing, Skoove does a fantastic job of introducing the fundamental concepts methodically and slowly.
Skoove Premium is priced at $119.99/£99.99 for a 12-month subscription.
The downside is that I feel it works best for people who want to play pop. If you’re looking for a more classical style, look elsewhere…a
Created in 2011, Playground Sessions is one of the most famous piano learning platforms online. Their claim to fame? They have Quincy Jones and Harry Connick, JR as their two principal teachers!
With membership around $10 per month, it’s a premium platform compared to something like Udemy – but I think it’s worth it.
Best Beginner Digital Piano
DP-10X Digital
Piano by Gear4music
Amazing Upright Digital Piano
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Keyboard: 88 keys with hammer action keys
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Pedals: 3 build-in pedals
- Easily record yourself, using USB and internal memory
- Become a better player, with the metronome and Learn Mode
- 24 diverse sounds
- 2-year warranty & 30-day money-back guarantee
If you’re looking to buy your first instrument, then this digital piano is absolutely perfect. Although it’s one of the cheapest instruments on the market, the build quality and sounds are still great and easily match a much more expensive instrument.
You can find a list of 24, amazing, 88-key digital pianos here.
- Amazing value for money
- Fantastic touch and feel
- In its price range, it’s the best instrument available
- The only one I can think of is that the manufacturer isn’t a ‘famous household name’ like Yamaha or Roland. But unless the branding is the most important thing, it shouldn't put you off!
Best Place For Sheet Music
There is only one place to go on the internet to buy sheet music, and that’s Sheet Music Direct. They offer a huge library of more than 1.1 million accurate, affordable, and artist-approved arrangements for 35 different instruments. There is no-where else on the web that I’d go to buy and download sheet music.
Best YouTube channel to learn piano for beginners
Summary
Although you may have come to this article intending solely to use YouTube piano tutorials as your learning platform, hopefully you’ve realised there is more out there. And a bit like dating, nothing is ‘set in stone’ – so give a few things a try until you find the ‘one for you’!
Leave your comment below on what option you’ve chosen. Good luck…
As a person who exclusively watches YouTube, this helps a bunch! Thanks for the article!
That’s great to learn Sean. Good luck!