There are really two ways to go about learning the piano. One is the old fashioned way where you sit and study how to read music, understand theory behind reading music, practicing scales and playing the music that you are reading on the sheet of paper. This is the traditional way of learning and can be a daunting task as the very least.
However the traditional way of learning really does only one thing. It teaches the piano player how to play pieces of piano music written by long dead composers. This however doesn’t really teach you how to be a creative individual with your piano playing!
Did you know that many piano players who learn the old fashioned way are playing piano by going through the motions? What do I mean by going through the motions? Well they are reading off the sheet music and playing their piano with precision of a robot in a factory. Its taking a pencil and connecting the dots to draw a picture, rather than and artist using creativity to illustrate the image in his head.
Now there is nothing wrong with this way of learning, nor is there anything wrong with that type of playing. If you are happy playing timeless classics on the piano from reading sheet music, without worrying about creating your own music or improvisation, than the traditional way is for you.
However, if you want to be a creative player on the piano, writing your own songs or spicing up pieces already written, you are going to have to learn a more modern way. Such as learning chords and playing by ear as well as learning to read music. But reading music is not even entirely necessary! The important thing is learning how to play music, so that you can practice playing music and creating right away.
This is why I advocate piano training software instead of traditional lessons. With piano training software, one can get up to speed on the basics of actually playing the piano rather than doing the timeless reading music exercises. Besides using piano training software allows you to start playing songs form the very beginning without having to learn boring scales or reading sheet music.
This way of learning allows you to have fun and you most likely wont even realize you are learning something. As time progresses and you learn to play the piano, as well as by ear and improvise, you can learn to read music too. You don’t need to start out with the old fashion difficult way which takes months to master before you are playing songs.
So its really up to you and how you want to learn, the difficult old fashioned way that feels like a choir or the fun refreshing newer way playing songs immediately. It’s your choice.