Music and learning to play a musical instrument is all about your personal interest and love for instruments. It truly depends upon which type of music and which instrument you like to play or hear to in particular. There is no assurance that you can succeed at learning to play any instrument whether it’s a piano or guitar or some other instrument, but here we will offer certain aspects of learning both piano and guitar so you will be able to make out which one would be a better choice for learning for you. Learning to play piano is easier than learning guitar or not is a difficult debate but here are some points that conclude that piano is a much simpler instrument for beginners in comparison to guitar. But remember that musical instruments and training would work only on the basis of your skills and interests.
Comparison between Piano and Guitar Learning!
When we talk in technical terms, piano is relatively easier to learn as an instrument. You may have seen many kids going to piano classes, taking lessons at home and may be playing very well even at a young age. Kids who begin learning piano a really young age have shown quick improvements and surprisingly have learned techniques faster than other grownups. Kids find it difficult to play guitar at a very young age. Some reasons to this ease with piano and difficulty with guitar include:
Pressing piano keys produce sound!
With piano, they only need to press some keys and they will be able to produce music.
Whereas when we take guitar in to consideration for a beginner especially kid, you would have to pick up a string and press a string down using another finger. This means that you will be doing two to three things together at one time that makes guitar a little complex than playing piano.
Repeated pattern of notes with piano!
Piano has a pattern of notes that is repeated throughout the instrument with the aid of different keys. For beginners, it is made much easier as your piano teacher would teach you one set of keys at first whether it’s white keys or black keys. You would be given time to master over one set of keys first before moving on to another set of keys. The pattern of keys and notes is simpler to understand and are easier to practice with a music sheet in front of you. All the lessons and songs that are taught in the beginning are based on patterns and thus are easy to identify with piano.
On the other hand, patterns with guitars are more complex. Each string of your instrument has a varied notes pattern and thus for a beginner it is often difficult to identify which string should be used with varied pitch.
Guitar needs tuning every time before use!
A piano needs to be tuned at regular intervals approximately once in two months. More or less frequent tuning may be needed depending upon use and condition of your piano.
Whereas a guitar needs to be tuned every time before playing. Thus learners would need to learn how to tune a guitar quickly so that every time before they begin their practice or lessons; they can tune their guitars quickly.
Piano beginners can do well with less coordination of both hands!
Piano lessons in the beginning are less complicated than a guitar lessons. A beginner can do well with one hand if both hands lack co-ordination in the beginning (which is common for beginners). However as you develop and grow as a pianist and in your process of becoming expert, you will be able to develop the skill of using both hands for playing different notes and chords over piano. Learning becomes complicated at a later stage and then you may witness your learning curve to slow down with piano.
Guitar learners on the other hand would need coordination between their hands and fingers in order to pluck and fret strings for sound production and dampening. As you work hard in the beginning to gain coordination, you will learn other difficult songs and chords at a later stage much quicker than piano students at their advance level.
Learning of Musical Theory:
Piano teachers often are more concerned about teaching their students musical theory first so that they understand music well and are able to read it for their lessons and practice sessions. Piano students usually are given good base of formal learning of musical theory.
Guitar teachers usually begin with first few lessons of a beginner’s book to teaching guitar and then later teach their students playing by ear and examples. However when we talk about classical guitar, there is much of theory included and students are even required to pass an exam based on that theory.
Conclusion:
In the end, we can’t really say that whether learning to play piano is easier than a guitar and you can truly become successful as you prefer one instrument over other. Piano is comparatively simple in the beginning and gives you gratifying experience even in first few lessons. It gives you an opportunity to have a good hand over musical theory that could become basis for learning other instruments quickly in future. But overall it is all about your preference, interest and skills. Each individual student may have different learning abilities and thus choosing to learn a piano or guitar should truly depend upon what that student wish to learn and is capable of learning too. Whichever instrument you opt for, it is important that you enjoy learning music over that instrument which is the key to becoming a successful pianist or guitarist.
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