> I know you can come up really cool sounds music in Ableton within months. There are plugins which make sure you are always playing in key. That's fine. Musi

> I know you can come up really cool sounds music in Ableton within months. There are plugins which make sure you are always playing in key. That's fine. Music is music; do what you enjoy. I'm not saying you need to take piano lessons to enjoy music, or compose music. I'm saying you probably need to take piano lessons to (efficiently) learn to play the piano effectively. > Even kids can tell if something is 'going up/staying the same/going down'. Actually that's not as easy for kids as you'd think. Anyway, what you're talking about here is ear training (melody playback, specifically), and that's already integrated into every classical music program. I was talking about trying to play a complete, two-hand, Adele piece on the piano by reading sheet music. At that point you'd definitely have to know a bunch of music theory already. > Let them come up with their own 'system'. Don't ruin their natural curiosity of discovery by telling them note names and stuff. Sure. And for consistency, forget about BEDMAS; let's give kids the axioms of ZFC set theory and get them to just work their way on up to arithmetic on their own. (Also, parents, don't forget to pay $50 an hour, every hour, while your kid tries to discover the concept of a square root on their own.) I'm kidding. But look, music teachers already try to push students towards as much discovery, creativity, expressivity, and musicality as the students can muster. Pop songs aren't a panacea for the motivation problem. > Countless people have learnt just by playing by ear. Like I said above, I didn't mean stumbling through a chopsticks or kumbaya melody by ear; I meant transcribing a full Adele song. Or anything you would reasonably hear on the radio or see in a movie. Playing around, composing, improvising, etc. while simultaneously taking music lessons (or at least studying from a book) is great. Fantastic. I recommend that to everyone. But if your goal is to learn how to play the piano and you're trying to do it with no music theory or classical education whatsoever, you... just won't make efficient progress. I don't know how else to put it. You'll learn something, sure, but you'd learn it faster with the teacher and the teaching system.