Piano For All Review: From an Actual Student Point of View

Since I remember myself, I always loved and appreciated the sound of the piano. About 7 years ago, I decided that it’s time, and I want to be able to play the songs that I love out of my own hands on the piano. After some research on the internet, I decided to purchase an online course called Piano For All, which I saw that had at the time over 10,000 user reviews, most of them raved about it.

Today, it is time to sit down and write my own Piano for All review – on what I definitely believe is the easiest approach out there to learning piano – and I’ll now share with you why, and also what I didn’t like about the course as well.

I’ll jump to the bottom line, and then I’ll break it down for you. Today I am playing piano and keyboard professionally in two bands, and even though I have a successful blog about guitar and I LOVE guitar, I can tell you that I love the piano even more and play it even more.

A LOT of that is thanks to the course – which made the beginning so inviting and motivating – since almost immediately I was able to start playing my own favorites.

Why I got the course out of all the courses that were out there? (besides that it had the most reviews) There were two selling points that got me. The first one was that the method is meant for people who want to play songs – and not classical music – unlike the traditional way in which many teachers are trying to teach piano.

The other one was that the course is simple and will use chords instead of music sheets – which I later realized how much of a genius choice it is when approaching the piano with the goal of playing modern songs and not classical music. I liked this because I have already been playing for a few years guitar at the time and I was familiar with chords.

If You Prefer Watching the Review in the Video Version Instead of Text – Here It Is: (ALSO, at the bottom of this text review here you can see video examples of how I play after taking the course)

The Big Difference Between the Piano for All Course vs. Traditional Piano Teaching Methods

The course is structured in a way that makes a lot of sense – instead of starting out with boring sheet music and songs like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Robin. the teacher, jumps straight to teaching you how chords are built and how you can play any chord on the piano. Then, you start learning piano rhythms for famous pop and rock songs. (mostly oldies like Stand By Me, Let’s Twist Again, etc.) The cool thing is that using this information you can literally play thousands of songs.

These rhythm patterns that you learn can work for most of the songs you know, and you get the ability to go to any chord website, (like UltimateGuitar for example. And yes, it says “guitar” but these chords are the same for piano as well…) open up your favorite songs, and just play along and sound just like how a pro would sound when asked to accompany this song.

While all you really need to play the song BEAUTIFULLY and just like Paul McCartney plays it himself looks like this: (It’s actually a very simple song!)

So do you see where the problem lies with the traditional, outdated and popular ways of teaching piano?

“Give someone a fish and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”

This is the perfect analogy about learning classical piano pieces (or popular songs) through note sheets (which will give you just one fish by teaching you the song note for note) vs. learning some chords and some strumming patterns. (thousands of songs have now opened for you to play in the style that YOU choose, and you can have fun for a lifetime)

Here’s Paul McCartney (with Billy Joel!) Shows the Exact “Ballad” Playing Style That You’ll Learn In the First Part of the Course, and Works for MANY Popular Songs, Not Just Let It Be:

How the Piano for All Course is Built

After this first part, the “simplifying” methods continue and you’ll also learn a lot more rhythms and styles, from rock n’ roll, into blues, swing, funk, and later when you’re ready, even into jazz – which is the lessons I am now coming back to. (seven years after starting the course! Which goes to show how much I still prefer Robin’s simple style of teaching – that works, even with all the knowledge out there on YouTube) Later, he even addresses classical music in the same “simplifying way” – if that’s what you were into.

Before each lesson, there is a PDF section (or you can print those sections as a whole book instead if you like) of 2-3 pages that gets you ready for the lesson by first reading about it and seeing some chords and notes, and only then the video lesson itself starts. Personally, I found that this method really helped me ingrain the material and understand it a lot more deeply than just watching a plain video lesson.

Piano for All Review – The Bottom Line – What I Love About It:

• As I already mentioned, I don’t think there’s a better way to learn piano than using the chords method, which is meant for playing modern songs (MUCH better than the classical way.) and especially in the way it is done in the course. Very well done and very well served.
• The material is presented in easy-to-grasp ways, including a lot of memory shortcuts and stuff the makes everything a lot more easy to ingrain.
• Within a few days, I was already able to start playing my own favorite songs. That’s what kept me motivated to push through while learning in the first phases. The course is literally tailored for everyone’s own musical taste. It focuses on giving you tools to use on your own music. It’s not about how to play specific tunes that the teacher like. (like many other courses are, sadly)
• The method of the course will build a very solid musical foundation in your mind – so you’ll not just be able to play but you’ll also get all the music theory essentials you’ll need in order to understand what you’re playing – and also to expand to where YOU want to take your playing style – blues, funk, jazz, classical, etc.

• The price is very reasonable: at the time of writing this, you can still get the course for 39$ which is about what you’ll pay for only one hour with a piano teacher. Here you get 200 lessons that you will be able to go through for a very long time. I still think it’s unbelievable that I play piano professionally now and I got most of my piano education in the first years for a 39$ course. The perks of the 21st century.
• Very easy to watch on a tablet as well.
• The course is built in a very comfortable way – where before each video lesson you get a 2-3 pages PDF mini-book where you can read about what the lesson is about, see the chord/note sheets, etc. This made it very easy for me to ingrain and retain the material.
• Robin is an excellent pianist with a great groove, his playing style is very pleasant to the ears and his examples clearly sparked a lot of inspiration inside of me. Also, he always answered all of my questions through email within less than a day and with a very friendly approach, which is very cool especially considering that he has over a hundred thousand students on his course.
• There are 9 sections for different styles (ballad, rock, blues, jazz, classical) and the span of the course is very wide. (see the structure pic in the above paragraph) 7 years after I started the course, as a professional pianist, I still go back occasionally to the course to watch a jazz or advanced blues lesson – because it is all so simple and the “takeaways” I get are immediate.

Piano for All Review – The Bottom Line – What I Didn’t Like About It:

• In some places, I wish the teacher would have expanded more about a specific tune. For example, in the lesson about the jazz tune “Fly Me to the Moon”, there is so much more to be said about the bass line and the way you can play the chords in the right hand, and I needed to go to go to YouTube for a deeper understanding of the tune. This does not repeat in many places but it does happen from time to time.
• Even though that for the sake of the example he uses popular tunes (mostly oldies) that most people know, it would have been cool if there were some examples on contemporary music as well – like famous rock and pop songs from the last 10 years. I personally like oldies, but I’m sure that many people would enjoy the modern stuff as well.
• Honestly, even when I try really hard to think about it, that’s it with the things I didn’t like. I am truly grateful for Robin for creating this course, otherwise, I might have never been successful at learning the piano – which became my favorite instrument.

Two Examples of How I Play After Taking the Course (7 Years Later, Almost All of My Piano Education Came Exclusively from the Piano for All Course)

5 Friendly Tips from Me on How to Get the Most Out of the Course

1. First of all, I highly recommend printing out chord sheets of your favorite songs as soon as you start the course, and place them right next to the piano. This will always keep you busy and also motivated, since you’ll see that each time you sit down – the way these songs sound out of your own hands will keep getting better and better. You can even go ahead and create your own custom chord books.
2. Again, still talking about getting the course into a physical form – I highly recommend printing out the attached PDF lessons book – so you can have it right in front of you while watching the video lesson after reading the PDF of the lesson.
3. Once you feel like you have the contents of the lesson down and figured out, don’t get lost in the mood of “just playing” all the time, (even if you already sound good) but instead start working on the next lesson. Don’t let 2-3 days go by without challenging yourself with new material. Try to always be in the mindset of improving. Making music only gets more fun the better you become.
4. Playing for 20-30 minutes a day X5 times a week is WAY better than an hour once or twice a week. Always keep the “piano neurons” fresh inside your brain.
5. If you get to a lesson that really seems irrelevant to you for some reason, or on the other hand – if you see some other lessons down the course that really intrigue you right now – don’t feel guilty – just go ahead and check them out / skip. Having a good time is always important!

That’s it. As you can understand from the above, I highly recommend the Piano for All method and I think it gives you an unbelievable bang for the buck. If you want to learn how to play your favorite songs on the piano – this is your course.