Hello Everyone.

I live in Florida, my pen name is Aritus. I write books (but I don't publish them...maybe one day I will I'm just not sure I want people to read my stuff lol) and I play keyboard.

I have been playing for about 10 years but I do not consider myself very good. I have always and probably always will play by ear. Whatever sounds right. I've been asked why I don't go pay for lessons and the answer to that is I both cant afford them and i can't find any teachers in my area lol.

I mostly play gaming music. I'll play things written by Nobou Uematsu or make my own stuff. When I'm "practicing" I play anything by John Williams because it's fun to play lol and I'll play Blue by Eifel65 because I've heard it a lot....

Out of the songs I currently know how to play I learned them all by ear except 2 and those 2 are mercy me and fur elise. Mercy Me was because I wanted some site reading practice since I'm not in band anymore. and Fur Elise because it was the 5th song I learned how to play ever. (first one was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, then something my dad wrote, the little lame, then black sheep. then when i was 10 years old I got my first yamaha keyboard and thats when I learned Fur Elise. I still have not gotten a new keyboard and probably wont for a while.)

uhhh I'm 15 years old... I'm trying to get my school to open a keyboardist club for people with skill in this area... I'm in army JROTC.

lets see what else..... I play war games?

oh yea I've seen people ask each other if they have to get piano lessons to be good. I want to answer that here:
Nobou Uematsu is THE most successful keyboardist for game music and he is self taught.
Anything is possible if you have a passion for it.
I've never had a lesson in my life.

Uematsu is the greatest.... Eh, one of the greatest, because there are so many great out there,
but it was his piece "FFX - To Zanarkand" that made me really wanna play piano/keyboard.
Always playd piano and keyboard since I was a little, but nothing seriously, so i didnt really learn anything.

But then my brother got his guitar, and playing Canon rock on that was a big problem, so I could actually sit 5-6 hours a day just to practice it.
But it wasn't really before I discovered Andrew's videos on youtube that I began playing, reading theory and stuff.

These days I've been playing guitar because my keyboard is broken, and my digital piano is in the very soon post office...
But I'll tell you that even on the guitar it's Uematsu's songs that are play'd.
Ofcourse, I have a few others as John Petrucci, Neil Zaza and that kind of music because it's so strong melodic,
instead of these shredders that play as fast they can and just patterns of notes...

You dont need to have a real lesson to success, but you need selfmotivation, lets say it like this, you dont need a programmer beside you if you write a computer program,
you need motivation to read. I wont doubt that a real life teacher can be better in some cases, but a "virtual" one like Andrew is more than good enough if you have the motivation. Andrew is uniqe, and he does kinda pop out of the monitor.

lol Well said.

Welcome to the club! Have fun progressing your knowledge of piano and music and teaching others what you know.

Hey there!! ^_^ Welcome to the forum!!! You have an interesting background. I used to want to write books as well. That never panned out even after writing several hundred thousand words and hundreds of pages.

I agree with you that you don't necessarily NEED a piano teacher. A piano teacher can make the learning process much faster, OR much slower depending on who you get to teach you and your own motivation level. The reason real piano teachers can be useful is the ability for the teacher to create a plan for your development (sort of like your own personal trainer at the gym, not needed but if you want to get into shape VERY fast and you have the motivation a personal trainer will definitely help)

So that's what I have to say on that topic! Anyway! I'm looking forward to reading future posts from you

Welcome!