Should you use free YouTube videos to learn how to play piano blues?

As we all know, YouTube is the place to go when you want to watch a video – any video in fact! Whether you want to watch a shark jump out of the water and land on a boat, or if you want to watch someone hanging from a crane with one hand; YouTube is the place to go for literally anything.

YouTube is not only a source for video entertainment, you can also find tutorials which will teach you pretty much anything – from sawing a piece of wood, to painting a picture, to catching a fish. But is YouTube the best place to go if you want to learn how to play a musical instrument?

Are YouTube tutorial videos the best way to learn to play the piano?

YouTube is without doubt a very popular way to learn how to play the piano, but more specifically, how to play a particular song. The most popular piano tutorials are often the latest pop songs and theme tunes, with millions of people watching them every day trying to work out how to play it on the piano.

An extremely popular piano style is blues and boogie woogie, and there are lots of tutorial videos on YouTube showing you how to play left hand boogie as well as amazing right hand melodies.

But do these tutorials actually provide the best possible way to learn?

The simple answer is no, they don’t. The tutorial videos that are posted on YouTube for free are not always done by professional tutors, and as such they are sometimes difficult to follow, can be too fast, and are not always considerate of the learner. Typically the number one reason someone posts a tutorial on YouTube is to get as many subscribers and viewers as possible, so don’t always take into account how the learner will follow them.

A mistake a musician often makes when attempting to show someone else how to play is to assume that the learner understands every word they are saying, and that the learner can easily keep up with the pace of the information being provided. However, this is often not the case, and ultimately the free tutorial video has ended being worth what was paid.

Try to remember the last time you watched a tutorial video on YouTube and think about how well you can play the song now? If the answer is ‘not very’, then you’re not alone, and this is usually the outcome for most learners keen to use free content found on the internet.

What’s a popular style of music to learn on the piano?

One of the most popular styles of music to learn on the piano is blues and boogie woogie – and for obvious reasons! Playing the blues on the piano is such an amazing way to have fun, and although it requires a lot of practice, it’s more than worth it in the end. What I love about playing the blues on the piano as well as boogie woogie is how free it feels to play. This style of music does not require you to play perfectly like classical does, and wrong notes are often easy to hide and don’t even typically sound like wrong notes!

Compared to classical, piano blues and boogie woogie is a lot less strict, and doesn’t require years of practicing scales in order to master. Not only is it a lot more fun to learn that a lot of other styles of music, it’s also the most rewarding. Can you imagine sitting down in a pub somewhere and playing like Jools Holland in front of your friends? How amazing would that be?!?

So what’s the best way to learn how to play piano blues and boogie woogie? 

At the end of the day, everyone who watches a tutorial video wants to be able to play like the person in the tutorial video – or at the very least, end up with a fairly good version of the song that they can continue to play and enjoy.

In order to give yourself the very best chance at learning to play blues piano you need to look at professional tutorial video courses. Why? Because they have been designed with only one person in mind – you!

As a learner you want someone who will take it slow and give the viewer a chance to play along at the same time, without having to rewind the video a million times. But it’s also important to find a professional video course that also offers sheet music and written guides. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t read music, as you can still follow the guides and the video – and you might even find that the sheet music starts to make sense after a little while.