My Plan for Learning Piano from Free Online Learning Opportunities, part 1

I have some music training but, I am certainly not an accomplished musician. I would really like to learn to play an instrument well enough to not have to focus so hard that it is no fun. In other words, I would like to learn to play effortlessly and improvise in ways that sound professional. I have read in one of Malcolm Gladwell's books, either Blink or Outliers, that the difference between being a good musician and a great musician is that becoming a great musician requires that you devote 10,000 hours to learning an instrument. I can't devote that much in large chunks but, I have a few minutes here and there. I have chosen to try and learn the piano and the site that will help me most in the early stages will be Ricci Adams' musictheory.net (click on this post's title to go there).

Here is the first step of my plan for learning the piano:

1. I am going to first learn the names/notes of the black and white keys on the piano to the point where I know the the keys without really thinking about it. Musictheory.net has a keyboard trainer that will really help me learn the keys.