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I learnt classical piano from 4 to 16 or thereabouts to a decent standard. In that time, I stupidly never pushed to learn more about improvisation and ended up not touching a keyboard for the next twenty years.
About four years ago, I got an old Kawai hammer action stage piano off craigslist to have a go. It took a solid 6 weeks of straight technique for an hour or so a day before I could attempt to get up to speed on some old stuff - proper arm pump and cramp. After that it came back surprisingly quickly and I found that the intervening, unlearned guitar playing had given me a better ear for picking up stuff quick. Kept it up for a couple of years but it's been another year or so since I've touched it. It's astonishing how use it or lose it the practice is. I can't play for shit again now!
For me at least, playing to a decent standard required a couple of hours a day just to maintain and who's got that time? I can noodle on guitar for 30 minutes and be happy. Probably an indication of how much lower my standards are.... :)
Jung-
I'm hoping to take my piano playing to the same position as my guitar playing, where I can muddle along with most stuff as long as I've worked out what the main chords are. Where I'm struggling is that the fret patterns etc are totally second nature to me, but hand positions on the keyboard still require a lot of thought, so playing along to a metronome is kind of out of the question. Frustrating, but I'm trying to dedicate an evening a week to fucking about on the piano with Nick Cave deep cuts
jackbepablo
I wish I’d had this with my piano lessons instead of the traditional do-the-grades approach, it was v much a chore. These days I play quite a bit to add layers to my band’s stuff and wish I’d stuck at it past 15/16 years old. So useful now but I struggle with technique stuff