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It's a bit pricey (though much cheaper than a teacher, not sure on the relative effectiveness though), but I found Melodics to be super useful in terms of getting the actual mechanics of independently coordinating your fingers to play what you see on screen. Then moved over to FlowKey which is more focussed on teaching actual music and has quite a bunch of classical to get you going. I imagine once you're relatively proficient with that you should be in a position to just grab sheet music and work away. Naturally you'll need to get up to scratch on your sight reading too, but I've found this just to come naturally with no real explicit practice.
The main thing I've found is to do it as often as possible, even if it's just 5-10 mins a day. It makes such a difference vs 1 hour once per week or something like that.
Granted, I'm not really coming at it from a playing classical piano stuff, and more from a music production point of view. If you're looking to use either Flowkey or Melodics (or any of the other host of similar services), you'll need a MIDI keyboard. Whether just a standalone MIDI controller or a MIDI-capable electronic keyboard.
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Could Jesus make a taco so hot that he couldn't eat it?
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How hard is it to learn the piano?
One of my mates learnt as an adult. Their two points were; 1/ you just need to practise, 2/ you need to be OK with being shit for a while.
Now if they play everyone is really impressed and when they fine out they learnt as an aduld people say they must have a natural talent, etc. But really it's just putting the hours in regularly.
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Sort of. If you can touch type you can learn to play the piano. It's all the same thing: muscle memory.
I bought a digital piano a few years ago and just sat down and played the thing. You don't need headphones - just turn it down a bit.
Because it was a new toy I was obsessed with it and played several times a day, getting better each day, and trying new things like octaves, minor inversions and arpeggios up and down the keyboard until I was good at them. To non-pianists I sound like I can really play, but really I know I'm not that good. My left hand is dreadfully limited.
You can go a long way just playing what you want, but you need to get the basics right first, and if you want to play classical then doing it "properly" is almost certainly more important than for other styles of music. You can probably learn everything off YouTube these days. That's how I'm learning drums.
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@nick_h.
How hard is it to learn the piano? Am imagining an electronic keyboard with headphones so I don't annoy the neighbours. I had lessons when I was 8 but didn't get far because I disliked the teacher and never did any of the practice sessions I was meant to. I would like to play classical stuff, not just the plinky plunk things you have to do when you're learning.