Piano Lessons

What music can you learn quickly as an adult piano beginner?

I have quite a few new adult students lately. I find it quite fun and interesting when teaching adult beginners – the conversation we have is definitely quite different from that between me and kids (I talk about unicorn and rainbow all the time!)

One thing adult beginners always ask is, “what kind of songs can I learn to play quickly?”

Although I emphasize the importance of musical and technical foundation, and I use my piano beginner books for most beginner students, I also like my students to have fun. So, here are a list of songs adult piano beginners can learn to play and enjoy easily.

  1. Amazing Grace
  2. You are My Sunshine
  3. Imagine
  4. Yesterday
  5. Let It Be
  6. Scarborough Fair
  7. Happy Birthday
  8. Indiana Jones Theme
  9. Forrest Gump Theme
  10. simple 8-bar 3-4 chord pattern
  11. 12-bar blues pattern

These are just some of the examples that you can learn to play the melody with simply left hand accompaniment. And there are many more depending on how fast you learn. A lot of times adult students come in with some songs they have in mind that they would like to play – and I encourage them to let me know so that I can plan ahead and see how I can incorporate their dream songs in our piano lessons. Sometimes I will find the scores easily or simply arrange them myself when they’re not available in easier versions already.

I like to teach scales and chord patterns early on – scales are very useful for technical and also musical reasons, and playing them well requires smooth movement in each hand and good coordination between the two. Chord patterns are fun and pretty easy to pick up to start with, and one can really start making music right away.