Getting back to the piano after years

Get the instrument ready

An acoustic piano left closed for a long time often needs a tuner before it sounds right; take the chance to have sticking keys or dampers checked. A digital piano never goes out of tune: just switch it on. If it has a USB socket or Bluetooth MIDI, it can also talk to a tablet, which opens up learning apps such as Noctave: see Connect a digital piano to an Android tablet.

Sit well: the bench at a height where your forearms are roughly level, feet flat, the sheet music or the tablet at eye level, on the music rest.

The first weeks

• Short, regular sessions. Fifteen to twenty minutes a day do more than one long session at the weekend: fingers and eyes get back into the habit together.
• A simple warm-up. Five notes in C position, hands separately then together, slowly; a few scales you used to know. If anything hurts, stop.
• Start a little below your old level. If you used to play sonatinas, begin with minuets or easy studies: you'll get your level back soon, without frustration.
• Refresh your reading. It's often what has faded the most. A few minutes of note reading every day bring it back: Learn to read sheet music as an adult.
• Keep a piece just for pleasure. Next to the practice pieces, a piece you love, worked on slowly, makes every session worthwhile.

Set yourself a goal

Choose a piece you dreamed of playing, and a reasonable date, a few months away. In between, steps: one piece per difficulty band, then the piece itself, first hands separately. This website sorts every score of the catalog into four levels, with what makes it hard: Which piece to play for your level.

Getting back with Noctave

Noctave was born from a return to the piano: that of its founder, who came back to the piano and could no longer read the score (the story is on the About page). The app is made for that moment.

• On first launch, a few steps you can skip: your instrument, the size of your keyboard, latency calibration, then a first level.
• The journey of the Game mode has 116 levels in eight chapters, from the right hand in C position to Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu. Each level opens as soon as the previous one reaches the required accuracy: a chapter you already know goes by quickly. The first three chapters are free.
• Learning mode opens the pieces of the catalog with every aid: wait mode, slower tempo, loop, separate hands. That's where you work on the piece of your dreams, and on your own sheet music: Add your own pieces.
• Note reading gets the eye going again, five minutes before you play.

Pieces to come back with

Intermediate pieces, short and well known, often played in the past: enough to find the pleasure again right away.

• Prelude in C major, BWV 846Johann Sebastian Bach · 2 min 07 sIntermediate · 4/10
• Gymnopédie No. 1Erik Satie · 3 min 15 sIntermediate · 5/10
• Prelude in A major, Op. 28 No. 7Frédéric Chopin · 39 sIntermediate · 4/10
• Arabesque, Op. 100 No. 2Friedrich Burgmüller · 59 sIntermediate · 5/10
• Dreaming (Träumerei), Op. 15 No. 7Robert Schumann · 2 min 09 sIntermediate · 6/10
• “Moonlight” Sonata, Op. 27 No. 2 · I. Adagio sostenutoLudwig van Beethoven · 5 min 07 sIntermediate · 6/10

Each has its free sheet music as a PDF on this website, with what makes it hard, measured on the score.