My Self-Taught Piano Journey at a Glance
On April 2nd, 2020, at the age of 13, I decided to start learning the piano, and to track it all.
It’s now April 2nd, 2026. Here’s how it went…
Hello! 🥳 To celebrate six years of learning to play the piano, I wanted to compile this blog post.
Snapshot Statistics:
It is now Day 2,192 of learning to play the piano, and Day 1,995 since I started learning to play by ear.
In this time, I have played piano for a grand total of 93,597 minutes (1,560 hours), for an average of 42 minutes 42 seconds per day.
Snapshot Experiences:
For 4.5 of those 6 years, I’ve regularly accompanied choirs at churches, playing live for up to hundreds of people during Easter and Christmas masses.
I’ve played piano at a relative’s wedding, with an actual band (shoutout to GoBand Entertainment!)
I can accompany my mum whenever she wants to sing any song, since I can learn it by ear and transpose it into any key on the spot! 🙂
I didn’t really have any expectations going into this as a 13 year old.
The decision to start was a spontaneous one, and since early on, I’ve framed it in my mind as just a fun experiment in self-learning.
After some time, however, it became clear to me that the piano was going to be with me for the rest of my life (for which I am very grateful).
And as for the experiment… it has become something much greater. It’s taught me the principles behind learning and mastery, which has certainly changed my life in many other areas, besides music.
Tracking Methodology
Throughout the journey, I’ve made an effort to keep track of everything, but my system has evolved many times.
I’ve also recorded hundreds of hours of video, some of which I have published online on YouTube and Instagram, which serves as a public record of my journey.
Figure 1: My initial tracking system was not as sophisticated as the current excel spreadsheet (shown above).
Google Keep (2020 – 2023)
The first iteration of the tracking was done on Google Keep. It was extremely inconsistent, making it a pain to add up.
Figure 2: Example entry from 22/08/2020 on Google Keep. As you can see, this originally started as a fitness/health tracker, to which I later appended minutes of piano practiced.
During this period, since I mostly memorised pieces, I also tracked specifically how long I spent learning each. Some highlights include:
- Klaus Badelt – Godspeed [2 April 2020] – 2,725 mins
- Scott Joplin – The Entertainer [6 May 2020] – 2,871 mins
- 님혜승,박상희 – The Song for My Brother [May? 2020] – 978 mins
- Frederic Chopin – Nocturne Op.9 No.2 [15 June 2020] – 1,358 mins
- Scott Joplin – Maple Leaf Rag [17 July 2020] – 842 mins
As I got better at playing by ear, and thus could learn a new song every few minutes, I stopped tracking individual songs.
OneNote (2024 – 2025)
In 2024, I switched to OneNote, in order to unify where I do most of my work and this Progress tracking. However, I would keep up my tradition of making yearly summaries in Google Keep.
Figure 3: Example entries from the end of February 2024 in OneNote.
However, these massive tables in OneNote would lag… a lot, and I still would have to add the times up manually.
Microsoft Excel (2025 – 2026)
Nowadays, I’ve (painstakingly) imported the data into excel, which is where I now track it. I no longer need to add it up manually! 🥳
Figure 4: Example entries from the start of 2026 in Excel. I add notes to provide further contextual information as to how that time was spent.
The beginnings
April 2020 | Day 1, Hour 0
For some odd reason (one which I am super grateful to my past self for), I decided to document and upload a video on my YouTube channel (the first video on the channel) on that faithful day, April 2nd, 2020, when I started.
This was the first day I ever tried to learn the piano. The video description contains further information on my musical background (or lack thereof) and how I started.
Klaus Badelt – Godspeed, from the 2001 film The Time Machine.
Aside: In the film, Professor Alexander Hartdegen travels from 1899 into the future, May 24, 2030. My excel spreadsheet currently ends at that date.
The waystage
July 2020 | Day 34, Hour 40
In these early days, my approach was basically brute force. I would spend an hour a day, for perhaps a month, memorising note by note, using Synthesia tutorials on YouTube.
Was it the best approach? Nope. Definitely not. Importantly however, I enjoyed this stage enough to continue.
These days I play almost entirely by ear (which we’ll get to), and if I have to learn a classical piece, I generally prefer to use sheet music, supplemented by videos discussing them.
After practicing every day for a total of about 40 hours, I am a lot more fluent now at playing compared to the first video, but still so much to learn.
This is also evidence of my early obsession with ragtime pieces…😅 I still remember when I first played this very piece on a public piano for the first time in Yagan Square in Perth, WA.
Play by ear revolution
October 2020 | Day 197, Hour 198
Starting to play by ear marked a turning point in my approach to learning piano.
Unbeknownst to me, my dad had figured out how to play by ear back in the 1990s, which he himself used at church in Jakarta. He taught me all I needed (his framework) in about 5 minutes, and left me to explore from there on my own.
The video below is the product of that about 2 years later in 2022. At this stage I am paying a bit more attention to the arrangement. This was fully improvised/learnt by ear (i.e. hearing the chords directly and playing them)
Aside: A number of people have expressed interest in how I play by ear, and how to learn it.
As such, I am currently in the process of writing a short ~20-page book which answers all of these questions, for anyone interested in embarking on a similar journey wishing for some guidance.
Applying the skill
September 2021 | Day 517, Hour 485
At my local parish, the previous pianist (who was amazing!) moved abroad at one point, unfortunately leaving us without music for some time.
So, I decided to take the matter into my own hands, after just 11 months of learning to play by ear (I barely knew what a chord was before then!), I made the decision to reach out, and start playing at church.
I can’t express the amount of gratitude I have for my choir leader – thank you for bearing with me all these years! 🙂
Aside: Thank you for never telling me the key of the songs beforehand. Counterintuitively, this would force me to become comfortable transposing any song into any key, live – a very useful skill for any accompanist.
Reflections on the journey
Most of the progress occurred in the first 3 years. By this point, I was actively using the skill already. The next 3 years were largely spent further deepening, and applying the skill, particularly for others.
I started learning at age 13. For the first 13 years of my life, I didn’t really care about music. I didn’t listen to it that much, I didn’t play any instruments. The way I learnt meant I got to discover first hand how fun music can be, and that it’s never too late to start learning!
Thanks for reading! If you’re interested in learning something, my advice would be to just get started with a bit every day (and to track it). And if you have a skill, see if you can apply it to help others! 🙂