After committing to daily piano practice again I quickly realised I needed a structured roadmap rather than random YouTube videos. I first tried the Playground Sessions boot‑camp, but felt it skimmed over crucial fundamentals like posture, hand mechanics and proper warm‑ups.
I already knew Felipe Scagliusi from his youtube channel and signed up for his online course Partituras – O Curso in the past. Although I dropped it after only a few lessons, I liked the course a lot, because of its detailed tips on how to position your hand on the keyboard, and for some very simple exercises that fixed my habit of playing with 5th finger lifted.
Remembering how clear his teaching was, I searched for a newer programme and discovered his course “Do Zero a Pour Elise”. It takes absolute beginners from the first notes all the way to a simplified Für Elise—a piece I used to peck out with just my right hand as a kid. I signed up on the spot.
Tracking practice time
In the beginning I only guesstimated that I was sitting at the piano “about half an hour most days”. A few weeks in I realised those loose estimates weren’t telling the whole story, so I began timing every session with a stopwatch app and logging the totals. That’s why from this post onward I can state the precise cumulative figure of 45 h 33 min. Watching that number grow is surprisingly motivating!
My routine is still a target of ≈30 minutes, Monday → Friday. Weekends are hit‑or‑miss, but the structured path keeps me consistent and motivated.
2 · Watch the Day 91 Video · Watch the Day 91 Video
“Swan Lake” is Lesson 3 of “Do Zero a Pour Elise“. The arrangement quite simple but still very beautiful, and has some challenges, like changing from playing with 1st and 3rd fingers together, to 2nd and 4th —which, by the way, I struggled with in the video..
In this video, I am playing in my old Casio CDP-120, and recorded directly from piano to my interface, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2.
Have you played an arrangement of Swan Lake (or another ballet)? Share your experience in the comments or tag me on YouTube—let’s encourage each other!
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