My biggest progress came from improvising at the piano using chord progressions, melodies, and composing songs. Music is aural—you hear it before you understand it, play it, and soak it in. Then it's played intuitively, and only after that is it studied through reading, analysis, and so on.

Hearing and the Suzuki method was the way I was taught. Although I may be weaker in learning and memorization, playing by ear is a source of limitless joy and definitely should be combined with other sources of learning, not shunned as cheating.

Chords, arpeggios, and chord scales are very useful for this and can be learned easily now. My recommendation for practice is 25% minutes of scales and arpeggios, 25% sight reading, 25% learning a piece, and 25% improvisation on a theme.

When improvising, think key changes, harmony (chords), arpeggios, breaking up chord shapes to differentiate your sections, and think structure and dynamics. Like speech.

Many scores are free nowadays, and AI tools can be useful tutors as they understand pedagogy as well. I did music theory at college. A study of Roman numerals or Nashville numbers can be a great way to learn the foundations. Minimalist pieces, for instance, like Gymnopédie, have a very simple chord progression at the start.

I believe there are better tools than ever for children to go from hearing piano music to composing it. Tools like StaffPad on iPad, where they can write by hand with a pencil on the iPad and hear playback, or MuseScore, which is free, and ones like Logic to produce. There's a world of classical composers and pianists on YouTube to explore. Piano music is all over Instagram, for instance, where you can find local pianists as well.

A musical notebook can be invaluable. The quality of transcribing—writing down what you hear—helped me understand time better than any other way. Taking the time to notate music by ear develops your understanding of rhythm, meter, and musical structure in a way that simply reading notation cannot match.

Many pieces from Mozart, Beethoven, and other composers whose works are out of copyright are free online nowadays. Sites like IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project) offer thousands of classical scores at no cost, making it easier than ever to explore the repertoire and study the works of great composers.

Reinforcing your fingers is important, especially the weaker small ones. Sight reading can be a great way to relax as it involves your mind logically and aurally. Jazz can be a good side project to understand harmony even better.

Playing other instruments can help. Melody instruments don't allow harmony and help understand intervals. Rhythm instruments help with beats, tempo, and complex time signatures. Solfege can be great for intervals and even perhaps singing.

College may or may not be worth it with all the knowledge out there. A music minor is a great idea to scratch an itch. Music professionally is mostly built on relationships and building a network, and crafting skills that can help with music production, promotion, or performance.

Personally, I attribute my skills to God if any are found in my playing, and recommend the church as a great source of youth training, especially smaller churches, which is where I learned from.