I’ve always been hugely into music and dreamed of playing instruments as a young kid. However, for some reason or another, I never went for any classes in a serious way when I was young. I did learn basic guitar which I enjoyed, but never practiced enough to do anything with it. The piano is also much more versatile and enjoyable to play alone versus a guitar. So as a young adult I took some music theory and piano lessons that I enjoyed, but again life got in the way. I do remember having a little wooden toy piano that I definitely used a lot when I was just a few years old, and had a wooden flute, toy air piano, xylophone and harmonica. I loved playing around with them but that was as far as I got.

As I approach my 40s, I’d like to take another serious shot at this. Moreover, I now have two young kids, and I am fully appreciative of the positive impact music education can have on their development. I want to set the example and hopefully they can also learn alongside me.

So, to start off, I need a digital keyboard that feels as close to a piano as possible, and a piano teacher or online learning platform.

This post will serve as my notes for these two tasks.

Best Beginner Keyboards

I focused my research on portable keyboards, as they take the least space, are easy to move around and probably easier to sell when the time comes, or if my plan doesn’t work out.

Next, it’s time to consider brands.

General consensus among piano teachers and players is that you should not go off-brand when buying a piano. There are a number of long-established brands that you are probably familiar with:

• Yamaha
• Roland
• Kawai
• Casio
• Korg
• Nord

Anything beyond these household names is considered off-brand. Some examples are Alesis and Donner. There are many others, typically Chinese manufactured and designed to look good, but with important flaws.

Weighted keys are essential for learning proper technique, so prepare to spend €500 and upwards as that’s where decent weighted keyboards start at.

The reasonably priced Casio CDP-S100 but watch the Youtube reviews by “Piano4ever” (James Pavel Shawcross) who is scathing about the mismatch in weight between the white and lighter black keys on Casio digital pianos. You might also want to find comparative reviews to hear the sounds of this one against things like Yamaha P45 and Roland FP-10. It may be a matter of personal choice but the Casio does not seem to sound that great compared to others – possibly too “tinny” (which some might call “bright”)

Going up the scale (!) the Yamaha P45 is somewhere above the Casio. A lot of reviewers have quite nice things to say about P45 but it’s not a “modern” design and is perhaps getting a little bit long in the tooth.

The most sensible choices for a beginner that wants a quality setup:

• Roland FP-10 (€400)
• Roland FP-30X (€670)
  
• Yamaha P45 (€422)
• Yamaha P125 (€600)
  
• Kawai-ES110 (€600)
  
• Casio PX S-1000 (€500)

Out of these the Roland FP-30X was the best choice for me. The FP-10 is better than the Yamaha P-45, while the FP-30X improves on the FP-10 for a slight increase in price. The speakers at this price point from Casio, Yamaha, and Korg don’t match up in this department.

If we compare the Roland FP-30X with the Yamaha P125, the Yamaha loses out on key-action as well as bluetooth connectivity, the latter being a big issue for me. The Yamaha P125 does seem to be slightly better sounding though. If you tweak the sound qualities, the FP-30X sounds just as good as the P-125. The speakers fire downward and fill up the room a little bit better. It is also the newer model of the two.

The number of sounds available wasn’t a big consideration for me, since these can typically be expanded either by connecting via MIDI to a VST, or by using companion apps that these makers provide. For example, with the Roland FP-10 you get 15 built-in sounds that can be selected using Function+keys. However, if you run the Piano Partner 2 app which connects to the piano with Bluetooth you actually get to select between 35 instruments.

With Roland’s SuperNATURAL Piano technology and the same expressive 88-tone PHA-4 Standard keyboard as the premium model FP-60X, the FP-30X is the perfect home instrument for Beginner players.

Finally, the Roland FP-10 and FP-30X are easy to sell as they are extremely popular among beginners. At worst you would lose a couple hundred euros, lessening the risk of such a purchase considerably.

I would have considered the FP-10 versus the FP-30, where it not for the fact that the FP-30X is a new model that improves in some significant ways on the FP-30, while the FP-10 does not have a corresponding new model.

My favorite keyboard for looks and features, on the other hand, is the Casio PX-S7000, but I would buy this further along the journey as it’s much more expensive and has features that are not necessary at the very early stages. It does look beautiful though, and I especially like the stand that comes with it.

Keyboards for Kids

Since I want to involve my kids in my learning process, I did some research on instruments/toys that might be ideal to get them interested as well.

Here are the best I found:

Korg tinyPiano (€200)

The tinyPiano is part furniture, part introductory piano, and part toy. Definitely on the expensive side, but the reviews are great.

Yamaha Remie (€60)

The best intro instrument, since it has quiz mode and lots of sounds (animals, horns etc) that can keep even the little ones entertained.

Yamaha PSS-F30 (€60)

Great for those kids who already know how to play a bit and want to have some fun with the in-built sounds and accompaniments.

Learning

For learning, Pianote is a good way to start, atlhough you will want to eventually find a good local teacher. There are also several books that you could try, and if you have a Skillshare membershi there are a few courses available.

Here are some resources I’ve been using:

• SimplyPiano – makes it really fun to progress as it lets you play popular songs in an easy way. They also have apps for singing and guitar.
• Skoove
• Hoffman Academy – especially good for kids
• Little Fingers – Youtube channel with easy tutorials (e.g. Coffin dance & L’Amour Toujours)
• EasyPiano – Youtube channel with easy and slow tutorials (e.g. Blue)
• Music Files – free sheet music
• Playground Sessions
• Flowkey

I’ll update this post with progress, but if there are any other adult musical instrument learners out there, I’d love to hear about your experience.

Here are some notes on family inheritances. This can be a heavy subject for many families, and now that I am both a child and a parent, it makes sense to think about the topic and try to plan early.

We start off with the fact that parents owe nothing to their children financially.

Most parents would have given way more than their kids can ever hope to equal in terms of love, care, shelter and financial assistance while they were growing up. This is just the nature of things. It’s the role of a parent to do so.

Once the kids leave their parents’ house to start their own life, provided there are no obvious impediments (e.g. disabilities) they should be independent. Even if they don’t physically leave the house due to some reason or cultural norm, there should be a cutoff point around the 18-20 years old mark.

Parents should strive to teach their kids how to manage their finances from an early age. Ideally, they should also show them how they can make money and instill an entrepreneurial spirit – even if they eventually end up getting a job and not do their own thing.

The easiest way to manage an inheritance is to split it equally between the children. But it’s not always such an easy strategy. One obstacle is the fact that inheritances rarely consist of purely cash assets. With other types of assets, valuations can complicate matters a lot. There might also be items being passed on that have a big sentimental value to members of the family, so it becomes very tricky quite quickly.

One other option is to not leave any inheritance or to leave all assets to a charitable trust, possibly managed by the kids. Typically this kind of option is chosen by parents worried that an inheritance will cause issues between the siblings or that the sudden influx of money will somehow corrupt them. While I think these are perfectly acceptable options, they wouldn’t align with my way of thinking. I think money is a great enabler, and if children are well educated from an early age in the school of life, an inheritance (or living a childhood with no financial worries) will not affect them in a negative way. 

100% of the negative cases I’ve seen concerning money and inheritances were because of the parents never really giving their kids a well-rounded education (typically because they were too busy working and amassing a fortune to actually spend time with the kids), so the end result was not surprising.

Another consideration is when not all siblings have been equally fortunate in life. What do you do when one child is objectively in a more needy state due to a disability, unfortunate event etc? In these cases, if all members of the family have a good relationship between them, it is quite understandable to make sure the more needy child has their needs covered as a first priority.

Communication between the parents and children about their inheritance plans is always essential and helps to avoid conflict down the line.

I’ll keep expanding this article over time, but if you have any input on this topic it would be great to hear for you in the comments section below.

Further Reading

• Family Wealth: Keeping It in the Family – Hughes Jr E

Note: This list is just a small taste of books that have played an important part in my life. I’ve read hundreds of books and it has proven to be impossible to keep a definite updated list of favorite books. 

Here’s the one biggest catalyst for most of my successes in life: being a voracious reader. My weapon of choice is the Kindle, I’m constantly on the lookout for new books and articles and sending them to my Kindle for reading later. Coming from a small and pretty isolated island I can definitely say that if I hadn’t read so much I would never have enjoyed the success in life and business that I have.

Although I have three University degrees, I must confess that I skipped most lectures, simply because I felt they were too boring for me. Instead, I spent time in quiet places devouring book after book on the topics that interested me most.

So if you want to be successful and don’t yet have a habit of reading, start now, read something daily, and allocate time during the week for extended reading sessions of 45 minutes to one hour.

Extra bonus tip: Make sure you keep a blog/journal/diary where you can write down new concepts that you learn or ideas that you get while reading.

I speed through lots of books every year but many times I have trouble recalling the ones I’ve read if, for example, someone asks me for a quick recommendation.

It’s also good to have a handy list of books read because it happens that a few months or years down the line you want to revisit a book you’ve previously read, or a specific topic. The answer to these situations is of course to keep a list of books that you read.

I’ve used Goodreads to try and build a virtual bookshelf of sorts, however, it’s been very difficult to maintain, mostly since I read a lot of books every year. My average is around 6-8 per month. So instead, I’ll be trying a different approach and just listing the most impressive books I’ve read about the several topics I’ve gotten into over time.

If I had to ever quit using my Kinde and install a library in my home, you can bet these books will be populating its bookshelves.

Religion & Spirituality

• Waking Up and The End of Faith by Sam Harris
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
• Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton
• New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton
• The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh
• Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield
• Why We Believe in God(s) by Richard Dawkins

I would also encourage reading books from Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, he has several good ones.

Business

• The 4-hour workweek by Tim Ferriss
• Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
• Rework by DHH and Jason Fried
• Remote by DHH and Jason Fried
• The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
• Built to Sell by John Warrillow
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• Work the System by Sam Carpenter

Psychology & Behavioral Economics

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
• How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
• Mindwise by Nicholas Epley
• The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters
• The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
• Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Outliers, Blink and The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Philosophy

• Genome, The Rational Optimist and The Red Queen by Matt Ridley
• The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman
• A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine
• The Republic by Plato
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Investing

• Money Master the Game by Tony Robbins
• Principles by Ray Dalio
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
• The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason

I would also recommend going through the investing curriculum for other great investing books.

History & Future

• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
• Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
• The story of civilization by Will and Ariel Durant
• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
• A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson

Health

• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
• Sleep by Nick Littlehales

Sports & Sports Psychology

• Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? by Alex Hutchinson
• The Champion’s Mind by Jim Afremow and Jim Craig
• The Brave Athlete by Simon Marshall and Paterson Lesley
• Winning Ugly by Brad Gilbert and Steve Jamison
• The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey

Economics

• The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
• Misbehaving by Richard Thaler
• Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

Biographies

• Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
• Giocare da Uomo by Javier Zanetti

Politics

• Political Order and Political Decay and The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama

Science Fiction & Fantasy

• Check out these Science Fiction and Fantasy lists on Goodreads

Looking for more books? While I continue to update the list above, check this great list of books, and this one too, many of which I’ve also read and can recommend.

I’m also working my through this collection of great essays.