When I was 8 years old, my family moved from Taiwan to the U.S. It was a difficult transition for me to move to a different country where I didn't know the language and therefore had no friends to play with, so I started banging away on the piano to pass my time. My parents bought me a book of Richard Clayderman sheet music, and I decided to make it my personal project to try to learn how to play one of his songs. I picked the song I wanted to play and figured out the first note by counting from middle C. Once I had the starting note down, everything else was just finding the right key and right tempo to play based on my familiarity with the song after hearing it over and over and over again.
I figured out every single note on the sheet music by starting a count from middle C, and it took a long time to figure out all of them. It took about a month for me to map out all the keys to the song and memorizing the sequences of the keys, but I managed to memorize how to play my first song - "Les Premiers Sourires de Vanessa" by Richard Clayderman (which, incidentally, was the song that the Taiwanese TV news used as the background music for their nightly weather forecast). I taught myself a total of 6 Richard Clayderman songs this way throughout my elementary and middle school years.
I didn't really play piano at all throughout high school, but once I started college, I had to undergo a very major surgery after my freshman year in 1995. For almost one whole year after surgery, I had extreme trouble walking and underwent more than a year of physical and occupational therapy. During that time, I went back to my piano again, but this time, I decided to challenge myself by learning songs composed by Yanni. Using the same method, I mapped out all the keys to 5 of Yanni's songs and memorized the sequences to each one.
For Christmas 1997, I decided to record myself playing all of the 11 songs I taught myself, and made a CD out of it to give to my grandparents as a Christmas present. I have since converted those recordings into MP3 files.
In the meantime, if anyone is interested, here are some audio of me playing Yanni and Richard Clayderman songs:
In The Morning Light
Before I Go
The End of August
Fun Fact: For the song "The End of August," I counted the first note from middle C incorrectly, and proceeded to map out, play, and record the entire song in an entirely incorrect key :P
Reflections of Passion
To Take ... To Hold
Les Premiers Sourires de Vanessa
Ballade Pour Adeline
Triste Coeur
Souvenirs d'Enfance