EVERYONE is profoundly musical. When we walk, there is a beat. When we talk, there is a rhythm. 

My goal is to help students unlock their innate musicality and to develop creative musicianship using a combination of playing-based strategies, physical movement, and creative activities. Students will start to play great-sounding contemporary, classical, blues, and accompaniment pieces with both hands from the very first lessons.

 

My overriding objective is to maximise the likelihood of maintaining music as a lifelong companion. I want piano students to:

 

• play a broad repertoire including classical, popular, blues, jazz and accompaniment

• experience playing the piano as a natural self-expression

• have a highly positive, self-affirming learning experience 

• develop the ability to self-generate and progress independently - including developing a strong foundation in music reading and theory as students move through the programme.

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What is a playing-based approach to learning the piano?

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It means that we use a multi-sensory approach, employing several learning styles in lessons such as:

 

• learning patterns in the fingers before going to the piano (tactile learning)

• processing song sections on a 'practice pad' with no sound (visual learning)

• listening for specific elements (aural learning)

• learning directly at the piano (combination of tactile, visual, and aural learning)  

 

Children don't learn to read and write before they speak - the same applies to music! In fact, research suggests that children aren't ready for music reading until they reach about 10 years old (although this is a generalisation and student readiness can vary, of course).

 

In my lessons, students learn to play first and learning to read is delayed temporarily until students gain an ease at the piano. I use unique concepts to familiarise students with the physicality and joy of playing the piano so that by the time we teach music notation, students have fallen in love with playing and are already comfortable at the keyboard, with a solid foundation of 20-30 pieces of music across different styles acquired after the first 12-18 months of lessons. 

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Adding the ability to read music gives the student another way to source music. Because students are not initially processing multiple thoughts at once (i.e. learning to read music from a page and learning the physical skills of piano playing simultaneously), reading music becomes a more natural progression. The ear is also developed naturally through using this approach, which is a wonderful development!

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