| |
Who I Teach |
|
|
Children
As a qualified secondary school teacher, I am fully experienced and conversant with current and best educational practice with regard to one-to-one piano tuition. My aim in teaching children (usually from about 7 or 8 years old onwards) is to ensure that lessons are as fun, engaging and musical as possible. In any one 60 minute lesson, I generally spend no more than 10 minutes on any one piece or activity, thereby ensuring that these different activities and modes of learning keep the child engaged and motivated as the lesson progresses: a typical lesson might involve any or all of the following activities: Theory of Music / Piece 1 / Scales and Arpeggios/ Composition/ Playing by Ear/ Piece 2/ Aural Test work/ Piece 3 – which could be a duet that the child is working on with a view to performing alongside me, a sibling or fellow school-mate. Duets, I find, keep children motivated and ensure that they enjoy high quality musical experiences from Lesson 1 and beyond.
Adult Beginners
Adult Beginners often have their own reasons for wanting to play the piano. Perhaps you played when younger and want to take it up again with a different approach or focus? Or perhaps you have a favourite piece from a stage musical or film that you’d really like to play and it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to get that piece under your fingers… and under your belt?! Or perhaps you’d like to work through an adult beginners’ course book, many of which are very good for developing the foundations of a well-rounded technique? Just let me know what your preferred learning style is and where your motivation lies. I’ll be happy to help you. Perhaps you’d like to work towards an exam, as I have recently? That’s fine too. As I said, just let me know and we can discuss a learning path to suit you.
Intermediate/ More advanced players
As your playing advances, and your enjoyment of piano playing becomes more and more satisfying and nourishing, you may find that you become more discerning in the pieces that you’d like to work on, whether with a view to performing them – either to yourself, your family and/or friends, or in a public performance context, such as a local music festival or at a local piano club where people get together to play to each other in a relaxed and informal way.
I can help you with all of this. Discussion about the technical or stylistic detail of a piece may, at this stage, become particularly important. Perhaps we may focus on some aspect of a piece, how best to use the pedal, for instance, with a view to accomplishing for yourself and/or others more satisfying and enjoyable performance experiences.
|
|
|
|
|
|
