My Piano Lessons

About my teaching methods

A Musical Journey

In my teaching I aim to be a companion on each student's musical journey. Whatever their musical knowledge or experience, I meet them where they are and build confidence as they develop new technical, note reading, listening and performance skills. I enjoy teaching a mix of age groups and my current students are aged between 8 and 80 plus.

For new learners, I concentrate initially on posture, hand position and the mechanics of the instrument and then move on to good tone production. In this process, I introduce basic notation and write tailored compositions including duets to create a fun, musical environment to produce the beautiful tone the student has learnt. I enjoy the wealth of good melodies in Scottish folk music and often make my own piano arrangements for students.  In return, I ask students to practice effectively in the time they have available, learn technical drills and complete music knowledge quizzes. 

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For intermediate students, fluent in reading,  I focus on a varied musical diet of graded repertoire to improve technique, giving the opportunity to become familiar with as many new musical periods and styles as possible. If appropriate, I like to teach some analysis to help students gain a better understanding of the structure and form of a composition.

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For experienced players, I encourage more independence in the choice of repertoire. I prefer a holistic, cross-disciplinary approach, recommending reading materials and listening resources, and making analogies to life experiences, other art forms such as dance for rhythm and painting to explore the palette of sound colours available on the piano.

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