Learning music is not just reading notes, it's a whole universe of thinking and using logic to get you where you want to go.
Piano Lessons
If you ever wanted to learn how to play an instrument, any instrument; now is the time because there is no time like the present. But seriously playing any instrument is a huge reward for both mind and body. Here are only a few of the known benefits of learning an instrument:
1. Increases your ability to remember
2. Enhances coordination
3. Creates personal discipline
4. Increases listening skills
5. Fosters a sense of achievement
6. Increases happiness and well being
There are many more benefits but the point of it is you are playing music, and being able to express yourself through music is one of the greatest things you can learn or have your child learn.
How I teach
It's not like your old piano teacher that taught you! I teach people how to play from the viewpoint of personal achievement and satisfaction. It is not a competition, you are not graded and there are not many tests (but there are a few). Students and I have fun while we learn and it is material they want to play not something out of a cookie cutter piano book. Now, do not get me wrong because those books are the fundamentals and we need them to get to the fun stuff but that is only a part of the learning. I try to match the student with as many of their favorite songs as possible and we learn them though a mix of sheet music and ear training that gets more difficult as they become more accomplished.
I also promote singing while playing piano as much as possible. We all can sing and if it is just in the shower why not sit in front of the piano, play a few chords and back up our own voices. That is the magic when you finally experience playing and singing together. The mind, body and soul all come together. If the singing just is not where you feel good then we will work on soloing.
Over the 15+ years I have been teaching I find singing and taking a solo on the piano the most challenging for students. It is hard to learn how to express yourself though a solo but it is rewarding when you get there. My students who strive to create solos and musical melodies are successful in creating catchy phrases and have gone on to create songs of their own.
Finally I would consider myself successful if you are able to look at some sheet music and understand how to play the piece, listen to a rock song and pick out the cord progression then the melody line. Once you have learned the song, you recreate it in your own way and what ever way you would like to play the song.
If you are interested in piano lessons with me, I teach out of Long and McQuade Music Lesson Center in Courtenay British Columbia and offer teaching at my home on my 1931 Mason & Risch Dou-Art Grand reproducing piano (a more advanced player piano of that time) .
Great Music Quotes
"THAT IS WHY I TEACH MUSIC.
NOT because I expect you to major in music. NOT because I expect you to play or sing all your life. NOT so you can relax or have fun. BUT- So you will be human So you will recognize beauty. So you will be sensitive. So you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world. So you will have something to cling to. So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good; in short, more life. Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live?"
- Unkown
"Imagination is more important than knowledge"
- Albert Einstein
"Music is about communication, creativity, and cooperation, and, by studying music in school, students have the opportunity to build on these skills, enrich their lives, and experience the world from a new perspective"
- Bill Clinton
"Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul; on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he who has received this education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognise and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar."
- Plato
Lastly
If I could teach you one song, what would it be? Would it be happy, sad? Would the words sum up your life or would the music inspire you to greatness?