A Rite of Passage

Have been asked recently to help ‘adult learners’ get started so I made this video to give you the most important things to work on, no matter your path. Nothing overwhelming. No silly books. No heavy philosophies. Just a simple truth: major scales and finger independence are the absolute foundation of your piano journey. I talk about some other stuff too and provide many examples of course. From this video, I’m happy to make further videos in slightly more detail so it perhaps becomes a mini playlist. Good luck!

Have been asked recently to help ‘adult learners’ get started so I made this video to give you the most important things to work on, no matter your path. Nothing overwhelming. No silly books. No heavy philosophies. Just a simple truth:

Have been asked recently to help ‘adult learners’ get started so I made this video to give you the most important things to work on, no matter your path. Nothing overwhelming. No silly books. No heavy philosophies. Just a simple truth: major scales and finger independence are the absolute foundation of your piano journey. I talk about some other stuff too and provide many examples of course. From this video, I’m happy to make further videos in slightly more detail so it perhaps becomes a mini playlist. Good luck!

Years ago, I created a major scale mastery game to confirm how well students know their major scales. Many say they know them but when playing this game, we see they don’t! You start on a note and, from a random

Years ago, I created a major scale mastery game to confirm how well students know their major scales. Many say they know them but when playing this game, we see they don’t! You start on a note and, from a random number generator or long recording of your own, using numbers 2-7, say the answer BUT the answer key is the NEW key for the NEXT number to apply to. I show some variations of this game too. If you can do this on a second by second basis, away from the piano, for at least 2 minutes, then you know your major scales. So, can you do it?

An interesting question was asked recently about why chord progressions work rather than the how. In this episode, with piano examples, I try to answer this question, while also talking about certain chord types. I provide a homework for you to try out at the end.

Hopefully you’ve got the melody down from Part 1 and are now ready for the basic chords of this beautiful piece. I demonstrate in Eb since the chords you’ll learn herein, as well as the progressions, exist in countless other songs

Hopefully you’ve got the melody down from Part 1 and are now ready for the basic chords of this beautiful piece. I demonstrate in Eb since the chords you’ll learn herein, as well as the progressions, exist in countless other songs written in Eb (this is originally in the rare key of Db). Part 3 will embellish the chords and discuss performance ideas.

It’s overwhelming to look at over 200 pages of hardcore drills so let me soften the blow by saying: you don’t need to do all of them, you can personalise them and you don’t need to go through the book in

It’s overwhelming to look at over 200 pages of hardcore drills so let me soften the blow by saying: you don’t need to do all of them, you can personalise them and you don’t need to go through the book in order. You also don’t need to do everything in every key; that’s overkill. Herein, I demonstrate how you might open the book to a random page, observe what a technical exercise ‘looks like’ and either do what it is says, of course, or recreate it in your own way. Let me show you how…

You know the melody, you know the chords, you know the structure… now it’s time to play it but you first need to discover how You play, so I provide some options and ideas, for both hands. I also provide some

You know the melody, you know the chords, you know the structure… now it’s time to play it but you first need to discover how You play, so I provide some options and ideas, for both hands. I also provide some more fancy chords and a few embellishment ideas. Happy to make a Part 4 if enough requests come in…