What Can You Expect from Lessons with Me?

Let's imagine, you have decided you want to give music lessons with me a go. What might the lessons look like? For this, let's use piano as an example, but violin and singing will have a lot of things in common with the process I am describing. When we first start out, I will very likely ask you a few questions. This is so I can get to know you a little bit and find out what your goals are. I am always interested in your reason for picking up music, and for choosing your instrument. This helps me to make sure I can include all the things in our lessons together that you will need to fulfil your goals and enjoy the process. Also, the more I know about other things you spend time with or are good at, the more I can relate new concepts to things you already know, and in the process make them easier to learn and understand. Of course, your prior musical experience, maybe even on the specific instrument, is also really important, as that will help me meet you where you are.

My first goal after this is to get you playing. If you have played before, I might ask you to play something you can already play. If you haven't, we might tackle your first song together. I will show you how to find your way around the piano keyboard, and some first basics of music theory. This may sound like a separate thing sometimes, but really music theory just means understanding how music works. Which is incredibly helpful when you try to play it.

Over time, we will learn many many songs and pieces together, of different genres and increasing difficulty, I will teach you how to read (and write) music, play by ear, play by chords and arrange on the spot. If you are interested in that, we can also work on composing your own music together.

In my opinion, one of my most important goals in teaching is taking something that you can't currently do and make it possible. We can achieve this by breaking it down into easier and smaller steps, in an order that makes sense, until you have successfully mastered what seemed impossible. Now this may not sound like the funnest process, but making it fun is my next most important goal. In addition, I think you might just find that achieving something difficult is in itself also very satisfying. I will teach you practice strategies that will help you efficiently and quickly make progress. Now of course, I am not offering some miracle solution that will teach you to play difficult pieces in an hour from no experience whatsoever, but I do promise to help you make your way to more and more complex and musically interesting songs and pieces, in a sustainable and realistic way. On our way there, we might play simplified versions of your dream songs, to give you that sweet sense of achievement on the way, as we work towards versions that are closer to the original.

Something else that I am personally very passionate about - and that of course has an impact on my teaching - is connecting different aspects of music and helping you become a rounded musician. A lot of people take more naturally to reading, memorising, playing by ear, OR to improvising (with or without any given information), but that doesn't mean that they are not all learnable skills by any of the types of people I just mentioned. Every single one of these aspects can be learned. And I can help you with that. You can be the person that can play from sheet music, but also make up an arrangement on the spot based on a song you have heard, or even make up your own music, based on given chords, a given mood or maybe just completely freely. We will use music theory and solfege (a method to train your hearing to be able to identify notes in relation to a key) to achieve that, because that is part of what will help you make sense of everything that is going on in the music. You can think of theory as similar to reading, speaking and writing words and sentences as opposed to individual letters. So I will help you to recognise and play patterns, understand components of music, identify melodies and chords from hearing, as well as being able to imagine what written music will sound like when played. A lot of these skills develop naturally alongside playing for most people, but we can accelerate the process and make sure it definitely happens for you.

Of course we won't just practice these things separately, but apply them to real music, since that is the actual goal. We will also work on technique, to make sure, not only does it not get in the way of expressing yourself with music, and making the most beautiful sound possible, but also to make sure you stay healthy and free of injuries. When learning an instrument, we naturally have more tension in our body than we need, and not enough in other places, before finding ways to make the movement more efficient. This is one thing that a one-to-one teacher is a great resource for, because we are trained what to look out for and know exercises and tips to help you get to a painless and sustainable way of playing. Do you ever watch experienced pianists and wonder how they make it look so effortless? Technique is how.

Now with all that being said, my main goal as a teacher is that you have as much joy with music as possible. I will try my very best to make the lessons fun and engaging, and to suggest songs and pieces to you that you will like. I always try to give you several choices to make sure of that. I am also very happy to take suggestions on songs you would like to play and find or make you an arrangement that suits you, if that is in any way possible (which it very often is).