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Recently I went on a camping trip with my mom. My mom loves camping and is always appreciative of being in nature. This makes her a lot of fun to camp with. When I got home from the trip, I was inspired to compose a new piano piece dedicated to … Read More
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From an early age, I found joy in making music and desired to spend my life doing it. That desire came entirely from inside of me. Similarly, one thing I love about teaching piano adults is that they too, in my experience, only take lessons for personal reasons. As I … Read More
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I have a confession. Though I am a highly capable sight reader and enjoy helping my students learn to read music, as a performer I often prefer piano improvisation over reading sheet music. For example, last year I did about a dozen solo piano shows, including a luncheon, a private … Read More
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If you have ever felt overwhelmed or discouraged about sight reading at the piano, you are not alone. Many piano students come to me saying their dream is to sit down at the piano and read music of songs they love by sight. Yet relatively few piano learners actually learn … Read More
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The summer I was twelve, I started taking piano lessons with Gail. Gail lived a few miles from our home in Concord, California. When I met Gail, she had some kind of medical problem with her throat. She told me she had to speak more softly than usual. This translated … Read More
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Recently, we had a book launch celebration for “Play Piano: A Learner’s Guide to Playing, Reading, and Creating Music.” It was a pleasant Saturday evening in April in downtown Sacramento. My piano students on the “Book Launch Committee” played a critical role in helping the event take place. Amy, who … Read More
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The notion of “talent” often confuses or discourages piano learners. Talent is the idea of God-given advantages, the kind that seem to exist for four year old children who play Mozart sonatas at the piano like virtuosos. Common knowledge suggests that people who achieve greatness were fated to become that … Read More
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The world of piano learning is vast and multi-faceted. Piano learners have many options for how they learn to play piano, as well as what they play and the source of information they use to play it. The traditional piano lesson is focused almost completely around reading sheet music. This … Read More
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Welcome to ThePianoLearner.com! I am so glad you stopped by. Since this is the first post I have written for the site, I will start by defining what I mean by the term “piano learner”. A piano learner is anyone who uses (or wants to use) the piano (or electric … Read More
