AS  MUSICIAN  &  PIANO  TEACHER

BACKGROUND

I studied music at The University of Huddersfield where I developed a deep interest in piano performance, historical performance practice, and piano pedagogy.
 
I've since focussed these interests toward teaching the piano as well as continuing to research techniques on effective long term learning.
 
My research on this is put to work in an ongoing series of piano tuition books for the beginner and intermediate standards. 

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PHILOSOPHY  ON  MUSIC  EDUCATION

I'm an advocate for music to be taught and experienced as a broad, rich, explorative journey, both for children and adults.  By encouraging independent and creative thought, problem solving and curiosity, it is my hope that developing a love of playing the piano in all its forms will remain with a pupil throughout their whole lives.
 
 

MY WRITING

Reading music is not difficult... as long as the learning of it is presented in an intuitive way.

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Today, the number of piano tuition books on the market is colossal.  After using some of them with my beginner pupils, I was surprised that learning to read piano music was presented as such a narrow and clumsy process. Upon noticing that some aspects caused the learner to struggle with reading, I decided to tackle this by writing my own tuition book.

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The first book starts out as a practical guide on how to recognise basic note patterns, and then turns them into clusters of finger movements.  Individual note names are presented initially as anchor points for different hand positions on the keyboard.  By keeping the learner's mind engaged with regular positional changes, combined with pattern recognition, reading music doesn't become the challenge that many teachers today seem to see it as being.

This results in a beginner being quickly up-and-running with the basics, so they can then draw on the advantages that reading music can bring.  It opens the door to start exploring the huge and varied piano repertoire, and forms a solid foundation to progress further.