Lessons
A lesson overview...
Lessons are ideally weekly, and you can choose how long you would like it to be. If you need to juggle lesson times around work, family and other commitments please get in touch and we will do our best to accommodate you.
Emily's Lessons
30 Minutes £20.00
45 Minutes £30.00
1 Hour £40.00
Katie's Lessons
30 Minutes £16.50
45 Minutes £24.75
1 Hour £33.00
What will I be playing?
Some of our pupils play the piano because they like to have a fun hobby amongst the stresses of every day life. Others are keen to take piano exams and progress through the grades.
When you start, we will talk about what you would like to learn and what your aims are, and from that, we can tailor our teaching to your needs and requests.
If you are not sure whether it is for you, then come and have a taster lesson and find out. There is absolutely no obligation to sign up.
In 2020 we launched the Vivace Arts Academy Piano Course Books and Piano Exercises that have become integral to our teaching material.
Use the Link to our Youtube video promoting our books
We email invoices monthly or half termly or you can pay weekly if preferred. (Payment via bacs). Parents are most welcome to sit in the lesson or to drop off/pick up if preferred. We would always encourage parents to get involved to provide praise and motivation and to be able to support their child when doing practise at home.
It is most helpful if you ensure you are on time to your lessons to make sure we have the allocated time. Please appreciate that we will not be able to over run if you are late. If you cancel the lesson on the day we are unable to refund or reschedule it, but if you let us know in advance, we can reschedule for another day.
Adult Learners
We thoroughly enjoy teaching adults! So many adult students come to us expressing how they wish they had learnt to play the piano when they were younger. As an adult it is often hard to be a ‘beginner’ at something, whereas children are quite used to it but from our experience, adults learners have several advantages;
- Longer attention span
Piano is a focused activity, and for children it can demand a great deal of concentration and will-power to focus for even a 30 minute lesson. Adults are able to focus for longer periods of time. - Patience and self motivation
Unfortunately we do not become concert pianists overnight! It takes time, practise and plenty of patience as we gradually develop our skills. Adults have a better appreciation of how progress happens over time and apply self motivation to keep moving forwards, step by step. - Knowledge and experiences
As adults we have so many songs that we have grown up with, or makes us think of a loved one, or enjoy sitting back and relaxing to. Adults learners get sheer pleasure in reminiscing through a nostalgic favourite song they are now able to play themselves on the piano.
Understanding Music involves lots of underlying mechanics and theoretical concepts that can often be complicated to grasp and understand but many adults comprehend them quicker than children.
To any adult that it is contemplating learning the piano, my best advice is – go for it! There is absolutely no age limit on the pleasure that is making music.
Children
Playing music is recognised by so many as a positive contribution to a child’s development, boosting their:
- Visual skills
- Motor skills
- Auditory skills
- Increasing memory capacity
- Social skills
Children that learn music are often more successful in their academic studies as a result, “a research team exploring the link between music and intelligence reported that music training is far superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children’s abstract reasoning skills, the skills necessary for learning math and science.” (Rauscher, F.H., Shaw, G.L., Levine, L.J., Wright, E.L., Dennis, W.R. and Newcomb, R.L. (1997) ‘Music training causes long-term enhancement of preschool children’s spatial-temporal reasoning’, Neurol. Res., 19(1), 2-8.) Learning music also helps children’s confidence to grow as they unlock the door to expressing themselves in a new art form.
Practise
Practise is fundamental to improvement. In my weekly lesson with you, I will do my utmost to provide guidance on how to improve, using a range of studies and programmes. The next step is to apply what you have learnt when practising at home. So many times I will hear a pupil comment on how much more they are enjoying their song because they’ve practised it a lot. They start to feel more confident as their piece becomes easier to play.
I would recommend doing lots of short practises each week instead of one or two long practises. When sitting down to play, it is important to get the most out of your times. Here are some tips to help you practise your best!
Practise Tips
- Understand what you need to improve and have a plan of action
- Make sure you relax and warm up before you begin
- Choose a tricky section to go through thoroughly and thoughtfully
- Take your time! It is better to play something perfectly and slowly, then really fast but very messy
- If you get stuck, take a break and try it again another time
- Balance working on new material with playing some old pieces that you have learnt before or some easy ones you enjoy
Exams
For some pupils, the drive to learn songs they know and love is ample motivation to continue to work hard and practise their instrument. For others, the music exams offer a target and recognition of the level they have achieved. Whichever you are, we think that both are perfectly valid as they will both push you to develop.
For the pupils that do wish to take exams, we are registered with the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music. The ABRSM exam board assess over 600,000 candidates a year over 90 countries around the world. Their exam syllabuses are eclectic in style and demand a breadth of skills and studies for the candidates. Since 2020 ABRSM now also offers Performance Grades, filming your pieces at home or with me and submitting the video to the examboard for assessment.