Home Piano Lessons in the Crouch End, Muswell Hill and Finsbury Park vicinity
Hello there, I'm Alvin.
I am a piano teacher offering lessons at your home. You can also have remote lessons via Zoom, Skype or Google Meet.
I travel to Crouch End, Hornsey, Muswell Hill, Islington, Finsbury Park, Highgate and Wood Green. The range of postcodes I cover includes N4, N5, N6, N8, N10, N17, N19 and N22.
You'll learn to play adaptations of well-known music, across genres such as classical, pop, rock, anime, metal and jazz. The music you'll play in lessons is familiar, current, and at a suitable level of difficulty.
You'll also learn how to improvise your own version of existing songs.
If you like, you can prepare for
Why Learn the Piano With Me?
You'll learn positively, with music tailored to your abilities.
We'll work from music that you can play and move on to more difficult repertoire as your skills and concentration improve. The focus is positive, on what you can do and what you can aim for.
You'll develop your current piano skills so you can continually play harder, impressive-sounding music. I'll also show you how you can improvise your own versions of your favourite songs.
You'll get to play music you like.
Piano playing requires co-ordination of six or seven independent tasks, and it is always reassuring and satisfying to know you are playing the correct notes.
Playing songs you are familiar with also helps with improve the reading of musical notation, because you'll have already have an idea of what the music should sound like, and hence know what the written notes, rhythmic symbols and expression marks are trying to convey.
In my own time, I write out and arrange your favourite songs at a suitable level of difficulty for you to play, at no extra charge to you.
Do you know any other piano teacher who does that on a regular basis?
I charge reasonable rates and am flexible.
My rates vary depending on your location, but they are comparable to rates charged by local music services for children's piano lessons in schools. The current rate charged by Haringey Music Service is £33.00 per hour for the academic year 2020-21.
In some cases - such as when siblings have lessons, and if I'm already in your area - I charge the school lesson rate, or less !
I teach in areas such as Crouch End, Hornsey, Finsbury Park, Muswell Hill and Wood Green, and my travel costs are shared among students. Please contact me to ask - my rates are frequently lower than most teachers who do home visits.
I have no cancellation fees.
I am particularly understanding if you need to cancel at short notice (e.g. due to child illness). Or maybe you've suddenly remembered about another appointment - as long as I've not appeared at your doorstep, that's fine!
Other music schools or tutors may require you to give 24 hours' notice for cancelling a lesson. I don't - no one plans an illness in advance! - and I understand that life sometimes just gets a little bit complicated for our liking!
Need a recap?
Music you like
A positive learning process
Very reasonable rates
No cancellation fees, no contract, no notice period!
Today's blog snippet - see more in the Posts section!
Ludwig van Beethoven, the bridge between the Classical and Romantic periods in music, was born sometime in 1770. The exact date of his birth is strangely shrouded in mystery, and may have at times been masked. It is recorded that he was baptised on 17 Dec 1770, and is likely to have been born on the previous day, but for years Beethoven believed himself to have been born in 1772. Some music historians believe his father went around telling people that in order to make them believe the boy was actually younger than he was ... and hence seem to be a child prodigy.
Beethoven often enjoyed improvising tunes on the violin, much to the annoyance of his father who often berated him for not playing according to the score. He was often admonished for "scratching silly tunes" on the violin and warned he might not amount to much if he continued to do so. How wrong Dad would turn out to be! The path to mastery of any skill must past through creativity, and on the piano, for example, experimenting around - playing some sections of the music which different touches, expressions, and notes to what is notated - is a form of learning, that complements the reading of notated music. It allows the pianist to learn not just to produce different effects using different touches, but also how these effects change the music on a larger level. What must appear to be mucking around is learning on a different kind of level.
The young Beethoven toured Vienna, playing the works of Bach in salons for the Viennese nobility. The prediction of Count Waldstein, who had earlier told him he might receive the musical spirit of Mozart if he worked hard enough, seemed to be coming true, as Beethoven established himself as a piano virtuoso.
Beethoven's personal life was tinged with struggling deafness, and he wrote that had he not felt the need to still bring forth the art within himself, he would have ended his life during a retreat to Heiligenstadt, outside Vienna in 1802. These words have come to form what is known by historians as the Heiligenstadt Testament, and the musical works written after these reflect the deep introspection, emotional struggles and turmoils of an artist struggling to get to terms with his deteriorating condition.
Was the Moonlight Sonata written during this period? Rhetorical question.
Interestingly enough, the haunting piano piece, which has become arguably one of the top four well-known Beethoven works - the quartet is rounded up by Fur Elise, Ode to Joy and the Fifth Symphony - was simply known as the piano sonata in C sharp minor. The Moonlight title was later coined by the poet Ludwig Rellstab, who said that the slow first movement, unusual in piano sonatas, reminded him of the moon shining on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.
Yoko Ono once experimented with playing the chords of Moonlight Sonata differently. John Lennon described how the improvisation subsequently gave him the idea for the Beatles hit Because. Midway through the song, the guitar riffs played show the influence of Beethoven a century and a half later on a modern work.
Improvisation? It's not that bad a thing to do.