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!
It has been said of Frederic Chopin that he epitomised the typical Romantic artist - temperamental, withdrawn, talented, and doomed to a premature death. This is probably an over-generalisation of the man whose influence on the piano genre is inescapable. There are many landmarks along the way of learning the piano: Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars, Ode to Joy, Chopsticks, Fur Elise, Moonlight Sonata, The Entertainer, and Chopin.
Chopin began composing before he was seven, and made his first public appearances as a pianist soon after. His compositional fervour continued at the Warsaw Conservatory at the age of sixteen, and at nineteen he would debut two of his own piano in Vienna, including the Op 2 Variations which led Robert Schumann to proclaim him a genius.
Upon his return to Warsaw, Chopin made plans embark on a European tour but they never materialised due to tense political situations. There, he immersed himself in the influences of folk music, and the two concertos he composed there are strongly influenced by the Polish mazurka. And when he did leave Poland for Paris to premiere these works, he composed his Revolutionary Study en route, in response to the news that Russia had invaded his homeland.
It is not inconceivable to suggest that this single event had a tremendous effect on Chopin's life and music. His overall music output was largely for the piano, apart from a few works for the flute, and contains a significant number of works drawn from Polish influences, such as mazurkas and polonaises. It is as if Chopin was composing in these forms to keep them alive, as a mark of solidarity, as a musical resistance figure, so that they would never be overwhelmed by external forces. But Chopin's music was not purely overly nationalistic; he also wrote in other forms, chiefly among them the nocturne or "night song", a song form he borrowed from the Irish composer John Field. Whatever genre Chopin composed in, in all his works you will find the hallmark blending of virtuosic skill, Romantic lyricism and subtle heroism that takes you through a range of emotions.
"After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own."
- Oscar Wilde