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!
Occasionally I am asked by friends about their young children starting piano lessons, and when would be the best time for the child to do so.
Most music services recommend that children who wish to start piano lessons do so from Year 2 onwards, although bearing in mind this could result in a recommended age range varying nearly over a year - a child born in early September would be eleven months older than a child born in August, despite both being in Year 2 - a better benchmark might be to start from about age six and a half.
Any sooner before that, and the child's hands might not have grown enough to comfortably accommodate a range of five notes, or possess enough strength to depress a note with enough conviction.
Concentration is also a factor. A young child may not be able to concentrate for more than twenty or thirty minutes at a time.
But even then age is not always an accurate gauge of ability or maturity, considering children mature at different rates. So how can we gauge if children are ready to embark on formal music lessons, if not by age or school year?
I sometimes answer that the a young child is ready to begin formal lessons when they have started to ride a bicycle confidently and can be trusted to ride without any adult intervention.
That is not a flippant answer. Riding a bicycle involves the coordination of several actions - your feet have to pedal, you have to make fine adjustments to your balance while the back of your arms and shoulders contract or relax in order to control the handlebars in order to determine the direction of the bicycle. It is not dissimilar to the coordination of muscle groups in playing the piano, although it may be argued that the action of playing the piano requires perhaps a slightly different form of specificity in the fingers.
The coordination of different muscle groups is only part of the equation. Another part of the equation is the interpretation of visual data and translating it into an action by controlling the muscle groups.
Imagine if a child is riding a bicycle on the pavement. What happens if they see a pedestrian coming towards them? Without stopping, are they able to gauge the intended direction of the approaching person, and chart out a path to navigate around, without losing balance?
And if the intended path of the bicycle is slightly inclined, or cobbled, is the child able to assimilate the physical from the muscles, pass on the information to the brain, and in return receive more mental directions to fine tune the existing movement? Are they able to do what scientists define as "making feedback part of the mental loop"?
And can the child physically do all that - maintain the control of the bicycle while managing that slight feeling of apprehension and hesitancy at having to do some mental calculations and estimation?
In aiming for fluency in playing the piano, your eyes have to scan fractionally ahead of what your fingers are playing at the moment, so that by the time the fingers press the keys, the visual information - what notes each hand has to play, which notes go together, how loudly or softly they have to be played and with what kind of touch - all that information has been processed by the mind and a plan of action has been considered and communicated to the muscle groups; all in the short frame of time.
When is the best age for a child to learn to ride a bike? Every child starts learning at a different age, and some take to it better and learn more quickly than others, but there's nothing to say a child should start at a certain age or attain a certain level by a certain age. Every child is different and learning must be tailored to the child. And often you will see a slightly anxious parent behind, arching his our her back trying to stabilise the bike as the child pedals, offering feedback - which is sometimes not useful because the child is already struggling to process all his or her own internal feedback. The additional instructions, no matter how well-intended, also add extra external layers of information that have to be comprehended and translated into action.
So when is a child ready to start piano lessons? Perhaps if you were considering piano lessons for your child, observe how he or she is in other activities that require the same level of physical and mental coordination.