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!
Born Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe in New Orleans, sometime between 1885 and 1890 - historical records vary) the jazz legend who would later become known as Jelly Roll Morton learned the piano as a boy, and by the age of 12 he was performing in clubs and bars in New Orleans. Morton blended the popular music styles of the time, including ragtime, minstrelsy and blues. To this combination he further infused Caribbean dance rhythms. The resulting amalgamation was an emerging style that would later be known as "jazz."
Morton claimed to have "invented" jazz, which is an unsubstantiated claim, but he was, however, the first prominent musician to notate his music down. Morton's performances, both on piano solo and with backing jazz orchestras, were a blend of composition and improvisation, and devotedly rehearsed. When we listen to jazz music, the improvisations seem flawless, and magically pulled out of thin air; but we forget that underpinning these improvisations are chordal structures either of twelve-bar blues, circle of fifths, or scalic and chromatic chord progressions, which performers have assimilated into their subconscious through repeated practice and exposure to music.
Notating the music - or at least some parts - of classics such as "Black Bottom Stomp", "King Porter Stomp" and "Shoe Shiner's Drag" meant that not only was Morton, in his practices, going over certain sections thoroughly instead of playing different versions each time, he was able to show immediately to others what he was playing, instead of using visual demonstrations and ambiguous statements such as "You do this, then this, then this ... " Anyone wanting to know what Morton had played merely looked at what he had written down, and once that had been learnt, used it as a basis for improvisation.
We often associate jazz with free improvisation and playing by ear, but we should realise that these concepts arise as a by-product of theoretical understanding and practice, and not rely on them as starting points. What does this mean? To get better at playing the piano, learn to read music instead of proclaiming only to play by ear as if it were a badge of honour - this would allow you to access lots of music, which would in turn develop your harmonic skills and give you the basis for improvisation.