FAQ's

How much do you charge?

I charge £25/hr (£20/hr for full-time students).

My rates reflect my:

  • qualifications (an MA Mus from Cambridge)
  • experience (five years of teaching, playing in a jazz bands, and working as a professional transcriber), and
  • location (Notting Hill)

I'm also the only teacher I know of who's developed a structured way of teaching you how to play by ear and who can teach you the music you want to play from the very start. Going to a cheaper teacher who doesn't know what they're talking about actually works out to be more expensive as you end up wasting months or years practicing incorrectly.


Do you do home visits?

Unfortunately I don't currently have time to travel to students' houses.


What's your availability?

I have slots at these times:

  • Weekdays - 10:00, 15:30, 16:45, 18:00 and 19:15
  • Sundays - 14:15, 15:30 and 16:45

(Note that I schedule lessons 15 mins apart so that it doesn't matter if you're 5-10 mins late.)

Weekday evenings and Sundays are always busy so I can't guarantee availability every week at these times. However, there are often one or two slots free in any given week so I can see you then if you're prepared to be flexible!


Can I book a regular time?

Most of my students book lessons on a week-by-week basis and I don't keep a slot free for someone unless they specifically book it. However, if you'd like to guarantee availability at a regular time you're very welcome to book several weeks in advance, just bear in mind that you'll then need to give me at least 3 days' notice before cancelling a lesson or you'll be liable for the cancellation fee (see below).


What's your cancellation policy?

Okay, no-one ever actually asks this but I've got to put it somewhere.

Basically, if you book a lesson you're preventing me from scheduling another student into that slot, so if you then cancel it at short notice I lose out. Most teachers charge the full lesson fee for this but I think that's unfair as:

  • it doesn't give me any incentive to schedule someone else into that time, and
  • you end up paying something for nothing

So, my cancellation policy is:

  • if you cancel with less than a week's notice you still have to pay the full lesson fee (unless I schedule someone else in, of course, which is quite likely if you cancel early enough)
  • but I'll use the time to transcribe, arrange and make tuition videos of the songs you want to play

In other words a lesson will still go ahead whether you can make it or not, and at least you'll learn something even if you can't.

I think this is a lot fairer than most teachers' cancellation policies, who for the most part can't transcribe music accurately, if at all, and don't have cameras mounted above their pianos!

If I cancel a lesson with less than a week's notice I'll schedule you a free replacement one (it almost never happens).


Do you take cheques?

I take any form of legal tender apart from postage stamps.


Do you teach beginners?

Yes, lots of them! You won't know if you're any good unless you give piano playing a sustained trial.


What should I bring to the first lesson?

Nothing other than that list of the 10+ songs you'd most like to play. You probably don't even need to bring recordings of them as I can probably find them on Spotify or YouTube. Whatever you do, don't spend money on buying scores if you're complete beginner.


What happens in the first lesson?

The first part of the first lesson will be geared towards finding out what your aims are and explaining how I teach. Then hopefully there'll be time for me to show you how to play couple of things.


Do you teach sight reading?

Absolutely! In fact I've developed a way of teaching sight reading to beginners that's considerably faster than the conventional method. I'm not against sight reading, I just think that people should learn to play by ear first so that they're not reliant on sight reading to be able to play at all.

For higher-level sight reading, though, I'd recommend getting lessons from someone like a professional accompanist who sight reads more than I do.


What keyboard should I buy?

First of all, I should say that I am not an expert on pianos or keyboard models so I recommend talking to a shop assistant or reading online reviews! However, I can give a few pointers to beginners.

What you buy really depends on how much you're prepared to spend. Cheapest are keyboards (starting at around £100 new), then digital pianos (starting at £600), and then acoustic pianos (£2500+).

The difference between a keyboard and a digital piano is that a digital piano tries to emulate an acoustic piano as closely as possible, so has weighted keys but very few voices or features. Keyboards, on the other hand, feel "lighter" and tend to have hundreds of voices and built-in beats. If you're buying the instrument as a piano substitute I recommend a digital piano if you can afford one, but if you're more into electronic music and synthesized sounds you'll want a keyboard.

One way of saving money if you're buying a keyboard is to buy a MIDI keyboard, which plugs into your computer. An ordinary keyboard is made up of the keyboard itself, a built-in computer to synthesize sounds, and speakers. A MIDI keyboard is just a keyboard, so you need to plug it into your computer for it to make any sound. If you have a program like Mac's GarageBand you'll be able to much better sounds through your computer than from a cheap keyboard.

A 4-octave (49 key) keyboard should be sufficient for a beginner. For keyboards I recommend going for "name" brands (Yamaha, Kawai, Roland). You can try out Yamaha keyboards at Chappell's, near Tottenham Court Road tube station, and there are other keyboard shops nearby that stock other brands. You can, of course, get keyboards cheaper on the internet but don't tell them I said that.

The only reputable piano shop I knew has gone out of business. Jacques Samuel are probably quite trustworthy but not cheap because of their location. The best value piano shops are obviously outside of Central London but I'm afraid I don't know any to recommend. Just don't, whatever you do, go into Kensington or Chelsea Pianos. I don't want to say anything libellous about them so I'll just express a personal opinion that I don't think you'll get your money's worth at either place (owned by the same person, who, so far as I know, can't play the piano). Also be wary of Steinbach pianos and any piano that's labelled with a brand name that's younger than 5 years old, like the aformentioned shops' ridiculous "Chelsea" piano brand.



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