Elements For Success

Oral/Aural Tradition / Learning to Play by Ear:

Students enjoy learning to play songs at the piano from the very first lessons. Folk Songs and simple classical pieces are a rich resource used for this purpose. A beginning piano student is taught to play dozens of songs to help develop their ear as they also gradually learn to read music notation.

Beat Competence: “I Got Rhythm”

The piano is a percussion instrument that can sing. A solid grounding in rhythm and beat competence is essential to becoming a pianist. Steady Beat and Rhythm are taught from the very beginning. 

Solfege (Do, Re, Mi) Sight Singing

The European system of “Solfege” syllables is taught in a modified way as students progress.

I had the privilege of studying Solfege from a master teacher, Dr. Matthew Colucci at The New School of Music in Philadelphia as a boy. This class gave me a music grounding that I have relied on now for many years. Solfege is standard academic fair at all American and European University schools of music and was certainly a requirement in my years at The Boston Conservatory of Music.