Recently we’ve been talking about the chords within any major key signature and how you can use them to create chord progressions that express different feelings. Today I’d like to expand on this to talk about some of the variations to the standard chords that musicians often use to express even more emotions in their music.

I think most of us have felt the pressure to be a good student and practice every day. Some people find the routine of daily practice to be really motivating. But I was never one of those people. I had to find my own ways to get motivated to practice, and today I’d like to share what I’ve learned in case it helps you!

If you're interested in gaining more independence in reading piano music, there is one skill I recommend you focus on that will catapult you to the next level -- and that is learning how to read rhythm. Learning how to identify the rhythm of the notes you’re supposed to play is going to unlock your confidence in a way that you can’t imagine! Today, I’d like to explain why this skill is so important, why hard for beginners to approach, and what you can do to gain your first steps in rhythmic independence :)

Playing along with your favourite songs is the best way to learn piano, but it can be difficult to get started if you don’t know what to do with your hands.

Today I’m sharing a really simple piano accompaniment pattern that’s easy to learn but has a huge range of applications if you want to play music by ear.

Today’s post is inspired by a viewer's questions about the relationship between music theory and creativity: “Is music theory a set of rules to follow? Will learning music theory stifle our creativity? How do you explain famous musicians who never learned music theory but still create great music?”

I thought these were such great questions because they really get to the heart of what we’re doing as musicians. What are the rules for, if not to be followed?

There’s a point in each of my piano students’ music journey where I notice their questions shift from how music works to why music works the way it does.

The how questions are the easy ones. They’re just questions about mechanics. How to build a major scale, how to build a good rhythm.

But once my students start to understand the mechanics of how music works, then they ask why it works that way. Why does the leading tone draw us to the tonic? Why is the dominant chord so strong in every key signature?

Today’s post is a response to a question I got on YouTube, asking me how much a person should expect to spend on a new keyboard.

I totally understand how the world of electric pianos can be overwhelming — I feel it, too! But over the years I’ve noticed there are some basic considerations you can keep in mind to help you make a decision that’s right for you.

Piano lessons are a really interesting educational setting to me.

On the one hand, with the vast history of music to explore, students objectively have the greatest choice of options in terms of what they could learn, compared to other educational topics.

And yet, out of all the educational settings I have taught in (a lot!), piano learners feel the most limited in what they are allowed to learn because of their expectations of what piano lessons are supposed to look like.

My piano students often know they want to give up on a song weeks before they build up the courage to tell me! Often the reason they hesitate to admit how they’re feeling about a song is because they don’t want to appear undisciplined. There’s a longstanding tradition of suffering through piano lessons in order to “get better”. No pain, no gain — right?

Well, no.

I think there are certain kinds of pain that are actually really detrimental to growing musicianship, and that’s what I’d like to talk about today.