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 I’d like to address a concern that comes up when someone is about to spend a lot of money, and that is, how do I avoid choosing an instrument that is quickly going to become obsolete? It’s a valid concern. A keyboard is a big investment and in our day in age when innovation happens pretty quickly and a lot of technology is seen as essentially disposable, it’s natural to worry that you’re about to throw your money away on something that won’t be usable in a few years.

So let’s talk about this. How do we choose a keyboard that has some longevity?

If you’ve been following my channel for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed that I love talking about music theory. One of the reasons I love talking about music theory so much is because of how personally beneficial it was for me to learn.

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.

Let’s get you comfortable using the sustain pedal!

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to use the pedal, including an exercise that will help you learn to use it smoothly even if you’ve never used it before!

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.

This week, I’m trying something new and adding song tutorials to my social media. I’m doing this because I notice a lack of online piano tutorials for true beginners to piano. Most people who create video tutorials for piano move through their songs pretty quickly, assuming the viewer has some background in piano. They don’t explain each step very clearly and I felt that left a lot of learners behind!

Here’s a collection of tutorials that are written for true beginners. Even if you’ve never played a song before, you should be able to follow along.