Listening Zone (free trial)

Piano Teaching

Discover a world of great music...

With so many piano composers and styles to choose from, students are encouraged to explore the repertoire as widely but always to select music that interests them. This approach helps sustain each student's musical interest but inspires the development of new skills and techniques along the way leading to great musical accomplishment.

Working with such a wide range of students at different ages and levels is both rewarding and invaluable: to appreciate how students learn and develop across a much wider plane and the challenges faced at advanced levels provides perspective and understanding, and help shape the learning programmes of those just starting out.

Establishing the basics

Taking your first steps as a beginner may be daunting but with a carefully-selected programme of attractive and enticing pieces, and supportive exercises to develop your technique, you will soon have the basis of a musical foundation on which to build.

We will start by learning how to sit at the piano and the importance of adopting a good hand position. After a few simple warm-up exercises to get some mobility in the fingers, we will learn our first piece together. This will be shown to you without the music, initially, to help you develop a better aural sense of the music and to make your first piece more accessible.

You will, of course, still be taught how to read music: a vital skill that gives pupils the confidence to discover new music independently; however, approaching a new piece without the music helps new students actually play something meaningful at their first lesson without being overwhelmed with reading and playing simultaneously.

To develop rhythmic awareness and listening skills further, a number of duets intended for beginners will be introduced. But, please don't worry about this: many beginners find the playing of duets really enjoyable and are surprised by just how good the ensemble sounds! Having worked with many beginners, rest assured, we will find the one that is right for you.

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IMJMusic

piano | theory | accompaniment

Est. 2000

Listening Zone

Free trial

The Listening Zone allows IMJMusic students the chance to discover some great piano pieces: from elegant Classical tunes to modern compositions, all carefully selected from over twenty years of teaching, and performed by Ian M J Pickett.

Once you become a student you'll have access to over 400 recordings, catalogued according to difficulty across eight grades, and a separate Repertoire List with over 800 pieces providing further recommendations. As a prospective student, you can still explore some of the recordings available in the Listening Zone below - this will give you a chance to appreciate the styles and composers you're likely to encounter as you develop your piano skills.

(N.B. Only a limited number of pieces are available in the trial version and each piece is limited to a 30-second preview.