adult man learning piano in parkIt doesn’t matter whether you have ever touched a keyboard before, or what age you are, the wonderful world of piano music is within your reach.

Please contact me now to find out more about my piano lessons for adults

My name is Ian Flint and I am a pianist and piano teacher with over 25 years professional experience in music. For more information about me and my musical experience please see the about section of this website.

Piano Lessons For Adult Beginners

Too old to learn the piano? Never!!

Yes, it’s true that children can have a greater facility to learn some aspects of playing the piano than adults. However, my experience with adult beginners shows time and time again that certain intellectual faculties that develop only with maturity, coupled with an eagerness to learn, mean that adult progress is usually rewardingly rapid.  

In your first few lessons, you will learn about the geography of the keyboard and you will start reading music. Before long you will be able to play simple melodies with chords; it’s at this stage that you really start to feel you are making music.

Thereafter we’ll structure your musical journey according to whether or not you aim to follow a graded exam syllabus, and if there are specific parts of the repertoire you would like to emphasize. As a piano teacher I’m very aware that if students are enthusiastic about the music they are playing, this can dramatically enhance their progress.

Piano Lessons For Adult ‘Returners’

We all know people who started learning an instrument as a child, let it drift and then as adults regretted giving it up.

If you are in that category, and are thinking about starting piano lessons again, be positive! The ‘riding a bike’ syndrome will probably kick in, and you are likely to surprise yourself by how much you can remember and recapture, once you rediscover the triggers to your piano playing. And with all the life experience you have accumulated along the way, you will probably find that a re-engagement with the range of emotions that music conveys is all the more meaningful second time around.

Piano Lessons For Experienced Classical Pianists

If you are already an accomplished pianist, and especially if you are ambitious about your piano playing (whether as a career or hobby), some of the aspects we are likely to concentrate on are:

  • ensuring you use your hands and arms as effectively as possible, to achieve the greatest variety and beauty of sonority
  • showing you techniques to help project a melody with one part of the hand while keeping the accompanying figuration in the same hand suitably subdued
  • exploring the expressive potentials of rhythmic suppleness, both within and across beats
  • developing your velocity and dexterity (often using straightforward but powerfully targeted exercises) for passage work, arpeggiated figures, ornaments, chords, leaps etc.
  • refining the precision of your pedalling (including, where appropriate, half-pedal and flutter pedal), to achieve optimum resonance without blurring
  • assessing the over-arching structure of each piece, and how the phrases and sections relate to each other, in order to build a cohesive and compelling interpretation
  • analysing the harmonic language of your pieces, to deepen your understanding and thus enhance the communicative power of your performances
  • investigating the biographical and artistic context of the works you are playing, to cultivate a richer response to the composer’s likely intentions
  • selecting repertoire that shows you at your best if required for audition, exam or concert purposes, while balancing this with other works that are ideally suited to develop your overall pianistic abilities  
  • For more details, please see the ‘Classical Piano Lessons’ section of this website.

Piano Lessons For Music Producers

This is a growth area, and of course there is a huge variety of genres within music production. However, almost everyone working in this sector can benefit from a greater understanding of chords and how they function together. In your first lesson with me, we would establish what type(s) of music you are working with, enabling me to define what chords and progressions would be of maximum relevance to you. The ongoing lessons would be structured in accordance with this. You would immediately be putting your new theoretical knowledge into practice by learning to play these chords on the piano, and see how they relate to melodies. We will agree the extent to which you need or wish to develop more generic keyboard skills, such as independence of fingers and hands, agility, sound quality etc. The key tenet is that the lessons would be flexible, tailor-made for your individual needs and aims.

Your Piano Lessons With Me

Whether you are a complete beginner or you have played the piano previously, I will quickly assess how best to develop your physical approach to the keyboard. Even if new to the piano, you’ll soon enjoy making a richly resonant sound across the whole dynamic range, one of the most important ingredients in producing an emotionally communicative performance.  In general, adults are more interested than children in music theory and history, so I tend to give extra attention to these elements in piano lessons with my adult students. Alternatively, you can study these subjects in separate lessons with me (please see the ‘Music Theory’ and ‘Music Appreciation’ sections of this website). There’s no question that an understanding of the building blocks of music, and the compositional context for each piece we play, gives tangible extra dimensions to our performances.

Rates

 £70 per hour; £55 for 45 minutes. Durations longer than an hour are possible for advanced students. There’s a small extra charge, to cover travel distance and time, if the lessons are in your home.

To explore further, please call me on 07917 363376 or email ian@ianflint.com

Please contact me now to find out more about my piano lessons for adults

“The excellent soloist was Ian Flint”

Sunday Times Magazine

“Ian is a very accomplished pianist, and a highly effective, insightful and enjoyable piano teacher. It is a pleasure to be taught by him.”

Anthony Browne, Chief Executive, British Bankers’ Association

“I came back to learning piano about a year ago after not playing for more than 20 years and didn’t know what to expect in terms of how much I could realistically improve. Under Ian’s patient guidance the change in my playing has been beyond anything I imagined possible. Ian’s approach to technique, practicing and performing is intuitive and very effective and has given me the confidence to tackle more and more challenging pieces believing that with his help I will get there eventually. I would highly recommend Ian for anyone wanting to improve their playing, whatever age or ability.”

Matt Lilley, Adult Piano Student

“I’ve been having lessons with Ian for around 9 months and have found him to be a patient, intelligent and above all effective teacher. I am delighted with the results and would have no hesitation in recommending him to learners of any level of ability.”

Alex McGuire, Adult Piano Student

“Ian has helped me to return to the piano after many years, great methods, really patient and very persistent – I would recommend him whole-heartedly.”

Paula Nascimento, Adult Returner