To be thoroughly familiar with; apprehend clearly the character, nature or subtleties of.

Play Beethoven in less than 3 days !

Learn how to play the piano in one weekend ?

Learn how to play the piano with little or no practicing !

Ever heard or seen these kind of advertisements ?

Bad news……..there is no such a thing !  It is as simple as this :

He or she,  who is NOT willing to practice the piano will NEVER

Enter the universe of piano.  Instead,  you’ll wind up in some dark corner of the galaxy with no fun, no progress on the piano. 

Another good one is :     ”I-DON’T-HAVE-TIME-TO-PRACTICE” .  And then when you look into their weekly schedule you find out they are watching TV  for about 18 hours a week.   So this “barrier” needs to be overcome

 BEFORE  you embark on the journey to the universe of piano.  If not….. Find another hobby.  There is always snowboarding.

Here is one way to overcome this problem is :  

 Decide that you ARE going to practice anyway, no matter what.

1. Change the significance of this barrier into a challenge rather than  a problem.
2.  Start practicing for 30 seconds.
3.  Enjoy this big breakthrough that you have now managed to practice for 30 seconds and then a few days later, practice for one minute and every few days make it a bit longer until you find that you can practice for about one hour a week minimum.   

Now that the   “I-DON‘T-WANT-TO-PRACTICE”  problem and the “ I-SIMPLY-CANNOT SEEM-TO-FIND-THE-TIME-TO-PRACTICE” problem is out of the way, we’ll move forward.

 So here you are !  You are practicing  a lot,  you’re putting your mind to it. You’re dedicated……determined.   You have totally ignored the warning of all your family members :  “There is no such a thing boy. You ain’t got the talent. Besides, you’re already way too old for that. When you want to do such a thing, you must begin at a very young age and practice scales for years !!” So there you are. You are practicing.  While others are having a “good time”  loafing in front of the TV or going out to the pub, you are sweating to move your fingers over that set of keys.  And yet………for all your effort and dedication,  you feel your progress is very little………you are figuring about it. 

We do have a case , your honour, that it could very well be true that there is no such a thing as progress with little or no practicing. The good news however, is that there is such a thing as a lot of progress because of  EFFECTIVE PRACTICING  ! (even if it is not a long period of practicing)   And the way to that,  is UNDERSTANDING.

 PRACTICING WITH UNDERSTANDING. 

The way to let your practicing give you the most possible benefit.  There it is !  I have said it !  There is no stopping now.

Everything you do,  goes better and faster if you  UNDERSTAND  what you’re doing.

I had a mother bringing her son to me asking me to teach him how to get him up to the level of grade  5.   With a face,  glowing with proudness, the mother said :

     “My Jimmy is grade 4 you know !”

So I said :   “Ok! I am totally fine to help your son but…… Let’s see” !……..I gave Jimmy a music piece from the level of grade 4  that he had never seen before.  He couldn’t play it ! Not even after 20 minutes.   So, what the hell had happened ?

Somebody had been teaching  Jimmy to play the pieces with  NO UNDERSTANDING. He had no clue what the notes were.  He had no idea about how to count properly.

 Welcome to the land of piano ignorance!.  Very far….. away from the universe of Piano.

This certificate was worthless.  He couldn’t read and play notes fast at that level. In the end , I had to put him back on exercises of the level of grade 2.  He and his mother both were very annoyed but they started on the lessons anyway and  weeks later were very happy about the results because he started to be able to really understand and read music notation at the level of grade 2.  And then not to long after, he could start doing exercises at the level of grade 3.

The  P.U.T. ( Piano Universe Test)  is done over the phone or skype.  It is  TAILOR-MADE,  which  means , it can go into different directions depending on the answers of the person. The test is constructed in such  a way that it zooms into the weak areas of the person that could have caused the problems.  The result of the test is that we will have isolated the MAIN PROBLEMS that bog the person down in his practicing. 

 The areas that are tested are:

1. The music notation.
2. The music theory.
3. The understanding of how the music theory is linked with the real world of playing music.
4. Personal problems that are so overwhelming that they affect the person’s  playing in a bad way.

Note:   Examples :   A person loves to learn to play the piano but he is in the middle of divorce proceedings with his wife and it’s a very messy scene. His attention is so on these situations that he keeps making mistakes in his piano playing.  Another example :  A person took drugs because some friend had told him that this is good for creativity so he keeps making mistakes on the piano and also a host of other problems caused by the drugs.  I have about 25 years of experience with life coaching to deal with the most urgent situations.

This Point  4 is of course optional.  For privacy or religious reasons, somebody might not want to address his personal problems.  That is OK. In that case, we go over the other points only.  Or, we locate this problem, he realises that this is a real problem getting in the way of his piano study and then he deals with the problem himself.   

5. The speed of awareness levels towards the notes,  the fingers and the keys.

Once upon a time,  there was a man who had to commute with his car to his work in the centre of a big city.  As the years went by, he  became more and more frustrated and angry because of the 70 traffic lights and the 30 traffic jams. Every day he arrived at his work charged up and tired.

 Then one day, he started to study a map of the area and he found another totally obscure road where he encountered only 3 traffic lights and only 6 traffics jams.  He couldn’t believe his luck !

Every day he got to his work and still felt quite rested,  fresh and cheerful.But funny enough, because of the fact that this road was a lot longer, he didn’t win any time at all.  It took him exactly the same amount of time to get to his work.  But it didn’t matter to him;  He felt great during that whole ride and when he arrived at his work every day,  he still kept his good mood.   The problem,  had disappeared because there were not so many  STOPS anymore.

In other words :

We just help you to make it easier to achieve the understanding.  The STOPS in your piano playing,  which are caused by lack of understanding are removed.  The missing bits are filled in and the right SEQUENCE of actions is put in. Does that make any sense ?