Tag: piano lessons

  • The bass player

    When I first went to Berklee College of Music, it was with the firm intention to learn jazz. In my family, in France, it was accepted as a noble style of music. So, I learnt jazz. It was not an easy feat, I was practicing 10 to 12 hours a day the basics then the…

  • Top of the mountain, bottom of the pit.

    There is a harsh reality in the music world. It goes like this: one day you’re being adored and cheered by loving fans and the next booed and driven off the stage by rotten tomatoes. Come to think of it, that might be the fate of every job. As a matter of fact, every person…

  • Difficult performance

    I purposely took a misleading title. Why? Because I can, that’s my blog, I do what I want. So there. One might think that the difficult performance refers to someone on stage having a hard time for reason X, Y or Z. But no, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the spectator, in…

  • The chariot

    There is a practice in France that college students use to pass their exams (or not). It’s called “Une charette”, a chariot in English. It goes like this. We have a student, someone who is in first, second or whatever years of college and is enjoying the newly found independence from parental supervision. That student,…

  • Breakthrough

    Love the English language. Breakthrough! What a word, what shortcut! Anyway, let’s move on. It happened to me twice in my life. Every time, I didn’t feel it, didn’t even realize it. I couldn’t tell you the day or the time. Just one day I’m on one side of the wall, the next, I’m on…

  • The bath tub

    There was the soccer World cup happening this month. And France lost. To Argentina. All right, I’ll get something out of the way immediately: I did not and I’ve never followed any sport, including soccer. Argentina is a special country: People dance in the streets. Let’s say you’re in Buenos Aires, the capital. All of…

  • Concluding 2022

    With all that is going on in the world, I am almost ashamed to confess that 2022 was a great year for me. Through my job as a piano and drum teacher I have met some incredible people and discovered the depth and charm of the ones I already knew. Ever since I’ve changed my…

  • Beyond all

    When you play something on an instrument you want to achieve something. It’s a natural thing because the instrument itself will never give you what you want. It will only be capable of compromise. Wait! By that I mean YOU have to do the compromise, both with your body and it’s limit, with your ear…

  • The discovery.

    When I was expecting my first child, my mum told me something strange. “You’ll see, she said, you’re going to rediscover the world through her eyes. Everything will seem fresh and untouched because of her.” I wasn’t sure what she meant until I started spending time with my daughter, then later on, my son when…

  • Telling the story.

    I think that teaching is like telling a story. If someone wants to learn the double stroke roll on the drums or the I-IV-V on the piano, it is my job to make it comprehensible and easy to grasp. And I don’t know any better way to do that other than story telling. In our…