Will Coyle's Piano School, Surry Hills in Surry Hills, New South Wales, Australia | Musician

Will Coyle's Piano School, Surry Hills

Locality: Surry Hills, New South Wales, Australia

Phone: +61 414 012 626

Address: 420 Bourke St Surry Hills 2010 Surry Hills, NSW, Australia

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19.01.2022 This is Anastasia, here practising a prelude by Bach, in C minor (BWV 999). Anastasia has been learning the piano for about four years. Like most of my younger students, from the outset Anastasia has favoured memorisation over reading she tends to look down at her hands, and to watch and feel the patterns in the keyboard, and to associate these patterns with how they sound as they are played, rather than to look up at the page. Because this has been her preference, and beca...use pianists tend to play more musically when they play from memory, it has only been in the last year once she had already learned how to play that Anastasia and I have begun to focus on her reading. In this excerpt Anastasia is looking up at chord names that I have added to the score, and these chords which she had already learned to recognise on the keyboard allow her to be less dependent on notation to get through the work. See more

18.01.2022 This is Zachary, playing a "Menuet II" (KV 6/IIIb), by Mozart. Zachary has been learning the piano now for about four years. In this piece, his focus is on maintaining the prominence of the right hand's melody, particularly in the syncopated first four bars. Notice that whenever Zachary plays a loud note, his wrist is descending, or "following through," rather like how a ground stroke ought to have a long follow-through in tennis. This generates a warmer tone than pushing away from the keyboard (in which the wrist is raised as the note is heard), and it also releases tension from the muscles of the forearm.

13.01.2022 This is Isaac, he's been learning the piano for about three years. Here Isaac is playing No. 15 from Carl Czerny's 24 Five Finger Studies (Opus 777). Isaac is slowly working through the book, he has learned every second or third piece from 1 - 15, and he will keep on with this work as long as he is interested. If he stays with these pieces, Isaac will end up with a skill set of around Grade 2 or 3. Over the years I have found these 24 pieces to be invaluable for teaching. Thi...s is for several reasons: Firstly, Czerny restricts his right hand melodies in this work to the first five degrees of the major scale. This ensures that students do not need to consider fingering while reading, and it also means that students begin to associate fingers with degrees of the scale, which means that melodies can be learnt by first being sung in solfege (which also takes pressure off reading). Students are sent home with a recording of the melody in solfege, and they are asked to listen to the recording while they are away from the piano, and to follow the melody with their finger on the page. By the second or third week they can sight-sing the melody unaided by the recording, and their ability to play the melody soon follows. Similarly, Czerny teaches his left hand accompaniments by building up a repertoire of chords by function (i.e. chords I, IV and V, for example), and these chords are given the same fingering regardless of the key that any particular piece is in (the first six pieces are in C major, the next six are in G, then in D, and then finally in F). This linking of fingering to chord function develops an awareness of the role of chords within keys, which takes pressure off reading, and aids memorisation. See more

11.01.2022 This is Max, who has been playing the piano for about four years, here practising "Arabesque," by Burgmüller. In this recording Max is concentrating on keeping his tempo stable this allows him to show that the piece is divided into sections (as each four bars, for example, are then as close as possible to being of equal length).

10.01.2022 This is Finn, he has been sharing classes with Max (previous post) since they both commenced lessons about four years ago. Here Finn is practising Kabalevsky's Étude in A minor (Opus 27 No. 3). Like Max, Finn is focusing on keeping his tempo as stable as possible this increases the immediacy of his chord changes. Notice that Finn prepares his last four chords by first lifting his wrists: this allows his wrists to continue descending after each chord has sounded (a technique mentioned in Zachary's post). This "following through" serves to release physical tension in the forearms. Also, it allows for his wrists to accelerate through each chord, which ensures that energy is propelled downwards into the piano. Finn thereby creates a tone that is both warm and strong.

08.01.2022 This is Alex practising "It's About the Rose."

08.01.2022 In this video I am practising Bach's Fugue in G major (BWV 884). Initially, I am focusing on the introduction of the three voices that comprise this fugue, and from then on I am attempting to ensure that each of these three voices is equally prominent.

01.01.2022 Here Anastasia is studying a further piece by J.S. Bach, this time the Prelude in C major from Book I of his Wohltemperierte Klavier (BWV 846). It is always good to see a student getting through one of the easier pieces of this book, because then they might be tempted to try more difficult ones and the Wohltemperierte Klavier is a piano course in its own right: these pieces can take a student all the way to university and studying them often serves as a welcome relief from scales and arpeggios and exams.

01.01.2022 This is James, he's been having lessons now for about two years. Recently, he and I have been trying to ensure that his melodies are louder than his chords. This can be difficult to achieve, since the strings in the treble of the piano are shorter, and therefore tend to be quieter, than those in the bass.