Online Piano Teaching Chronicles: Finding my Niche
Busy Adult Piano Students
2026 marks my sixth year teaching online piano lessons - a university keyboard proficiency course, group piano workshops, and individual lessons. I have also had the opportunity to do one-off coaching sessions with undergraduate music majors preparing for recitals, professional piano teachers who want to continue growing as performers, adult amateurs halfway around the world from down under, as well as do online masterclasses for schools in Canada and Mexico. Online Piano Lessons have really broadened the scope for what’s possible with classical music education. Figuring out the technology in order to ensure a high level of quality that rivals in-person instruction has been quite the journey. This process has also inspired discernment on the matter of who I can best serve with this relatively new approach to classical music training. And I have indeed figured out my niche: Busy Adults who want to make space in their lives for (re)learning piano. In the last couple of years, I have had the privilege to teach such students, further strengthening my resolve to reach out to this underserved population of adults out there who need a different, flexible, but still structured and focused approach to learning classical piano.
I don’t really know how to cleanly organize my random teaching stories, so if you’ll permit me, I’m just going to ramble on for a bit and in the interest of protecting privacy, I will refer to these folks by their archetype:
A screenshot of a zoom piano workshop I hosted in late 2021, featuring works by Czerny, Bach, and Eckhardt-Gramatte.
The Nomadic Retiree
In Summer 2024, a friend and colleague going on maternity leave passed on one of her students to me: an older gentleman who had lived a long life as a techie, business owner, pilot, young adult gymnast, and frequent classical concert attendee. And to this day, he still has so much life in him as well as a remarkably sharp wit. He’d always wanted to study music, but didn’t get to it until his mid-late seventies! But here’s the catch: he’s always traveling between his bicoastal residences, so it makes sense to take lessons virtually in order to sustain a consistent workflow with the same instructor whether he is tuning in from Manhattan, The San Francisco Bay Area, or Los Angeles.
The flexibility of online lessons has worked well for his continuously shifting routines and in the last year, we have tightened his sense of rhythm, improved his dynamic control, and deepened his understanding of music history through lecture-lessons we do when his carpal tunnel acts up. We’re nearing our second year of working together, and he’s showing no signs of slowing down in his pianistic growth.
The Stay At Home Mom
Another student I got to work with for a few months was a stay at home mom who wanted to return to piano after a long hiatus. I stepped in while her teacher, the same friend I mentioned above, was on maternity leave. She had done piano as a kid, but for some reason it didn’t really stick. But now, further along in life, she felt a yearning to resume her exploration of the performing arts. With her hectic schedule and the bustling traffic in her city, the most sensible thing to do was to take online lessons from the comfort of her own home where she could more easily pace herself and sustain full concentration. We refined her practice habits so that even on the busiest of days, she would have clear goals and efficient strategies to make meaningful improvements in the course of the week between lessons. The greatest advantage to learning piano as an adult is easily the ability to approach complex material with more fully formed intellect. It’s no longer the necessary but not-so-productive rote repetition of young learners. Adult piano training involves training the mind and body intelligently to catalyze musical transformation.
The Med Student
And then we come to the med student who found me online by chance (thanks to a very kind friend who posted about me in the deep bowels of the University of Alberta subreddit). Initially, she had thought she would wait to do piano later in life, but in the midst of the crushing demands of med school, she had an epiphany: why wait?! Because both of us were travelling quite a bit (due to work and both of us being in long distance relationships with our respective partners) we did hybrid lessons - in person when we were both in Edmonton, AB and online when one or both of us were abroad. Presently, since I have relocated south of the border back to (what remains of) the United States, we’re just doing Zoom piano lessons which have worked remarkably well for her insanely hectic schedule. We have built excellent rapport and continue to hone her piano practice regimen, empowering her to maximize the limited time she has to devote music. Currently, we are midway through the second Faber Adult Method Book, and have also been working on my own beginner arrangements of music from The Legend of Zelda.
The Talented Teen
Among the non-adult students I coached recently was a quiet teenager enthusiastically committed to tackling challenging classical repertoire. He was referred to me by a colleague who had no space in her studio, and luckily his family was interested in zoom piano lessons due to living away from the city. It was also a convenient way to avoid icy driving conditions in the frigid Alberta winters! One thing that especially made lessons with this young fellow efficient and effective was that he was able to invest in a couple of pieces of technology to improve audio and video quality: a blue yeti microphone and a webcamfor an overhead shot of his hands. This allowed me as the instructor to give very precise, targeted feedback facilitating rapid progress from lesson to lesson.
We covered A LOT of ground: Liszt’s 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody, a few of Chopin’s Etudes, and we had just started Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata before changes in his schedule led to him deciding to take a hiatus from piano. However, we were able to make excellent use of online lessons to elevate his technique and musicianship. I predict he has a very bright future in music, should he decide to continue one day.
Coaching Sessions & Masterclasses
The common denominator with all the pianists I mentioned above whether professional, amateur, university level or beginner is that they all love music and must find a way to fit it into lives already filled to the brim with activities and demands both personal and professional. Pursuing music is much more about using time wisely rather than possessing raw talent, though the latter certainly helps. Young learners have the benefit of having a very regimented life built around school, sports, and extracurricular activities, so piano practice is integrated in to their weekly structure. But with age, as we we take on more commitments and are constantly in motion, time slips through our fingers like sand. The key is to find whatever time we DO HAVE and use it as efficiently as possible. Through decades of experience, I have distilled my practice philosophy into a framework that ensures consistent progress:
DEFINE➡DIVIDE ➡ DIAGNOSE ➡ DRILL
In short, know your goals, limit the amount you work on in any given session, identify problem spots, and then only repeat once you have worked out a solution. With this approach, I have often managed to accomplish more in 15 minutes of mindful practice than I would in 2 or 3 hours of mindless, mechanical repetition. It would take hours and hours to comprehensively unpack Define➡Divide➡ Diagnose➡ Drill for the simple reason that the details look different in every application depending on the particular student, specific piece of music, and the unique obstacles that must be dealt with. But it absolutely guarantees that every second you spend at the keyboard achieves a concrete result. Stay tuned for videos, workshops, and blogposts elaborating on my core practice philosophy.
If you are a busy adult piano lover determined to embark on an epic music journey and achieve results through smart, structured practice, please sign up for a free consultation, and let’s work to get you in shape, musically!
