Unleash Your Creativity
Explore the Joy of Playing Piano
At PianEasy the central ambition is to make learning and exploring the piano fun and accessible for anyone, whether brand new beginner, intrepid returner, or someone wanting to take it to the next level. At home or on an Immersive Retreat, through the demonstration and sharing of simple practices & strategies, you are invited to explore your innate musicality and your inherent motor-neurone capacities.
Welcome
Welcome to a new piano teaching enterprise PianEasy where the chief goal is to create an environment online and on immersive retreat where a set of tools is put at your disposal that make learning the piano an experience, a discovery, and in the end simply a skill that you really can actually acquire. Whether you’ve never touched a piano, once played and wish to return, or are always looking to improve and explore, this is being created with all pianophiles in mind, but especially those many people I’ve met who regret giving up as a child, or never having started at all, and who suspect it’s too late now – because it really isn’t, and this is the first thing I’d like to share and really draw attention to from the outset – that much of what I can do now as a pianist comes from time spent as an adult.
The Immersive Retreats and the PianEasy Online Tutorial Library, originally conceived to support students post-retreat, offer in-person residential immersion and/or guided online resources, everything you need to play, understand, and enjoy the piano — at your own pace at home with online support, or if ready for where the progress curve truly achieves escape velocity: total immersion in the company of the like-minded on immersive retreat.
For those who can’t find the time or means for a short spell of full immersion, there’s the “Atomic” 30-60 minutes a day from home approach, or every other day, as life permits – 2 or 3 times per week as base minimum, 60 minutes per day optimal.
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Two Paths to Progress
1. The Immersive Experience...(Intensive Residential)
The Immersive Retreats aim to curate a space which encourages focus and flow – a place to immerse in learning and explore your dormant musicality and innate motor-neurone capabilities, both of which are easily awoken with simple regular training. This is somewhere to engage in some serious bit-between-teeth skill-building, accompanied & encouraged by others of like mind engaged similarly beside you.
The retreats are for now based near where I live with my wife and 3 boys, in the Occitanie Region of southern France – Mirepoix, the Ariege – a medieval market town with the Pyrenees as backdrop, and which has a 15th century central “place” (town-square) offering a selection of cafes, bars, shops and restaurants. This will be an intensive but balanced learning experience, with the day shared strategically between practice, workshops, theory, discussion and relaxation/rejuvenation. At the heart of the experience lies the question how best organise/manage our time/selves so as to maximise attention and concentration, and by so doing optimise for the thrill of progress.
A typical day will include:
Individual lesson time, guided practice and solo practice.
Group seminars, workshops and “Scales & Chords” Theory sessions.
Rejuvenation sessions (yoga, meditation, walks, siestas, saunas, river swims, coffee etc.)
2. The Atomic Experience...(online resources from home)
The “Atomic” programme is what has become the “30/60 minutes a day from home” branch of the principal residential immersive trunk. This “Atomic” approach is inspired primarily by the progress I have seen in my own playing and retention at this frequency over the last few years, and which is currently being demonstrating with “Project Rachoven – The Road To Automatic”, a series I’m releasing on Substack under my newsletter banner “The Accidental Pianist” looking at what’s achievable from a 30 minute session per day with regard retention and fluidity of recall. The title “Atomic” is inspired by James Clear’s Bestselling self-help book “Atomic Habits” which in part explores this phenomena of cumulative incremental gains that become inevitable over the long-run with just a simple small (atomic), but crucially regular habit.
The many profound cumulative gains an “Atomic” approach offers to one side, immersion represents the uncontroversial gold-standard when it comes to rocket-fuelled progress with any skill. It’s how we all learned our mother tongues, and is the ideal when it comes to the environment I personally crave most for knuckling down to learn anything. In reality though this uber-effective “mother-tongue” or “dusk-til-dawn” approach usually slams head first into the reality of our finite existence and the ensuing to-do lists. This is where a fallback approach is necessary, and 30 minutes a day spent efficiently turns out to be astonishingly effective and sufficient for profound cumulative progress over time, and in the end this does represent what most of us can realistically achieve much of the time, and it’s what retreat members keen to build on their momentum are urged to fall back to when they get home to their busy lives. Until the following retreat that is!
The Online Library was originally devised for access on and post retreat as a set of tools and clear & concise teaching materials consisting largely of pieces broken down segment by segment, section by section, plus the Scales & Chords Theory Course, and the Practice Strategies content. It was originally conceived so as to offer pause and repeat functionality enabling effective teaching in group settings, with the idea being that these carefully produced tutorials/demonstrations never leave any doubt as to which note is next, nor with which finger to strike it, nor of which chord it is a part, so segment by segment off you go. The library contains:
FollowAlong Videos: Watch and be guided through pieces step by step, segment by segment, section by section.
PlayAlong Tracks: Practice with accompaniment at your own pace.
Theory & Discussion: Short and digestible lessons with emphasis on Chords & Scales as well as certain Practice Strategies, there to deepen your understanding and super-charge your progress.
Everything is designed to support you in building confidence & skill, and to guide you through some inevitable frustration to much inevitable joy.
For now in the Tutorials Section, accessed via “Hub” in the above menu, there is a taster/tester page which contains a demonstration tutorial for the ever-so-simple opening of the famous slow movement to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21 for anyone to have a go at, beginners included. The Section 1 Orchestral PlayAlong Track is also available to practice against, with options to practice hands separately/individually, as well as hands together, so that once you’ve mastered either hand or both, you can turn down the lights and imagine yourself in your favourite concert venue with your favourite orchestra and your favourite pianist (you). Have a go here.
Also currently available to have a go at as part of “Beginner Series #1″ on Substack is “Left Hand Only” from the first Segment of Section 1 of the same piece. Beginner Series #1 also includes the 6 min Theory Primer and the 9 min Principal Practice Strategies videos, as well as a series of six other opening sections from six beginner arrangements of pieces as chosen by friends and family, including the Harry Potter Theme, The Passacaglia, Nick Cave and more.
About James
On Substack as The Accidental Pianist
James is an award-winning film composer and excitable amateur pianist, with a Masters in Music for the Screen (NFTS & Royal College of Art) and a Bachelor of Music from the University of London. He has composed for projects including Merlin (BBC) and Lego’s Nexo Knights, and earned a Golden Skull award from Hollywood’s Screamfest Horror Film Festival for his debut film score, The Hallow.
“Though I started late and have never played as my profession, my own personal piano journey has brought me to a place that if I’d known was possible aged 18, I may well have dedicated myself to it earlier, because I later discovered strategies that proved astonishingly effective, unlocking progress and possibilities that continue to astound me to this day, a kind of real life magic. It’s this experience which has inspired PianEasy, where I’m going to be sharing these methods with anyone interested in learning them.”
For more on James’ story and to make sure he can play, see the “about” section in the menu, or click here.
Join & Stay Connected
Whether online or on retreat, you are hereby cordially invited to step into your musical journey and sign up free to the accompanying Accidental Pianist Newsletter
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The Accidental Pianist Mailing List: Get retreat dates, latest news, early access and regular posts exploring the subject of learning the piano and what it can teach us about the practice of learning in general, and how we can apply that to the violin, darts, portuguese and more. Also explore how learning and music can have benefits for mental health, aging brains and what implications might be drawn for the related but broader subject of education.
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Start Online: Begin your first lessons today with free access to Beginner Series #1.
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Contact James: Questions, partnerships, or curiosity welcome.