A Guide to Our Content & Resources

Since its launch just under three years ago, the Online Academy has grown significantly and now contains over three hundred articles, hundreds of videos and thousands of musical examples on playing and teaching the piano from a range of highly respected experts.

Whatever your goals and ambitions for your playing or teaching for the new term ahead might be, we have numerous resources to support you in achieving them! To help you find what the content that is most useful to you, we’ve compiled the following index of some of our popular resources (a full index of resources is also available here):

• Practise more effectively and learn new pieces faster
  • The Practice Tools Lecture Series – An overview of practice tools and methodologies to help you get the most out of your practice time
  • Slow Practice – How and when to use slow practice
  • Skeleton Practice – Deconstructing a score in order to learn new pieces faster and more accurately  
• Improve your playing and technique – Click here to view a general listing of resources on piano technique or on one of the following specific topics:
  • Scales and Arpeggios – resources on playing scales and arpeggios at the elementary and intermediate levels
  • Fingering – Learn fundamental principles behind comfortable, musically appropriate fingering
  • Pedalling – A comprehensive treatise on the subject of pedalling
  • Double Notes – Detailed advice on how to practise scales, exercises and studies featuring this challenging area of technique
  • Technical Exercises – An overview of exercises and regimes and suggestions for how to use Hanon’s exercises
  • Sight Reading – Improve your sight reading with a range of sample works and exercises from ReadAhead
• Learn new pieces
  • Click here to view our library of walk throughs and resources for sixty works from the repertoire various resources including:
  • From the Ground Up – A series which uses outlines and reduced scores that help you to learn new pieces more effectively
• Develop your skills as a teacher and empower your students – Click here to view a listing of our teaching resources developed in partnership with the Piano Teachers Course UK. Topics covered include teaching beginners, practical psychology, technique and practising.
• Prepare for an exam – Our examination guides contain walkthroughs of selected pieces and resources on scales and arpeggios for ABRSM and Trinity College examination syllabi
• Learn how to improvise or teach improvisation
  • Anyone Can Improvise – A step-by-step system for learning to play by ear and improvise
  • Create First! – A collection of solo and duet pieces designed to teach improvisation to students of all ages
• Reduce tension and avoid injury – Click here for a collection of invaluable resources by healthy piano playing expert Penelope Roskell
• Overcome performance anxiety – Click here to view resources from performance coach Charlotte Tomlinson on overcoming performance anxiety and delivering performances that reflect your true potential

As part of various enhancements and new features that we will be rolling out over the coming months, we’ve also just added a new search wizard tool which provides a quick and easy way to find relevant content. Click here to try it out! 

Click here to find out more about the Online Academy or click here to subscribe!