Planning tools and thinking frames for the decisions that happen before a lesson starts.
What do you actually ask at a first meeting?
“How long have you been playing?” — and then what? Sixty questions across icebreakers, temperament, working habits, family atmosphere, household rules and transfer students. Each one comes with what to listen for, how I’d follow it up, and a question left open for you. Pick twelve, print the sheet, take it into the room; a decoding table is included.
Ask the first question →Should I give this piece now?
Three minutes with a new score, four gates: scan the page, inventory the technique with ✓△✗, weigh the student's current state, then turn the choice into a schedule. Whichever gate it fails, the piece goes on the future list instead. Printable worksheet included.
Run the check →The 7 Habits walk into the piano studio
The same habit looks nothing alike with a preschooler, a schoolchild, a working adult or a learner of seventy. Twenty-eight squares of translation — what to watch for, what I'd try, and a question left for you at the end of each one.
Press the first key →Planning a student recital, backwards from the date
Venue, repertoire, programme, announcements, run sheet — the whole project that gets rebuilt from scratch every term. Enter the recital date and the milestones lay themselves out: ten phases of checkable items, a run-sheet template, and three ways to handle the fee question.
Start counting back →Choosing repertoire isn't a lottery
Level, personality, strengths, practice time, learning cycle, parental support, whether the hand reaches an octave. List the candidates, let the student pick one, enter the recital date — and that student's own start date and milestones fall into place. Fill in online, print in one click.
Fill the first sheet →Which kind of piano teacher are you?
One-to-one teaching is a bit like a blind date — being a good person doesn’t make you a good match. Thirty-nine situations from real studios sort out your teaching personality, so you can see your own defaults clearly and recognise the students you actually work well with.
Take the quiz →Hear the story, then play the notes
A child’s first Schumann, opened up piece by piece: what each miniature is doing, where the teaching difficulty actually sits, and how to guide the practice. Built for the teacher putting next term’s repertoire together.
Open the set →Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas, paired with Czerny
Each sonata layered by difficulty with the technical direction it trains, paired with the Czerny studies that build towards it. Henle difficulty ratings included, for teachers and students choosing what comes next.
Open the reference →If you're learning on your own, these are the two questions that cause the most trouble: what to play next, and how to survive the stage.
Can I actually play this piece?
What stops self-learners is usually not effort — it's choosing the wrong piece. You don't need to know your "grade": find the one sentence out of six that sounds most like you, and get your comfort-zone list, your worth-a-stretch list, and the pieces most likely to go wrong at that level.
Find your list →Rehearsing everything that could go wrong
Before you can show what you've prepared, there's one more thing to practise: being on stage itself. A rehearsal checklist plus a worst-case simulator, so every "what if" gets walked through at home first. Works for recitals, exams, competitions and recordings.
Start rehearsing →Practising the way a rabbi reads
The study habits of the Talmud — question everything, cut it small, argue with yourself — set alongside the practice wisdom of Cortot, Neuhaus and Gieseking. Rigorous thinking beats blind labour: slicing a passage thin, and recording yourself so you can listen as a stranger would.
Start reading →Scenes from Childhood
Thirteen miniatures, thirteen states of mind. So few notes that there is nowhere to hide — a serious test of voicing and control, disguised as a set of little pieces.
Explore the set →Written for the person sitting next to the piano bench, not for the person on it.
Which kind of practice parent are you?
Twenty real situations from real practice rooms, six parent types, and the "love language" your child is actually waiting to receive. Takes five to eight minutes, and a few of the questions are worth stopping at.
Take the quiz →The Composer Gossip Weekly
Fifty true anecdotes from music history — Brahms forgetting his belt, Beethoven counting coffee beans, Dvořák chasing trains. Good for a car ride to a lesson, or for a child who thinks composers were born on the front of a textbook.
Read the stories →Most of this site is in Chinese
There are around fifty more tools, guides and essays on the Chinese side — a teacher community, a podcast, free teaching materials, and a good deal of writing about what thirty-odd years in a piano studio actually teaches you. More pages will appear here as they're translated. Have a look at the Chinese site →