Learn the piano purely for pleasure, with David Wallace

“I was really excited,” explains seventeen year old Isabel Steele, “I would listen to my brothers playing and envy their ability to make music, and now it was my turn!” Isabel is currently halfway through her A levels and looking forward to university, but just over a decade ago she was a little girl waiting to open the front door to David Wallace and begin her first ever piano lesson.

Isabel’s mother, Anne, had given up the piano as a child, put off by repetitive scales and grade exams, and so was keen that her children should learn purely for pleasure. In David Wallace she found a rather unusual piano teacher, one who sees his job as igniting a love of music in children by teaching them to play music rather than burdening them with exams.

“I’ve always look forward to lessons,” says Isabel. “With David I’ve learnt the piano through playing music that I love. If I don’t like a tune then we won’t play it, but if I come across something I want to play, David will find the music for me so that we can learn it together. One time,” she explains, “I heard some songs by a French composer that I really liked, so David found the music for me and we learnt to play it together.”

Not that David’s approach means that the basics are overlooked, as Isabel is keen to stress. “David taught me to read music and he really helped me with my music theory. For my GCSE music exam I was able to visualise the music by drawing out the piano keyboard, which really helped.” And David’s expertise goes beyond learning to play. A semi pro jazz trumpeter in his youth, David has also helped Isabel overcome her performance nerves. “I used to have really bad stage fright,” she explains, “my hands would shake but I really wanted to be able to perform at school. David helps me to prepare before a performance and then afterwards we look at what went well and anything I had difficulty with. David has,” Isabel continues, “helped me to become a confident performer as well as a piano player.”

Learning the piano has also had other benefits for Isabel. She has not only fulfilled her childhood ambition to match her brothers’ ability, she also finds the piano therapeutic. “I put in plenty of practice but only because I love it. After a long day,” she explains, “I’ll sit down at the piano and have so many songs that I can play. And,” she adds, “if I’ve developed a headache, especially if I’ve had loads of homework, it always makes it go away!”

The only downside to not going through the grade system according to Isabel is that she has no absolute measure of how good she is compared to grade students, but David has addressed this by labelling the tunes he teaches with their degree of grade difficulty. “But for me,” Isabel explains, “the wide repertoire David has helped me develop is far more important than achieving a specific grade.”

And it has been a lot of fun over the years according to Isabel. “David goes above and beyond just being a teacher. He sends me music themed birthday cards every year, and we always have a good chat about music and other things going on in my life, which makes it even more enjoyable. I’ve always looked forward to my lessons.” When she goes to university Isabel will, reluctantly, have to give up lessons with David. “It just won’t be practical,” she explains, “but I’ll never stop playing the piano, David has helped make it a really important part of my life, and it always will be.”

If you’d like to find out more you can email David (who has Enhanced CRB status) at davidwallace5@msn.com or call him on 0793 994 8482, and he will be delighted to have a chat with you about how to bring the joy of music into your child’s life through the piano.

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September 8, 2016