piano & musicianship classes

Early level music classes are capped at 10 pupils to 1 teacher, but depending on space this is sometimes reduced.

This ratio allows each student to benefit from their own instrument for the duration of the lesson, yet the group is big enough that they can feel the excitement of making music with a group of their peers.

Lessons are booked through class for kids as half-term blocks. We try to keep our half term blocks to 5 weeks, so you know what to expect in terms of costs, and payment dates can be found on the webpage as a pdf.

Lesson fees are £10.53 per class, which includes access to your child's own piano at class, sheet music, platform booking fees and of course covers the necessary licensing, insurance and professional fees that come with operating a high-quality children's class. 

We're a registered charity so all the fees go towards achieving our objectives of providing high quality performing arts education - for the students!

No, you don't. (Unless you lose it and it needs replaced - so make sure the names are on everything, and don't rely on spares - part of the process is that children take responsibility for their own things, and you can help them with that) 

It's useful to provide a folder, and encourage your child to take an organised approach to their music, and special music carriers are available to buy from customique.

You only need to get your child to class, and take them home again at the end of it! When it's time for new music, that's up to us to sort out for your child. It could be a book, or single sheets of music. You can purchase Rhythm Academy bags to transport music to and from class, but a good idea is to provide a folder for loose sheets. We encourage the use of ipads and tablets if you have access to this.

Early in the process? Not a problem, at least for the first while. That's why we provide an instrument for every student at class.  Click here for some useful apps that can bridge the gap and help enhance your practice, if you have an android or iOS device. There's a lot of learning that can be done without a piano at home in these early days, so do not worry.

Roll out pianos are cheap and can help to familiarise patterns for young learners, but they're not a long term solution.

As your child progresses, you might want to consider purchasing a small keyboard instrument to help them keep up through the week. Recommendations can be provided on request, to suit any budget. Sometimes we are upgrading our practise piaggeros and we will advertise old class instruments for rehoming.

If you've been coming for a while, you'll find you need access to a keyboard instrument to get the best out of the experience.

Depending on your level of study, this can be an electronic keyboard, (Initial to Grade 3) an electric piano (Grades 4-8) or an acoustic piano at the top grades and diplomas. It makes for nice furniture but it can be expensive!

We can recommend some good instruments and stockists for you, just contact us.

A huge variety of styles are explored at Rhythm Academy. 

The music world is too big to only focus on one tiny aspect of it, but we believe that to build adaptability and musicianship, Classical Training is important for each musician. That's our foundation, and yes, they learn theory, scales, arpeggios, music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven & co.

This means that lessons will always contain some element of Classical training e.g. Solfege - Dalcroze, Kodaly, Scales and Arpeggios etc. However that will then get used "in real life" to play a large variety of music styles as our students develop their piano and vocal skills.

You can expect Classical, Modern, Pop, Jazz, Movie themes, Romantic, Baroque, Country... and so on. When a "wee obsession" evolves over a certain piece of music in a class, we'll follow that thread. It's great to see students direct their own musical awareness like that.

Songs cover a range of styles from theatrical, to pop, folk songs and even gospel. At our recent show one class was singing in Gaelic.

At regular class, we include assessable components in our own Rhythm Academy syllabus, and when a student demonstrates competence over these elements, they are awarded with a certificate at no extra cost. 

This is a good way of measuring progress and celebrating their achievements without added pressure or cost.
External exams do incur an extra cost and we can present students on either full Graded or Performance exams through the ABRSM.  Our Exam Portal is available for our kids who are preparing one of these exams. No exam is ever mandatory.
ABRSM exams are the global gold standard in music examination and at the more advanced levels are equivalent to Scottish Highers and Advanced Highers. Advanced grades can be used toward University admissions. If you're interested, ask.

Professional diplomas are offered after completion of the amateur Grades, but this is intensive study and arranged individually.

Our core programme is delivered in classes because the whole ethos of Rhythm Academy is about delivering an outstanding music education in groups. 

One of the most important principles of Rhythm Academy is to get children working in a community where they can grow and learn together, and make friends for life.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, we've all seen first-hand the impact that isolation has on young people. 

Our programme is a very healthy, productive way to help make up for some of that lost time, the impact of which is yet to be fully realised.

Short answer: No. Not just now.

This is in the pipeline... there's a lot of adults who wish they'd learned as kids!

We will figure it out in time, and when we do make sure to follow us on facebook and instagram so you're the first to know.

We are actively pursuing projects to support targeted groups of adults in the community through piano.

Electronic keyboard is alive and well in Scotland's high schools. For groups of learners we can run a class, and for individuals we can offer remote options, to help you get through those performing exams. Contact us to see what would suit your situation best.

The "keyboards" we use in classes are touch sensitive "training wheels" called Piaggeros and we rotate that with a fully weighted 88 key piano to develop dexterity, sensitivity and tone quality in the students. 

Sometimes young kids quit piano because their fingers can't operate the heavy keys yet. We'd rather those kids gradually build their strength and skill up on the Piaggeros and still learn than abandon the whole gig because they thought their hands were too wee!

Did you learn to talk before you learned to read, and to write?
The same process follows on piano (or any instrument). We use our biology to experience and learn music through listening and singing, and then we acquire the skill of recreating that on the instrument, which is not part of our biology. 

It makes for a better musician when their instrumental training includes aural and vocal work; they learn to internalise a concept more readily this way, which makes it much easier to transfer onto the piano - or any instrument for that matter!

You might've heard the term "perfect pitch" before - not everyone can get there, but we aim to grow a very close and reliable "relative pitch" in every student we teach, and that's only achieved through using our ears and our voices as we learn. If you choose to sit graded piano exams, aural tests will be included in them as standard, which requires a strong sense of pitch and ability to vocalise.

At Rhythm Academy we expect the musicians we have trained to be fluent in all types of piano notation (yes, there are several), and we ensure there is always attention given to theory training in each class.

This is a transferable skill - being a skilled reader of music means you can understand it as if it were a language, regardless of instrument, style, country of origin etc.

Every level of Rhythm Academy's music programme will include learning to play from notation, developing music literacy skills every time they come to class and when it's appropriate, assessing against the industry standard ABRSM theory tests.

It's worth noting that every accredited college or university level music course on offer requires a reasonable level of understanding music theory, even if it's not billed as a Classical Training course.

Single, private lessons are a great way to get undivided, targeted attention. No argument.

However, music is a social activity - someone makes the music, someone listens to it, everyone enjoys it!

After many years of teaching both private and class lessons, experience has shown that young people thrive on the community ethos of creating something together, and the dropout rate of one-to-one music learning is alarmingly high in young children and teenagers.

The method we use to teach music is designed to work on a group basis, using the ensemble of students to build up concepts that are then applied in performance.

In particular, younger students learn better when they learn with their peers and as they grow, they develop a camaraderie and network of support for each other which we know from experience helps a child develop social and emotional intelligence and we often see lifelong friendships blossom from those early music days.

Both instruments share the hardware and layout of the piano keyboard, which is pressed down by the fingers to create and control the sound.

The simplest difference between the two is a piano has weighted keys which react to the player's hands and technique to manipulate the quality of tone and volume coming out of the instrument. 

The keyboard looks the same, has the same notes, sounds similar, but is not weighted and therefore the tone quality doesn't react to the player's sensitivity of touch - although many keyboards now include a touch sensitivity function to imitate the piano reaction. Keyboards have built-in backing rhythms and sound effects so they can be used in many different applications.

In our professional performing experience we see first-hand the benefit of having singers who read and play, and players who read and sing. This is why you'll see many professional training centres and colleges requesting 2 instruments for any music course of study - there has to be an element of transferability to your skills, or you're not going to manage in the industry.

If you can only learn by hearing a song, then you are limited to songs that someone else interprets for you first. Learning to read, play and sing grants you freedom and autonomy in your music making. It's also so much easier to book gigs as a professional if you' have aural and reading skills.
Similarly, if you cannot play - then you are at the mercy of booking an accompanist unless you learn how to do it yourself!

Not to mention the huge benefit to musicianship that comes from being trained in both concurrently. You will naturally have a preference and that's okay - but we know that the two go hand in hand, and that's why we do it.

You may have heard of a triple threat performer: someone who can act, sing and dance. At Rhythm Academy we actually think the best performers are quadruple threats; they play too.