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Free video lessons

Finchcocks launched its provision of free online courses during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown. Wanting to stay connected with the piano community and help motivate people in their practice, our Musical Director David Hall put together a series of five free online videos for both Beginner and Intermediate players to work through at their own pace. Released over the course of five weeks on our blog, you can find them collated here.

Veronica M

I just wanted to express my appreciation of your online course. Very helpful, and so useful to have the input!  I look forward to receiving more!

Sheila H

Just want to say thanks […] It’s lovely to have some inspiration – I especially like David Hall’s practice tips for intermediate players. I need to go back to basics a bit and the video really helps. I’m looking forward to the next one!

Beginner online course

The Beginner series assumes no knowledge whatsoever and gets piano enthusiasts started on the basics of playing the piano, from scratch. We were thrilled that the video lessons were picked up by Classic FM and listed on their website under “best online music lessons“, alongside Nicola Benedetti and Myleene Klass!

Over the course of the series you’ll cover:

  1. Note names and 5-note warm up exercises in a classical and jazz style
  2. The C major scale and playing hands together
  3. Chords, using the sustain pedal and hand crossing
  4. Reading music notation, separate hands
  5. Reading music notation, playing with both hands, and an introduction to sharps and flats

You can pause and replay each of the videos as often as you like until you can get the hang of each exercise. Then, once you’ve mastered it, you can play along with David as a duet – to whichever backing track he provides!

To access the Beginner course, click the button below.

Intermediate online course

Copy of sheet music being annotaed in pencil

Following the success of our Beginner course above, we launched our online series for Intermediates a week later. Here at Finchocks, our Lower Intermediate courses run for those roughly at grades 2-4 standard and our Upper Intermediate courses for grades 5-8. Regardless of your experience, all Intermediates can hopefully take away something useful and inspiring to work into their practice from the topics below!

  1. Practice tips
  2. Harmony and the circle of fifths
  3. Improving your pedalling technique
  4. An introduction to jazz and pop styles
  5. An introduction to accompanying

To access the Intermediate course, click the button below.