I have an offer on at the moment. Normally I offer one free lesson to new pupils. Currently, for any new pupils booking a block of 6 or more lessons, I’ll give an additional free lesson.
If you know anyone wanting to start learning piano, guitar, bass guitar, or ukulele, let them know. I can also provide gift vouchers if you’d like to offer lessons as a present!
The offer will run until 10th January – lessons can be taken after this point but must be paid for by then to qualify for the extra free lesson.
As in previous years, I’m offering an extra free lesson for any new pupil purchasing a pack of six lessons during the winter holiday season. As I’m a bit late with adding this to the website, I will run the offer until the end of January.
Every new pupil usually gets a free lesson to try out my teaching style before committing to more lessons. With this offer, there’ll be one additional free lesson with a block of six or more purchased. This will add up to a total of eight lessons: the usual free one, plus the six paid for, and the extra free one!
One additional note – sometimes new pupils will pay for a block of lessons and change their mind about which instrument they want to learn – from piano to guitar, for example. I’m absolutely fine with this, just give me a little notice.
A couple of weeks ago I released the first video of me playing my Linnstrument. I’m happy to share another one – this time with both hands on the Linnstrument, rather than having one on the piano. This time it’s the safe room theme from the first Resident Evil game, titled ‘Safe Haven’.
The biggest challenge of this one was learning to keep the flow of notes in my right hand steady while sliding around with the left – initially sliding made me rush the other hand. There are a couple of times when I played to softly to get a note with my fifth finger on the right hand, but I’m happy for this video to stand as a measure of my progress.
I’m planning to write a more consistent blog about how I’m practising this new instrument – I think it’s essential that any teacher keeps learning new stuff, whether in the same or different fields. Breaking down one’s own learning can help generate new ideas for teaching.
I recently bought a Linnstrument, one of several modern electronic instruments known as expressive instruments. They allow for a lot of nuance in performance that digital pianos don’t offer. I just uploaded a video of a cover I’ve been working on, combining piano (played on my digital piano, and violin (performed on my Linnstrument). You’ll hear the occasional slightly sharp or flat note, as I have pitch quantisation turned off (as violins have no frets). That’s something I’ll iron out with more practice.
I hope you enjoy it!
I’m excited about the possibilities as a composer, in particular.
For a while towards the end of last year, I didn’t release much music, as I had so little time to practise/compose/record. Thanksfully, I’ve had a bit more time recently and have managed to release four videos, three of them original music and one cover.
The first release was a piano piece of my own called ‘Let the Scheming Begin’. It’s a character piece and is related to a piece I released at the end of 2022 called ‘Inexorable Force’. It shows a different side of the same character.
Next up was the orchestral version of the aforementioned ‘Inexorable Force’. It’s the music that would play for the final battle with the main villain of a game. It took me a couple of months working on it every night to get the orchestration sounding how I wanted. I expect if I return to it with more experience, I’ll make some subtle changes, but I’m very happy with how it turned out.
Before I started work on that orchestral version, I’d actually made a prog-rock version of the same piece, largely inspired by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, as are many final boss themes in Japanese RPGs. I ended up releasing it a week later than the orchestral version as I’ got so focused on working on that one that I hadn’t thought to release this one. I hope this, the orchestral version, and the original piano solo will serve as an interesting example of how multiple arrangements of the same piece can be made.
Finally, I just released a piano arrangement of Motoi Sakuraba’s ‘Majula’, from Dark Souls 2. It took a while before I was happy with this and there’s still one section that I’m, unsure of. Generally, I’m pleased with it.
While I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up a schedule of one release a week, I hope to keep things more regular than before.
Hello everybody, I hope you’ve all had a wonderful holiday season.
As a celebration of the New Year, I’m offering new pupils the chance to get a second free lesson when they buy a block of six lessons for the remainder of this year or during January. Typically I offer one free lesson to new pupils, so this is a chance to get eight for the price of six (one free, plus six paid, plus the extra free lesson)!
Feel free to attend the first free lesson before deciding. The offer is valid as long as the lessons are paid for in December/January – the lessons can be taken after this point.
Hello, everybody! While I’m not a huge Halloween person, I do like horror media, so thought I’d work on some creepy music this month. My first release is actually a re-release. Just over two years ago, I released a piano album and not long after I started to orchestrate some of the pieces from it.
One of the earliest was ‘An Ill Presence’. Listening back recently, it sounds excessively harsh, and at the same time, quite muddy. The panning of the instruments is also fairly arbitrary. I decided to remix it with the knowledge I’ve gained in the last couple of years and feel that it sounds much better now.
So here is ‘An Ill Presence’, arranged for piano, violin, flute, and oboe. There are two versions. The first has emulated tape wobble:
It’s been a while since I last released any music. Here’s my latest track. It’s quite outside my usual style. It was an experiment to learn how to use U-he’s Zebralette synth, and also a chance to write in mixolydian mode, which is a scale I don’t often use. It comes in two different flavours, so you can pick the version you like the most.
I haven’t shared any performance videos for quite a while as I’ve had so little time to practise recently (and my practice time has been used for my sight reading project, which I’ll write about at a later point). I was pleased I managed to make a recording of this piece from the soundtrack of Tombi!, one of my favourite PS1 games (one of my favourite games in general, regardless of platform, actually).
It was a lot of fun to work on, and I improved my left hand leaps and broken octaves while doing so, both elements of my technique that I want to improve further.
Here’s my latest video, a piano arrangement of the track ‘Quiet Withdrawal’ from the game ‘Tormented Souls’. It was requested by someone who follows me on YouTube – I love the game and the soundtrack, so was happy to agree.
Piano arrangements are always interesting, as they usually involve taking multiple instruments and condensing them onto just the piano. How the instruments transfer depends a lot on the skill of the arranger. The original composition has lots of string swells – I’m not sure how well I captured that aspect of things, but I’m happy with the result overall.
Music and Movement Lessons with Nick Owen-Petch 