About the Business
I’m the director of Key To Music, and I founded it to share my passion for music. I set up a music education service in London in 2005 before relocating to Edinburgh and founding another, and it gives me huge satisfaction to see the students I began teaching when they were not yet in their teens now performing their own compositions in pubs and clubs a few years later. I teach guitar, singing and composition.
My approach to teaching can be distilled to three key ideas: firstly, a student needs to feel comfortable in their environment in order to learn most effectively and express themselves most freely. Secondly, new information or skills become embedded and mastered most effectively when they are actively applied. Thirdly, music is composite of many different skills and aptitudes, and these all need to be developed in tandem in order to be able to express yourself musically.
A traditional model of tuition whereby a student learns some new content, reviews it in the next lesson and then gets more content works for some types of student but not everybody, and can result in an unbalanced skill set, where a student is able to play some pieces but has no real understanding of how use and combine musical elements themselves. I address this by presenting content in such a way that students are apply to use new information in various different musical contexts and integrate it into what they are already able to do.
Business Services
Guitar
Are you taking guitar up for the first time or looking for a way to learn effectively? Have you experienced frustration with your level of skill and your speed of progress? Is your enthusiasm affected because you’re unsure of how to proceed and what to focus on? Do you want to study with an experienced, trained teacher who can deliver results?
If you answered ‘yes’ to any of those questions, you’re in the right place. At Key To Music we’ve helped many guitarists develop their enthusiasm and their skills on the guitar and reach their goals in the most efficient way.
You can waste a lot of time and become discouraged if you’re learning alone, encountering a lot of information on the internet and becoming overwhelmed. Our guitar teachers have first hand experience with teaching and unlike many rock and pop teachers have received training on the most effective way to help students progress. Eliminating the ‘trial and error’ approach to learning an instrument will save you time, increase your enjoyment and result in the best value for money.
We’ve all encountered challenges and roadblocks as we learn, and with our combined experience we can help you surmount these developmental obstacles. We can help you set your goals and design a learning path tailored to your requirements. The focus of lessons is to encourage mastery and integration of knowledge and technique from the start-rather than fitting every student into the same linear pathway, which produces very mixed results.
With Key To Music you also get to be part of a community with full access to our forum where you can ask for advice, meet other musicians at the same level as you and access extra resources. We also put on masterclasses with visiting guitarists and other events to help develop your all-round musicianship.
Location & Hours
36 Dalmeny Street
