Frequently Asked Questions
Rather than us telling you, we’ll let you hear directly from Neil Moore, the creator of Simply Music. Please watch the video below.
Alex Nguyen created the Power of Two Practice Lab to meet the needs of his students at Dancing Keys Music Studio. As far as we’re concerned, no one else offers this kind of service. It’s only available at Dancing Keys Music Studio.
Watch the Power of Two presentation.
There are two in-studio practices students will do weekly when they are in the Accelerated Power of Two Practice Lab. They do their first practice immediately after their lessons. The following day they come back to the lab and do their second practice under the supervision of a tutor. Anytime they get stuck or have questions, the tutor is there to help. For a detailed explanation, please go to the Power of Two presentation.
No, there isn’t. Your tuition includes the use of the Better Practice App.
Absolutely, adults appreciate this because of the play first approach to learning the piano. Most adults do not have the patience or inclination to go through the rigors of learning to read musical notes. We help you bypass the reading part and get you straight to playing great sounding songs from the very beginning.
We generally accept students around six years of age. There are always exceptions. If your child is younger than six, bring them in for a quick assessment. We’ll determine if they’re ready or not.
The same reason we learned to talk long before we went to school to learn to read and spell. We want you to acquire the language of music by immersing you in the process of playing immediately. After the first year, we’ll introduce reading. By then you should have an intimate relationship with the piano and a repertoire of about 30-50 songs in different styles of music. In addition, most people would love to be able to sit down at the piano and play songs, not practice scales and drills.
Unless your child learned it the Simply Music way, yes. Your child is going to learn something very new. Even though it’s still the language of music, we are going to look at it from a different angle. We are going to establish a new foundation from which their new skillset will be built upon. They’ll be learning how to learn. Instead of looking at music as a linear note by note fashion, they’ll be looking at music in terms of sentences, shapes and patterns. In addition, we’ll be drawing from existing aural and visual skills and the natural sense of musicality that everyone already has.
Yes, this method works regardless of whether someone has taken traditional lessons or not. If your child previously took traditional lessons, chances are that he/she will progress faster than average. The teacher will match the pace of the student.
No, we bill month to month. You can cancel anytime. We have a 30-day cancellation policy. However, if you prepay three months at a time, you can save some money on your tuition.
We have a 30 day cancellation policy. Just let us know 30 days in advance and you’re good to go.
We choose not to list our tuition fees on our website for two reasons:
- Because we teach a very different method than anyone, we believe that it’s in your best interest to check us out first before we give you our pricing. We’d like for you to “test drive” us before you decide. It only makes sense to find out about pricing after you know the value of what we do. You are more than welcome to come to one of our Free Introductory Sessions to find out more about us.
- If you’re price shopping for piano lessons, it’s really hard to compare us to any other piano studio in Irvine since no one does what we do. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. At Dancing Keys Music Studio we pride ourselves on the value that we can bring to you. Put another way we care about results more than anything.
No, although the ear will develop as a by-product of this method. Students learn strategies or learning clues. Each song has a specific set of easy to follow learning clues that allow students to play immediately without having to read musical notations. Once the learning clues are mastered, students will be able to play these songs anytime, anywhere without having to rely on sheet music.
There are many piano methods, but it boils down to two categories: traditional and non-traditional. For the sake of simplicity, any method that requires you to learn to read music first falls under the traditional method. Any method that does not require you to learn to read first, but rather allows you to play immediately, is considered non-traditional. Simply Music is the world’ls largest playing based method. This is our preferred method to teach at Dancing Keys Music Studio.
Yes, around the second year into the Simply Music program, when students have acquired between 30 – 50 songs in the active playlist in different styles of music, we introduce the reading process.
