Six weeks, one to one, with Meishi

Take the grade you never took.

Maybe you stopped partway and never went back. Maybe you played for years and never sat one at all. Either way there is a question you have carried around for a long time, and six weeks is enough to answer it.

Apply for a place

Six places. Applications are read personally, not filtered.

You'll know if this is you

  • You stopped somewhere around Grade 3, 4 or 5, and you still remember the number.
  • Or you played for years and never sat a single exam, so you have no idea what you would be measured at.
  • The lessons ended for a reason that had nothing to do with your playing. The money, the move, the exams that mattered more.
  • You can still find your way around a piece of music, more or less, and no idea whether that counts for anything now.
  • Some part of you suspects you were never actually good enough, and you have never once tested that.
  • You are not chasing a career. You want to know what you are capable of.

It isn't too late, and I can show you

She sat her first exam in her fifties and passed Grade 1 with distinction.

She spent her working life in corporate. Piano was the thing she kept meaning to get to, and there was never room for it. When she stepped away from that career, she wanted something that belonged to her, and she wanted it done properly. Not a few tutorials. Proper formal training, taught the way it should be taught.

A few months in, she decided to sit an exam. Partly to push herself, because she knew she would drift without something to work towards. Partly because she wanted an honest measure of where she actually stood, rather than her own guess about it.

She had never taken a grade before. She was not a natural. She practised in the gaps of an adult life, the way you would have to. The examiner did not know her age and it made no difference to the mark.

She is working towards Grade 2 now.

She works with me in person. This programme is the online version of the same teaching, and you would be among the first six to do it this way.

The six weeks

Before we start, you send me two videos. Five minutes of you playing anything at all, and two minutes telling me where you stopped. The second one matters more than the first.

  1. Week one

    Where you actually are

    I watch everything you sent and tell you the truth. What you have, what is missing, and what grade you could sit today. Most people have never been told this, and the real answer is almost always kinder than the one in their head.

  2. Week two

    Reading, rebuilt

    Sight reading from where you genuinely are, not where you think you ought to be. This is the skill that decays fastest and comes back quickest.

  3. Week three

    The hands

    Scales, hand position, the technical work that exams ask for and adult learners quietly skip. This is usually where the belief that you were not good enough is actually hiding.

  4. Week four

    Ear and theory

    The two components that feel most exposing and are, in practice, the most teachable. Nobody is born with this.

  5. Week five

    One piece, properly

    We take a graded piece and work it on all three rungs. You end the week with something you can play for another human being.

  6. Week six

    The decision

    You decide whether you want to sit it. If yes, you leave with a target grade and a month by month plan to get there. If no, you leave knowing you could have, which for a lot of people turns out to be the thing they were after all along.

How it runs

You send, I respond

Once a week you film yourself playing and send it over. No live calls, no scheduling across timezones, no performing to a camera in real time.

Within 48 hours

You get a voice note or a video back from me. Specific, about your hands and your playing, not general advice you could have found on YouTube.

A written plan each week

What to practise, for how long, and why. Built around the week you actually have, not an imaginary one with two free hours a day.

What this is not

I will not score you. I will not list your mistakes. I will not tell you what you should have learned by now.

Wrong notes are information, not verdicts. That is true here too.

6 weeks is not long enough to sit an exam, and I will not pretend otherwise. You leave with an honest assessment and a plan. The exam comes later, if you decide you want it.

What you send goes to me and only me. Nobody else sees it unless you ask me to share it, and even then I will ask first.

What you leave with

An honest assessment of your playing from someone who has taught piano for 18 years. A clear answer on what grade you could sit, and how far the one you want actually is. One piece you can play properly. And a plan you could follow on your own from week seven onward, whether or not you ever book an exam.

Wherever you are, whichever system

Every graded system in the world tests the same four things. Repertoire, technique, sight reading, aural. The set pieces differ, the scale requirements differ, the forms you fill in differ. The musicianship underneath is identical.

Which is why the first 5 weeks are the same no matter where you live. The system only comes into it in week 6, when we work out what you would actually sit and where. I have taught across more than one of them, and I will point you at the right syllabus for your country at the end.

Six places

USD 297

Six weeks, one to one

This is the first group

I take six people at a time so that every video gets a real response rather than a template. When the six are full, the page closes until they finish.

Applications are a short form and I read every one myself. If it is not the right fit I will tell you, and I will tell you what would be.

Apply for a place

Takes about five minutes. Tell me where you stopped.

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