The RockStar Method: Piano Course program starts from scratch and goes on a journey from total beginner to elite, virtuoso piano performance. Each song is chosen and taught in a specific order to gradually build skill, knowledge, musicianship, and complexity. If your child is somewhere in between beginner and advanced, our annual membership includes a LIVE lesson during which we can evaluate your son and then skip him forward into the appropriate level if necessary.

We focus on the things we enjoy. The reason teens love sports or video games is because they’re fun. If your child’s lessons and exercises bore them, it will be like pulling teeth to get them to practice. But if they are motivated by an urge like “How cool will it be to play Still D.R.E. for my friends?” … That will get them to practice, to get them past the awkward adolescent period and into the “flow state” of creativity and intellectual stimulation.

Eventually, but remember that children learn how to talk before they learn how to read. What if we were forbidden from speaking, singing, or telling jokes until we learned how to read? We have found that it’s best to get your child playing right away. 

Many piano methods start with sight-reading, but we find that this is counterproductive to childs’ learning style. Teens learn by doing. They like to ride bicycles over ravines, run into walls, and learn by doing. The action of learning to play a song is much more fulfilling for them. Slowing them down to learn how to sight read is likely to discourage them and lead to quitting.

The Van Tuyl “Piano Tab” method focuses on getting them to play the songs they love as quickly as possible, and then work backwards, teaching them to sight-read as they go.

Every lesson includes a “crash course” in music theory. No lesson is “all theory.” That’s an excellent way to bore an energetic teen to tears and have them begging to quit the piano. Instead, we focus on bite-sized theory lessons that they can apply immediately to the song they learn in the lesson.

Yes, video feedback or even live video lessons are available for purchase. If you buy a whole year in advance, your subscription will include four video feedback sessions personalized to your child's progress, in addition to getting two months free!

Nothing, not even a program as innovative as ours, will ever be able to replace sitting in a room with a trained instructor who is patiently guiding you along your journey of music. In fact, Ryan Van Tuyl still teaches hundreds of in-studio lessons every week. If you have the time, money, and access to a modern rock piano program like ours, you should absolutely experience it. But for the cost of less than a month of private lessons, why not sign up for our program regardless of your situation and try it? Maybe your child can use The RockStar Method as a companion to his in-studio lessons with Nelda the Piano Teaching Grandma.

Yes. In addition to observed reductions in anxiety, playing the piano gives boys a sense of identity, a way to contribute value in social settings and create social proof through confident performance.

A Canadian study found that children increased an average of 3 IQ points in testing after 9 months of piano lessons. Piano practice has demonstrable positive effects on memory, spatial-temporal ability, language skills, and audio-visual processing.

Piano never goes out of style. A teen who is a whizz on a piano will always bring down the house. In fact, this is even more the case now that so few teens have access to music education. With piano on the decline, pianists stand out. Other teens want to be them, boys or girls want to date them, the best teachers fight to have them in their class. We have seen it time and again — if you want your child to thrive amongst his peers, skill with piano is one of the best talents he can cultivate.