Individual Instrumental Teaching - Melbourne
I teach piano and violin to students across a range of ages, abilities, personalities and musical goals. My approach is highly individualised, and I enjoy designing lessons around the learner rather than expecting every student to fit the same method, repertoire or lesson structure.
I regularly design my own games, visual resources, practice tools and learning activities to make musical concepts more accessible and engaging. I have created visual lesson plans to help students understand the structure and goals of a lesson, transformed repetitive technical work into challenges and games, and adapted activities according to students’ interests, strengths and confidence.I also enjoy finding ways to make repertoire feel personally meaningful. For example, when suitable sheet music was unavailable for a piece one student loved, I transcribed music from her favourite film soundtrack so that her own musical interests could become part of the learning experience.
With students working towards more formal goals, I look for ways to build independence and self-reflection alongside technical development. During AMEB preparation, for example, I have used recordings to help students listen critically to their own performances and co-created tiered mastery goals so that progress feels visible, achievable and increasingly owned by the student.This means that my lessons can look quite different from one learner to another. Depending on the student, I may draw on movement, storytelling, visual cues, technology, improvisation, student choice, games or creative challenges, while still maintaining clear musical intentions around technique, musicianship and repertoire.
My lesson design does not end when the lesson finishes.I maintain individual reflective logs in Notion, where I document what students worked on, strengths I noticed, barriers or challenges that emerged, what seemed to motivate them, which teaching approaches were effective and what I might change the following week.
This has created an ongoing cycle within my practice: design → teach → observe → reflect → redesign
Over time, this process has helped me become much more intentional about the learning experiences I create. Instead of asking only whether a student mastered a particular piece or skill, I also think about why something worked, where the difficulty came from, what could make the learning more accessible, and how I can gradually help the student become more confident and independent. For me, instrumental teaching has therefore become a space where music education and learning design naturally meet by combining musical expertise with creativity, responsiveness and thoughtful design to create learning experiences that are meaningful for the individual student.