I'm Edward Lloyd Price, a composer and working cocktail bar pianist. I hold both a music degree and a doctorate in Musical Composition (AMusD) and have studied Jazz music, Impressionist music and the composers of the late 19th century and early 20th century in depth for well over 30 years. My Piano Concerto on themes of Edvard Grieg's sketches for a 2nd concerto was shortlisted for the International Grieg Competition in 1998, and I have written and directed high-level musical shows for children as well as composed jingles, background music and a variety of 'to order' music, and actively used music in working with young people with Asperger's Syndrome.

I particularly advocate playing by ear, based on singing and playing intervals, as the primary foundation of all music tuition. I have played by ear since I was a teenager, and as my partner is an innate musician but is dyslexic and thus struggles to read score I now focus on teaching using interval recognition by ear and by sight and feel of the notes/hand shapes on the keyboard, bypassing the traditional paper-based methods. I have found this is more enjoyable for instructor and student.

With all my music courses, it is possible to learn the skills required without any ability to read music whatsoever, though you do need to be familiar with the concepts of scales, the notes included in them, and the triads derived from them. Everything else comes with practice!