My name is Yash Gandhi and I am 9 years old, and I started piano in September 2015 and, I really enjoy playing the piano a lot.
I started out as pushing random buttons on a very simple keyboard and it sounded terrible, but then my mum found a free website online and I started doing free online lessons from Hoffman Academy. There are 120 lessons and they are adding more lessons as we speak so people can get better at piano as they go along. Currently they have beginner lessons but soon they are going to add beginner through to advanced lessons.
In my classroom my friend Andrew can play the piano and he makes it sound amazing and I want to play as great as he does so that is what inspired me to learn the piano. As I get better my parents get more and more proud of me and I think it’s because the songs get more and more advanced, and the songs sound really good. Some of the songs Hoffman Academy teaches you are Frog in the Middle, Mouse in the House, Silver Birch Tree, Debka Hora, Ode to Joy, and Au Clair de la Lune. Also some of the notes I learned are quarter notes, eighth notes sixteenth notes and fermata.
To be honest now my family want to learn to play the piano as well, but they just do not have the time to learn piano but my brother Krish and I have lots of time. Once my dad did 3 to 4 lessons and then soon after that he did 3 to 4 more lessons, and then gave up because he can’t consistently keep up with them.
Hoffman Academy is great. Mr. Hoffman teaches us in very simple terms, and we can do the lessons on our own time. I really love it. And you can go back and re-watch the videos as many times as you want to or need to.
On the Christmas of 2015, my mom said that she was getting my dad a giant speaker, but it turns out that it was a way bigger and better keyboard, and I was so happy. Now I go on it a lot more and now I can slowly read sheet music from 2 books that I got for Christmas along with my keyboard, depending on how hard the notes are to read and if I have learnt them yet from the Academy. The author of my favorite book called “The Disney Collection” is Hal Leonard and I love the song in there called supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I haven’t learnt this song yet but can’t wait to learn it.
Mr. Hoffman’s teaching method is very helpful when it comes to reading sheet music, here is what he does, he teaches two - three lines of music for the right hand to play, and then two – three lines of music for the left hand to play, and then we try to do it on the piano and we keep doing that until we finish all of the sheet music. I think it is really fun playing the piano because I enjoy pushing the keys and listening to the beautiful sound it makes.
Mr. Hoffman is trying to make more lessons but doesn’t have enough money so he started a Kick start website to get donations to help get the money. In school I play the piano for the class to get an E in music class the songs I played are Jingle Bells and Ode to Joy, after I played for the class the class thought I played really well especially as im learning on my own without a live teacher in front of me.
If you’re reading thank you for reading and I hope you start playing the piano. Check out Hoffman Academy for free lessons.
https://www.hoffmanacademy.com/
