How to Use the Flex Studio Membership

If you are a new member or considering joining, you’ll find an explanation of how the Flex Lessons Studio Membership works on this page.

The Flex Lessons Studio Membership is quite unlike Pianote, Playground Sessions, Simply Piano, and many other apps or platforms. This experience closely resembles traditional piano lessons in terms of what we will cover and what is asked of you. 

If you choose to participate in this program and follow my recommendations, you will learn to read music skillfully and you will have the opportunity to experience a large amount of repertoire. This is a comprehensive education!

Plan Options

The Flex Lessons Studio Membership is divided into different plans according to skill level:

• The Beginner Studio Plan is intended for new piano students or those who wish to start from the beginning. This plan provides all of the necessary instruction to successfully reach the intermediate level.

• The Intermediate Studio Plan supports piano students as they further develop their skills and explore intermediate level repertoire. This plan helps to prepare students to ultimately be able to study late intermediate and early advanced repertoire.

Students can only study from one plan at a time and will not have access to any courses from any other plan. This helps to keep the program very streamlined and avoids having to deal with an overwhelming number of courses. Once a student finishes the content for the first plan, they can switch to the other plan to continue their study.

Navigation

The Flex Lessons Studio Membership is divided into two main sections: community and products. You can access these areas at the top of the page. Note that you will need to click the menu button to view these on mobile.

The community area is where you can access a private social experience, similar to a forum. This area includes topics, posts, and comments from members. While this experience can be helpful, it is very much an optional part of the program.

The products area is where you will find all of the tutorial content for the Flex Lessons curriculum. This content is organized into series of courses which are intended to support different areas of your piano practice.

The course titles include level numbers to help you associate courses with one another. For example, if you are a Level 1 student, you should work on any course that includes “Level 1” in the title. You can also type in “1” in the search box to only view courses associated with that level.

How to Use the Courses

All of the Flex Lessons courses will be associated with a particular category of practice. This includes Piano Essentials, Piano Repertoire, and Piano Studies.

• Piano Essentials introduces you to all of the necessary technical and theoretical concepts to support your study. The topics are “essential” to your piano education.

• Piano Repertoire contains lessons and reference videos to guide students through a series of piano pieces. There are roughly 10 pieces per level. All of the music is downloadable.

• Piano Studies help students work through specialized musical and technical studies for the piano. Beginners will play exercises from Mikrokosmos: Volume 1, and intermediate students will play exercises from Czerny Op. 599.

It’s very important to work out of all of the courses for a given level at a time. Each type of course is designed to support one specific area of your practice. You’ll need to divide your practice accordingly.

Also note that the course content is best used to help you plan your practice sessions ahead of time. While it occasionally makes sense to reference a few of the videos while you are practicing, it’s generally more optimal to view the course content in between your practice sessions and use it to plan your routine.

Creating a Practice Routine

Once you have an idea of what sort of instruction you’ll find in each course, it’s time to develop a routine to take advantage of all of the information.

If you type your level number into the search field, you’ll only see courses that are relevant to your level. When viewing the courses this way, you should notice that the courses are arranged in order of priority for your practice.

Piano Essentials > Repertoire > Piano Studies

This priority doesn’t mean that you should complete the entire Piano Essentials course before moving on to Piano Repertoire. Rather, you should divide up your practice and focus on all three courses as part of your routine.

I recommend all of your sessions begin with some exercises from Piano Essentials. Note that your practice in this category will change as you work through each course. You might start out with some reading exercises, and then progress to playing pentascales, then some sight reading, and so on. The Piano Essentials course is basically a “catch all” musical skills course. Note that there are several videos that simply introduce you to various topics with no related exercises. If you can, try to watch these videos outside of your actual practice time.

After this, I suggest that you work on pieces from the Piano Repertoire course. Try to always work on two pieces at a time, if your practice time allows for it. Whenever you finish a piece, you can replace it with the next piece. While you are practicing each piece, feel free to use the different kinds of reference videos from each course as needed.

Lastly, you can wrap up your practice by playing one of the exercises from a Piano Studies course. Generally speaking, these exercises should generally be less involved compared to your repertoire, and you should move through them at a faster rate.

Practice Frequency

For best results at the piano, you will want to have frequent practice sessions throughout the day. These sessions should consist of the same activities. This is known as spaced repetition.

Your whole routine should fit into a range of 30-60 minutes, depending on skill level. You will then want to repeat this routine at least several times per week. If your practice time allows, you can even repeat your routine a few times each day.

Note that practicing shorter sessions more frequently generally results in faster progression than practicing in longer sessions less frequently.

Submitting Recordings

Each course has a dedicated “discussions” area that can be used to share your work. The discussion area functions very similarly to the community in that it is basically a private forum. However, each discussion area is singularly focused on the course content for the course that it belongs to.

To share a recording, simply navigate to the relevant course, click the “discussions” button, and create a new post by uploading your video file and any relevant text. It would be very helpful if you could include the piece title and composer name in the title of the post.

As time allows, I will review your recording and give you feedback. In many cases, it’s very typical for us to go back and forth several times on each piece. If I request an additional recording, be sure to specifically reply to my comment. This way, I receive a notification that you uploaded something. If it’s been a few days and you don’t hear back from me, feel free to send me a message.

Note that you will also be able to view posts from other community members along with my responses. You can even offer them some encouragement or constructive feedback and they may do the same for you. Keep in mind that these posts are private and only viewable by members of your specific plan.

Another helpful feature of the discussions area is the fact that you can search and sort the information. For example, if you want to see all of the recordings relating to the piece you are working on, simply search for the name of the piece. This is why it is helpful to include the relevant piece information in the title whenever you make a post.

Zoom Lessons

To maximize the effectiveness of your membership and your practice time, you might consider getting an occasional lesson with me via Zoom.

You should consider a lesson in any of these situations:

• You want a lesson and you have lots of questions!

• It has been a few months since your last lesson and you want to check in

• You have uploaded several recordings for the same piece and still feel like you are stuck

• You need help practicing or want some coaching while you practice

• You need help organizing your practice and developing a routine

• You have any other issue that you want to talk or work through

Please note that scheduling and billing of online lessons uses a separate website application called Fons. You will need to enter an email address but you don't need to create a new Fons account (unless you want to). If you have questions about this, open up a chat with me.

If you have never had a lesson with me before, your first session is free! Choose the "New Student" option when booking a session. Otherwise, choose the most appropriate option for your situation.

You can learn more about Zoom lessons with me by clicking here.

Email Notifications

If you feel that you are receiving too many email notifications, you should know that there are adjustments that you can make to correct the issue. Please don’t unsubscribe from everything! If you do, I won’t be able to communicate with you at all. Instead, navigate to the notifications section of your account settings and uncheck the items that aren’t relevant to you.

There are some notifications that I suggest you keep enabled, and I will list these below:

• General: “Allow Flex Lessons to send me emails” (this box has to be checked for me to send you any emails from my platform)

• Messaging: “Send me email notifications for new messages”

• Community: “Mentions in open and public topics you don’t follow”

• Topics: Post Replies and Comment replies

• Discussions: Discussion replies and Comment replies

By default, I have disabled notifications for new discussion posts inside the courses. However, you may wish to be notified when one of your fellow members shares a recording, especially if they are studying out of the same courses as you. If you would like to be notified in this instance, navigate to the bottom of the notifications section of your account settings and check the boxes for any course discussions that you are interested in following.

Go Forth, and Practice!

Now that you know all the basics, it’s time to learn some music!

For those of you who aren't members yet, you can sign up here.

If you need help at any point, feel free to send me a message or leave a comment below.

I hope you enjoy the Flex Lessons experience! It is my pleasure to guide you through the study of this wonderful instrument.

Happy practicing!