Aaron Sweeney

Hello, my name is Aaron. I live in southport, United kingdom with my fiancé and two cats; Quasar (boy) and Matatabi (girl).
I started learning piano properly at the age of 14 whilst in my fourth year of secondary school.
I have ASD (autism spectrum disorder), and I attended a school for special education needs.

I believe my condition gave my the focus I needed to develop at a fast rate, and within a year I was playing famous classical pieces thar I didn’t even know the names of, all by ear.
Despite my best efforts, I cannot read music, at least not in the conventional sense, despite owning several sheet music books; I read the basic guitar chords usually located above the sheet music, and use my natural sense of rhythm and strong ear to quickly learn most pieces, and often do not even require the guitar box chords, usually working purely by ear, though, I find music books are not always perfect, neither am I.

I STARTED TEACHING when I was still at school, and continued after I left, having inspired many fellow students, and kept going, also playing live at gigs, though gigging is not something I personally enjoy.

MY MUSIC PHILOSOPHY;

As of writing I have OVER 20 YEARS EXPERIENCE TEACHING.

Music is all about about INTERPRETATION, IMAGINATION and IMPROVISATION. The three eyes so to speak, these three principles allow music to flow through us.
All music (not counting percussion) is based On 12 notes, repeated up and down a harmonic scale.
12 may not sound like much, but that’s where the three eyes come in.
All music ever created utilities these 12 notes to create chords, melody, harmony, in an infinite combination of EXPRESSION, EMOTION and ENTHUSIASM, the three E’s.

I specialise in bringing out EMOTION in pieces; learning to play a piece is one thing, but learning how to stroke each note and chord, when to play louder, quieter, or not at all.
A single piece can be played in a multitude of ways, depending on how the player EXPRESSES it.
There is no right or wrong way, you can play a classical piece as a blues piece, or turn a heavy metal song into a ballad; this brings us to one of the eyes.

IMPROVISATION is another key focus for myself, and my favourite aspect to cultivate in a students development.
It is the art of using your music toolbox to insert in your own parts, using relative possible choices from a huge pool.
The artist that creates a piece has these options available to them when composing, and creates it in a specific way, as it is released.
You can choose to play it the exact way the artist did, or improvise and make it your own.

Most performing artists change thier songs when performing live.
I myself prefer to listen to several live versions, then mix them with the studio version to form my own take.

USUAL FLOW OF LESSONS WITH MYSELF

I encourage students to choose a PROJECT SONG to aim towards, and my SPECIALLY CURATED lessons will revolve around a teaching method that naturally leans towards this.
But in my experience, music has a way of altering expectations as one develops as a musician, often, the things you are not interested in end up being the things you enjoy playing the most.
Lessons will start by teaching some music theory, in inner mechanics of how music works; the open ended rule book.
From here, you can learn notes, chords and how to quickly identify them, play preprepared pieces to challenge your grasp of chord progressions.
You will also be taught how to develop your own ear and how to compose and arrange music.

Hopefully, you will choose to learn to play a different way, and I look forward to your enquiries.
Thanks for reading.