Will Hay

Category: Piano Teaching

  • Before Grade 1 – The Pre-prep Test

    This is the first in a series of posts looking at the certificate options available for young beginners to tackle before they are ready to start working on Grade 1. I have used the ABRSM Prep Test for over a year now which has proved popular with my students, giving them a taste of what exams are like without the pass/fail pressure.

    Trinity LCM exams have an exam venue in Chester and offer a range of pre-grade 1 options; Pre-prep, Step 1 and Step 2. The entry fees for these exams in 2011 are £23, £24 and £25 respectively. The closing date for Spring entry is 1st February 2011 and the spring exam session takes place from 19th March – 21st April.

    Pre-Prep Test – All the necessary material is available in a single publication

  • Students perform in Chester recital

    Thirty students performed in the Charity Piano Recital last week at The King’s School.  The concert raised a further £180 towards Betina’s lesson bursary bringing the total raised this year to over £400. With a year of lessons costing £300 this means there is a surplus to go towards her exam fees and other costs. Certificates were presented and the winners of the composition competition performed their work along with noteflight accompaniment!

    A selection of video clips from the concert are available to watch below. More may be added in due course…

  • Christmas and New Year

    Might I take this opportunity to wish everyone a joyous Christmas and a peaceful New Year!

    Piano lessons in school will be finishing by 20th December. View your rearranged lesson times. Other than students at Upton Heath who will have a lesson as normal on Tuesday 14th Dec, you will only have another lesson if your name is on the spreadsheet or if you have a lesson booked on the diary.

    Lessons will start again and follow a regular schedule in the New Year from Thursday 6th January, 2011.

    Lesson times for Chester Catholic High will be updated after 16th December. Please see the on-line timetable or log in to the diary to check for updates!

    Events leading up to Christmas 2010

    16th Dec: Listen out for some “wrong” notes on Radio 4’s Afternoon play at 2:15pm – Will Hay playing some piano moments in  “Chequebook and Pen”

    17th Dec: Neston Ecumenical Singers Christmas Carol Concert at St. Winefride’s Church, Little Neston starting at 7:30pm (featuring “Snowflakes” by Graeme Hopson)

    18th Dec: Chester Cathedral Choir Christmas Concert at Chester Cathedral 7:30pm

    18th Dec: An alternative Nine Lessons and Carols at All Saint’s, Hoole 7:30pm

    22nd Dec: BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong live from Chester Cathedral on BBC Radio 3 at 4pm

    24th Dec: Nine Lessons and Carols at Chester Cathedral 3pm

  • Composition Competition 2010 – Results

    It was great to receive 11 composition submissions to the competition and many of my students had worked hard on their pieces. In the end though I had to come up with two winners from the entries received and these pieces were performed at the concert on 4th December, 2010. I will add some more of the entries in noteflight form to a composition gallery page over the next few weeks.

    Please find the winning noteflight scores embedded below to listen to and view.

    Oliver – Christmas Dinner

    Ruth – Winter Wonderland

  • Christmas Piano Music

    I first wrote this post over two years ago as “Easy Christmas Carol Books”. Having had a few queries since from parents about which music to buy their children for Christmas, I decided to add some books below with more challenging yet fun arrangements.

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    “As the frosty mornings are starting to set in and christmas parties are getting booked up, it’s time to prepare some festive music so today I’m looking at what is available. So many books are promoted as ‘easy’ piano music or ‘easy to play’ but ‘easy’ is such a relative term.

    The Easiest Tune Book Of Christmas Carols - Book 1One of my favourites which truly is about as ‘easy’ as you can get is The Easiest Tune Book of Christmas Carols. Despite being in it’s fiftieth year of publication it is still one of the best. Whilst it isn’t decked with brightly coloured pictures like some of the more recent editions of christmas carols, it is easy to read, easy to play, the fingering is sensible and points where the pianist must change hand position are clearly marked with an apostrophe though the edition is designed to reduce the need for changes in hand position where possible.

    The left hand parts are also very simple and guitar chords are also given.


    Piano Time Carols from Oxford University Press is a little bit more expensive than ‘The Easiest Tune Book of…’ but it offers a more attractive front cover. Inside colour is used subtely. The carol arrangements are easy enough but a little more challenging than ‘The Easiest Tune Book’. The left hand parts use more chords and the right hand involves more changes of position.”

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    For more advanced pianists, Pam Wedgewood’s JAZZIN’ ABOUT Classic Christmas arrangements are more challenging but particularly fun when played alongside the backing CD in this new edition. One of the arrangements which is most popular with my students is “Christmas Jingle”, a medley of Jingle Bells and We wish you a merry Christmas that switches between straight 4/4 time and 3/4 Jazz Waltz.

    Christopher Norton uses five well-known carols in Carol Jazz as a ‘jumping off’ point for jazz-related variations. These arrangements offer the more advanced pianists a chance to develop their own improvisation skills following a suggested routine.