Mark Meronek

Hi, I'm Mark Meronek, a piano teacher who has been playing for almost 20 years and teaching for 10 years privately and I would love to help you with learning piano if lessons with me would be a good fit. My playing experience includes that I played in a duo and as part of a trio for 4 years for bars, weddings, parties and music events in Southern California playing a mix of jazz chords and improvisation on hip hop drum beats (often mixed with jazz, latin, and other drum styles). Here is a bit about the lessons and my style of teaching and playing so you can get a better sense of what they are like and if they are for you:

In lessons with me my students generally learn how to play lush, beautiful chords and accompanying soloing scales, how to improvise freely and expressively, music reading/theory, rhythm, and how to overcome any blocks they may have about accessing their own creativity. Also, the styles that I play and focus on the most are two jazzy styles, and if I were to try to describe them, one is close to John Legend's style of playing and includes playing jazz standards and a cocktail piano sound, while the other is the style I mentioned before, one of playing jazz chords and improvisation on hip hop beats, similar to the kind that you might have heard in Youtube videos these days, and also a style like the piano you might hear for movie scores like Interstellar with a more classical influence.

My teaching style is focused on these points: that the piano is a place where you can be free to express yourself, to be creative, in whatever way you want and have fun, teaching with simplicity, and empathizing to see what will work best for my students and not just explaining things that aren't related to their interests and/or are unnecessary.

To get a better understanding of what and how I teach, it will definitely help to watch the sample performance and teaching  video on this webpage (the sample lesson is at 4:23, and it is from a course I previously made, and excerpted from the middle, but I hope it is still helpful and easy to follow).

For the lessons they are taught online and Skype and/or Zoom are used with a two-camera setup with a regular camera view and an overhead piano camera view.

If you have any questions that would help you get a better sense of whether lessons with me are a good fit for you please let me know, or if right now it seems like having me as a teacher might be a good fit for you and you would like to set up a free trial lesson for you to get a full sense of that, I would be happy to do that and just let me know.

Thanks,

Mark