If you are extremely talented, you can probably do that — and in that case, you certainly don’t need me or any other teacher. I couldn’t help Mozart, Garner or Brubeck — but if you’re not in that category (and I’m certainly not), there’s probably a great deal you can pick up by taking one or more of our piano courses.

Most of us — including me — are not Mozarts or Oscar Petersons . So we need all the help we can get. Learning to read a bit — at least being able to read a melody line (the tune) — will help a lot, because then you can learn to match chords to the melody and you’re on your way.

When people say things like “I just want to play the piano. I don’t want to learn chords, or music theory, or any of that” what they are really saying is “I want to have magical fingers that play while my brain is asleep, because I don’t want to put in the time and effort necessary to learn what I need to learn.”

As much as I would like to be a Fairy Godmother or the Easter Bunny, I’m really just a human piano teacher. I can teach, but I can’t do magic. For every teacher, there has to be a learner on the other end for anything significant to happen. But when a good teacher hooks up with a student hungry to learn, then magic — the real magic of human progess — often happens, and observers stand by and say “I’d give anything to play like that!”

Anything except time, effort, money, and little things like that.

It’s still true: “What a man (or woman) sows, he will also reap.”

To get started learning, go to www.playpianocatalog.com