The Method I Had to Create Because Nobody Taught It to Me

Hi, I’m Amanda.
And just so we’re clear from the start, I don’t teach music the way most people do.

I didn’t come out of a conservatory. I didn’t memorize my way through a degree. I didn’t inherit the “traditional” way of teaching piano.

Everything I teach, I had to build myself.

I’m neurodivergent in a very pattern-oriented, logic-driven way, and my brain simply cannot learn something unless I understand the structure behind it. Growing up, I was handed rules with no explanations, techniques with no reasons, and concepts with no logic. So yeah, even though I was a fast learner (I’m a textbook autodidact), I spent years confused and annoyed, wondering why everything felt harder than it should. I could read well enough to play pieces and imitate the sound, but the second I hit advanced music, I slammed into a wall. Hard. I hadn’t been taught the actual skills or understanding needed to survive at that level.

I did eventually have a teacher who gave me some of the logic I’d been missing, but that was after I had already been stuck in RCM Level 10 for years and was already teaching students myself. It helped, but it came far too late to fix the gaps I’d been carrying.

Honestly, most of my teaching style wasn’t planned. It was instinct. From the beginning I naturally did what worked, threw out what didn’t, and stitched together better and better ways of explaining things. I didn’t learn that in school. It’s just how my brain works. Later, I stumbled across a piano-teaching blog which reinforced a lot of what I was already doing and gave me some extra tools, but the core of my teaching? That came from instinct, pattern-recognition, and figuring things out the hard way.

I began reverse-engineering everything.

Every concept. Every technique. Every theory rule. Every skill progression. Every explanation. Every missing link.

Nobody taught me the underlying logic of music, so I had to figure it out myself.
And in the process, I discovered something most teaching programs never touch: how the brain actually learns.

I built a teaching style based on:

• logic

• pattern recognition

• developmental psychology

• how neurodivergent brains absorb information

• how humans process overwhelm

• the emotional side of learning

• and clear, simple explanations that actually make sense

My entire teaching philosophy sits on one belief:
music is not hard, bad teaching makes it hard.

I refuse to teach by memorization, shame, or tradition.
I teach with clarity, compassion, and logic.
I don’t assume students “just get it,”
I show them the why so they can own the concept and use it independently.

Students don’t leave my lessons dependent on me.
They leave independent, confident, and capable.

That didn’t come from a degree.
That came from being neurodivergent, curious, stubborn, analytical, empathetic, and determined to do for my students what nobody did for me.

I teach differently because I had to learn differently.
And that difference is the reason my students thrive.