I have a piano student on Thursday mornings who is an absolute joy to teach. He’s interested and enthusiastic and we have really good discussions about how music works. And that dynamic makes me a better teacher. The photo below is a teaching idea I am thrilled to have come up with last week. It may look like just a few messy coloured lines, but it is in fact the music for Autumn Leaves – instead of trying to remember a whole string of chords, you just have to remember the order of the pink and green. It works a treat! (I will make a video in the next few weeks that explains it, if you’d like to know more.) Tiny good ideas are a particularly fabulous kind of tiny pleasure.

a sheet of paper with coloured lines