What is Toronto Arts Academy?
Our mission is to provide a safe environment where our students can build the musical skills they can enjoy for a lifetime. We’ve invested heavily in building a community of supportive, fun and friendly staff that all believe in that goal.
Our academy values individualized learning, where students can build essential creative skills and learn to exercise that creativity so they can experience a lifetime of success in any area.
Our Features
Caring Staff
All of our office staff & music teachers are professionally experienced and trained, or have university music
Central Locations
Our facilities are centrally located in Midtown and Downtown Toronto accessible on the ground floor.
Motivational Rewards
Flexible Scheduling
Your busy! We get you. Enjoy month to month no long-term contracts & unlimited, free makeup classes!
We Guarantee the Best Piano Teacher for you.
With over 30 carefully selected music teachers between 2 locations, we guarantee to have the best teacher match for you! We aim to provide a great experience for you and your family, or get your money back.
Meet our Team
Top Choice Awards
Winner of multiple Top Choice Awards for Toronto’s Best Music School in Central Toronto.
Consumers Choice Awards
Winner of Consumers Choice Award for Toronto’s Best Music School Every Year since 2015.
Nico, Toronto
One of the many things I like to wonder as a musician is our ability to tell stories, by having others relate to our emotions…
Arianna, Toronto
A lot can be learned in 30 minutes, and even more in 60! More lesson time allows you and your teacher a more in-depth…
Ashiya, Toronto
I have integrated my own experience of practicing music to inspire students to use their spare time creatively.
Galen, Toronto
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor. incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
Arianna, Toronto
A lot can be learned in 30 minutes, and even more in 60! More lesson time allows you and your teacher a more in-depth…
Nico, Toronto
One of the many things I like to wonder as a musician is our ability to tell stories, by having others relate to our emotions…
Galen, Toronto
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor. incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
Ashiya, Toronto
I have integrated my own experience of practicing music to inspire students to use their spare time creatively.
How it Works
Getting started is easy! We have helped thousands of students ignite their passion for learning music through our easy-to-use online music lessons platform and in-person lessons at our midtown Toronto location.
Contact us so we can find the right teacher and lesson time for you!
We work together to create an individualized program for your goals
Students Reviews
My daughter loves her piano lessons
Very friendly but professional. Teachers are all great. My daughter loves her piano lessons and looks forward to going to Toronto Arts Academy.
N.L.
Our unique Teaching Methodology
Our diverse faculty incorporate a wide range of educational methods to ensure you are challenged while keeping your learning fun!
Individualized Programs
While some schools enforce one musical curriculum and agenda, we do not. Our teachers draw on a range of curriculums while customizing each one for every student. You are not cookie-cutter and your musical experiences shouldn’t be either.
Explore Your Creativity
There’s more to creating musical experiences than reading notes and playing “right”. We encourage our students to go further. By learning to more fully embody and express their own unique character, they tap a much more important life-skill: Authenticity.
Blended Learning Formats
Students learn best with an array of learning formats that challenge them to incorporate their learning in new ways. Our academy incorporates both private lessons and group learning within our students own age groups, so you’re always meeting other students, and partaking in many ways within our musical community!
My daughter loves her piano lessons
Very friendly but professional. Teachers are all great. My daughter loves her piano lessons and looks forward to going to Toronto Arts Academy.
N.L.
Frequently Asked Questions
Explore the answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about our piano lessons below:
There is no right age for everyone when it is best to start our Toronto piano lessons, and one can start at any age. We’ve had children as young as 3 demonstrate remarkable interest and focus for learning piano. We’ve even had a virtuoso 2.5 year old! However most others may find their sweet spot for learning between the ages of 7 and 8, while many of our students are younger. Starting piano lessons at a young age allows the hand muscles to coordinate just as they are beginning to form, and students are able to grasp the more complex patterns used in music more quickly. The most determining factor for any child when beginning our Toronto piano lessons is whether or not they have the attention span to focus for 30 minutes without being too distracted, or losing the ability to stay engaged in their learning. If you’re not sure if your child is the right age, we always suggest enrolling your child on a trial basis, to see if they can maintain focus during the 30 minutes of a piano lesson!
On the flip side, some adults often wonder if they are too old to start our Toronto piano lessons, or even if they should continue their learning and love for the instrument. The answer is, of course, you are never too old to improve your ability to play music. We’ve had students as old as 80 learn how to improve their keys playing. Importantly, playing piano often helps keep mature minds young at heart, and gives expression to their inner music and creativity.
At our schools, we don’t focus on just one way of learning piano for everyone. Each student has different interests and learning styles, and so each teacher must adapt to the learning needs of each student. With that said, there are many successfully used, tried and true ways of learning piano that have been used around the world for decades. Some of those are: Bastien, Piano Adventures, Royal Conservatory Of Music, Alfred’s, and others.
There are in addition other piano learning systems that are rooted in the rich and varied, as well as established methodologies of the classical period. Some are more theory based, for those that love to get complicated, and others are designed to be more practical, structured to help you play popular songs you might hear in movies, games, or hit songs on the radio. We always suggest talking with your teacher so you can discover your motivation for learning piano, your interests, and your unique learning style, so we can look at ways to help you grow into the best piano player you can be!
If you’re looking for more advanced Toronto piano lessons, you might find yourself up against some challenging musical songs. Learning how to master any instrument is a challenge and takes time. In fact, it’s difficult on many musical instruments to even get a pleasing sound out of it! But with the piano, the notes are there ready to be played (and sound great if the piano is in tune). Although creating a basic tone is easier on piano, it’s the playing of the music written for it that can be the real challenge!
The challenge with piano is that much of the music written for it can be quite complex, and both hands often play independently of each other. While most other instruments you would play one note at a time, on the piano, you play with two hands, often doing very different patterns. It can take some time to develop this autonomy with both hands. One also has to be able to read the music written for both hands at the same time!
You might have noticed that the piano keyboard consists of a series of black and white keys. These music keys each have names based on the letters ABCDEFG. Novice piano players may spend time in the beginning learning how to identify the letter notes on the keyboard, and learning how to play just the white keys to produce the major scale – a pattern of notes that most western music is based on. Can you find where the letter names that match the keys on the piano? When you’re ready to get started with Toronto piano lessons at our academy, give us a call, and we’d be happy to help you get started!
The first step is to make sure you have the right keyboard to practice on. We’ve included some guidance in the next section if you’re looking to purchase a piano, but not quite sure where to start.
Decide on your practice frequency. Then you want to decide on the best routine for you and your learning style. Some students find that going to the piano for a few minutes at a time with lots of breaks in between is great to allow their minds a chance to absorb their learning during the breaks, without getting overwhelmed. Others find that choosing a 30-minute window and practice during that time on a daily basis is preferable for them. Still, more serious pianists may practice for much longer periods.
In the beginning, divide whatever song you are learning into small sections, and learn them section by section. Master each one slowly. As you improve, you can work on longer sections. Also learn to separate your hands: Learn each hands’ movement separately, before trying to play them together at the same time. Learning just one hand is often quite enough to start with!
And remember: If your mind, your fingers, or your wrists get tired, give it a rests and come back to it later. It takes time and patience to learn piano, and it always helps getting the best guidance! Let us help get you started with the best Toronto piano lessons in the city.
At Toronto Arts Academy, everyone from the front desk to your chosen teacher really cares about you and your music journey. We offer a step by step plan designed by your teacher to ensure you reach your piano goals. We offer the flexibility of teaching different genres; whether you want to learn Rock, Pop, Jazz or Classical, we’ve got you covered. We also feature a powerful rewards and achievement system that keeps students motivated and focused with the chance of earning wristbands, certificates and trophies.
It’s important to find the right piano teacher and a supportive learning environment local to your Toronto area. Most students benefit from a teacher who is fun to be with, has a warm personality, has a wealth of experience, and who supports and inspires you in your piano lessons to get better. You will only find that here, at our academy.
Get ready to fall in love with our Toronto piano lessons from our amazingly supportive, and talented teachers and office staff!
Our piano teachers are carefully selected from across the city for their educational background, their professional experience, and their wonderful personalities! All of our teachers are also police checked and reference checked, and we keep video cameras in all lesson rooms as part of our comprehensive family safety program. Each one brings a wealth of professional and academic experience in just the right balance to really help you explore your potential in a safe, productive environment. Our teachers are flexible in their playing style and experience so they can accommodate a wide variety of learning styles and goals for each individual student. We have many piano teachers (both male and female) between both locations, so we most definitely have a teacher that will be the best fit for you.
At the academy our teachers have a great variety of teaching styles, so that we are able to find the best teacher for you. We have teachers that specialize in Jazz, who can teach you all the secrets of improvisation and guide you through all the jazz standards. There are those that specialize in Classical Piano, if you want to learn how to read any type of music at will and develop great finger dexterity you cannot go wrong with a classical piano teacher. Also, there are teachers that are masters at Pop piano that can teach you how to play that catchy song from the radio without the need to read music and how to figure out a song using only your ears.
There are many different kinds of pianos that you can look into purchasing if you don’t have one already. They range from very affordable all the way to top of the line “Rolls Royce” of pianos. What kind of piano is best for your needs really depends on your budget, your commitment level, and your goals
You don’t necessarily need a full acoustic piano to start learning the instrument. Many decide to start with more cost and space efficient digital keyboards to get the basic finger movements and musical understanding in place, and time to demonstrate a more long-term interest in the piano, before making an investment of time and money in the purchase of a real acoustic. However, it’s worth remembering that only real pianos can give you the authentic experience of piano playing for the most enjoyable and rich learning experience. However, at midtown Toronto location, we offer a mix of acoustic and digital pianos for our award-winning piano lessons.
If you’re just starting out, and not 100% sure if it’s the perfect instrument for you, and/or you don’t have much experience yet, we might suggest starting with a very inexpensive small, portable and lightweight digital keyboard (with full-size keys), with 3 or 4 octaves of keys (means you see the same pattern of notes repeat 3 or 4 times all the way up the keyboard) that will help you get accustomed to the correct fingerings and exercises, without breaking your bank account. You can usually purchase these keyboards including keyboard stand, one sustain pedal, bench and music sheet holder for sometimes less than $100 on Amazon. This is a great way to get started quickly and easily. And if you decide to upgrade, you can easily pass this keyboard to anyone you know that also might be thinking about starting piano lessons.
If you’re a few months into your piano lessons, or if you really start falling in love with the magic of the piano and think you might be sticking to lessons for a year or more, then you may want to consider getting just a little bit closer to the real experience with a weighted-keys digital piano. While still not a real acoustic piano, a weighted-keys digital piano means that the keys on the keyboard are not lightweight as above, but weighted so the feel of pressing down on a key more closely resembles the same action on a real piano with heavier wooden keys. Practicing on this kind of digital piano will help train your fingers to adapt to the keypress action of a real piano, like what we have in our music schools when you take piano lessons with us! Keyboards with weighted keys will typically start around $600-$1000 for keyboards with a key range anywhere from 61 keys, or 5 octaves, to the full 88-key keyboards, the length of a real piano, which stretches out to about 8 octaves. Some other things to keep in mind when purchasing this kind of digital piano is whether or not you want to keep it simple with just a few different digital piano sounds on the piano, or if you are interested in exploring more varied sounds like strings, organs, and other sampled sounds, or even if you might enjoy editing or creating different sounds, which can be a lot of fun if you are into exploring and composing music.
While digital pianos have a lot to offer, nothing quite beats the majestic feel of a real, acoustic piano. While the downside of a real piano is that they are not portable like digital pianos, a real piano uses real hammers hitting real strings, creating rich vibrations that will permeate with much more warmth, depth, and colour than a digital piano. Upright pianos are the best place to start. The strings in an upright lie vertically behind the piano stretching up and down to the floor. Uprights are more affordable than grand pianos (where the strings are laid out horizontally stretching away from the keyboard). Upright pianos are often much more affordable than grand pianos, and are a better fit for most homes with smaller spaces. Purchasing an upright piano brand new is the best options which could cost you anywhere from $4000 and up. Many choose to buy an upright piano used, as they are often significantly cheaper. Be warned, however, that getting a good quality used piano can be very difficult, as so many used pianos have mechanical issues and wear and tear that affect their usefulness and playability. We would suggest taking a piano tuner with you who has lots of experience working with acoustic pianos to look at any used piano you’re considering buying before purchasing one. There are so many components inside a piano that it is very easy to purchase a used piano that won’t play well in the long run, and could ruin your enjoyment of learning to play. Invest in a piano tuner or piano technicians time to go and look at used pianos with you. You’ll be glad you did!
