Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum PCA - what can I expect?

Great Jamie! Now my next recommendation. Practise a couple of days more and then make a recording of one of the pieces of lesson 1 or 2, that you submit for feedback. The pieces may seem overly simple but it is good to find out right from the start if you understood everything correctly.

I was using this online course on and off for about two years. At the end, I was paying for it, but hadn't used it for many months, so I terminated my subscription. I'll give you some brief bullet points about my experiences:

1) The method employed is completely different than the chord/melody approach employed by most methods. It is carefully crafted to develop dexterity and flexibility at the keyboard and equally on both hands. It attempts to develop a totally different body/mind skill set, relying heavily upon imagining the sound in the mind and transferring that sound to the instrument using a relaxed and dextrous whole body motion.

2) The first few months are most valuable. After that, the instruction becomes repetitive. Most valuable are the demonstrations so that one can listen to and observe how the teacher Vartic creates the music. However, and this is a big however, the demonstrations are buried in the tutorials, and extremely frustrating to find and repeat many times. It's the primary reason I stopped the course. I then turned to the German version channel available on YouTube, which has just the demonstrations without any instruction. I actually found this more useful.

3) I am not sure how much teacher Vartic is involved anymore. She is not nearly as active on YouTube as she once was. Others may be better and to comment on this.

4) I think at $30/month it is a good value. I wouldn't spend more than that though for anything beyond the first three months.

For me, it is more than three years now and still very valuable.


[quote=Richrf] I am not sure how much teacher Vartic is involved anymore. She is not nearly as active on YouTube as she once was. Others may be better and to comment on this.

She is still very much involved and creates new tutorials, or answers questions about tutorials. In addition she has hired another teacher to give feedback.

For the premium price of PCA I would expect not only high quality teaching but also a high quality experience regarding filming and editing. Sadly the latter lets PCA down. Many of the videos are old, poorly filmed and the choppy editing really makes watching Ilinca hard work. This is just my opinion and YMMV.

This is also my impression. In the process of deciding wether to enroll at PCA or not I posted a question in the remarks field on one of her free YT videos. I got an answer from her within a couple of hours. And not just a formal "Thank you!" type of answer. During these two hours she actually had noted that I in that time had joined the PCA and bid me welcome.

I'm starting at beginner level after playing "self teaching" a couple of years. I have high demands and expectations on my teachers after a long guitar career. And I must say that so far the PCA method - and teaching - is meeting my expectations more than well. In fact I much prefer this way than having a so-so personal teacher next to me (which I also tried).

What I find unique at PCA is the heavy focus on HOW to play the piano. Not just WHAT you should try to learn. This suits me perfectly, since I need all help I can get to develop my technique. (There may be other online schools that have the same pedagogic method, but I haven't found any after a year of deep search. YMMV).

Anyway OP - best of luck on your continued piano journey!

Has Piano Career Academy restricted its reach to Facebook members only?

Per a post earlier in this thread, I saw the pre-announcement of a coming "Black Friday" offer. So, I went to the PCA website and did all that I could to express my interest, including sending a message per their on web message facility.

However, I heard nothing in reply. It is now several days past Black Friday, and I am disappointed in their failure to reply.

I am not a member of Facebook.

Does anyone know of a way to learn about and take advantage of the Black Friday offer without sacrificing my life and privacy to Facebook?

Hi Ralph.

Sorry not being able to help. I'm a member of FB, but had not seen - nor looked for - the PCA FB site. I picked up PCA on Youtube and went from there to their home page where I enrolled in their program.

Maybe a PM to Ilinca could set things straight for you?