Hochstein student Michael Meindl started taking Piano 101 classes with Dr. Yi-Wen Chang in 2013 and has continued taking individual lessons over the past 10 years. Yi-Wen tells us that he played piano by ear before taking lessons at Hochstein, then switched to playing using sheet music.
“It's a shifting of two different learning systems for Mike,” she says. “After all these years, he has been persistent and working hard, and now he can sight read the music that he’s interested in learning!”
He recorded the tune of “When a Man Loves a Woman,” playing his two favorite instruments, piano and guitar, and combined them into one audio track.
Mike says, “I have liked this song ever since I first heard it back in the late ‘60s. Since then, it has been recorded by numerous artists in styles as varied as pop, country, and R&B. I used the sheet music from a piano lesson and wrote an 8-bar instrumental break that I used to improvise piano and guitar. I owe much to Dr. Chang for her excellent instruction with the sheet music.”
If you’re inspired by Mike to pursue music lessons yourself, you can find more information at:
https://hochstein.org/Music/Individual-Instruction-for-All-Ages
Listen to the audio track of Mike’s version of “When a Man Loves a Woman” on the video player below or use this link: https://youtu.be/b53yRHvP0UA