about the author

My name is Ron Ottley.

I live in Dunedin, New Zealand. I am a piano teacher, or more accurately I am a semi-retired piano teacher. I was born in 1934.

I still enjoy teaching, but now I try to restrict that to three days a week. This schedule suits me very well. I have the pleasure and satisfaction of teaching and I have time and energy left to pursue other activities.

I live with my wife Heather. We have been married for 54 years.

CHILDREN

We have 3 children, 7 grandchildren, 8 great grandchildren and 4 honorary grandchildren. We have, or have had, very frequent contact with all these descendents, especially when they were children.

In fact, we have 2 of our great grandchildren here for a sleep over as I write this.

We brought up 2 of our grandsons . They came to live with us permanently when they were aged 2 and 4. They are both parents now.

We appointed ourselves honorary grandparents to a family who immigrated to New Zealand and who have no relatives here. We have frequent contact with them.

When I was younger, I was an instructor in a children’s gymnastic club for 25 years

Also for about 25 years I was a youth leader in a church group.

I have piano pupils, of course, and most of them are children.

Why am I telling you all this? Well I guess it lets you know that my wife and I are very involved with family, but more relevant is that over the years I have been, and still am, very involved with children. I enjoy that.

MUSIC

I studied classical piano from age eight till I was about twenty

when I became interested in popular music. This was partly due to the influence of my Father who was a trumpet player in a dance band.

I played the piano in a group for 25 years.

Then I was the resident musician at a restaurant for 8 years.

Then I moved to another restaurant where I was the resident musician for a further 12 years.

PIANO TEACHING

Teaching the piano very neatly combines two of the main interests in my life, music and children. I do have adult pupils, but most are children.

A large part of being a piano teacher, is encouraging and motivating the pupil to keep at it, generating enthusiasm for piano practice, and stimulating and fostering a love of music.

I felt that I had made a major breakthrough with my reluctant pupils when I started telling them stories.

Firstly, they enjoyed the stories. Who doesn’t enjoy a good story?

Secondly, and this is the point of the stories, they got the message. It was very satisfying to see a pupil smiling and nodding knowingly, as they understood the relevancy of the story to themselves.

NOW I LOVE MUSIC PRACTICE

I decided to put many of the stories I have told over the years into a book. I have entitled it Now I Love Music Practice and more than half the book is based on stories.

I wrote it as an inspirational book for children, but the feed back I am receiving indicates that it is also a great music teacher resource.

Also, people are telling me they are finding it to be very helpful and inspirational in areas not even related to music.