The mistake
More hours of practice does not equal more progress. Pianists who practice on the wrong physical frame can repeat a passage a hundred times — and encode the wrong pattern more deeply each round.
Nothing to do with finding more pieces to practice — and nothing to do with practicing harder. Everything to do with the instruction behind how you play the ones you already have.
You can spend a lot of time at the piano without much to show for it. That is rarely a discipline problem — and almost never a talent problem. It is an instruction problem, and it is almost invisible from the inside.
More hours of practice does not equal more progress. Pianists who practice on the wrong physical frame can repeat a passage a hundred times — and encode the wrong pattern more deeply each round.
Years of effort can pass without compounding. Tension builds, speed limits hold, tone stays uneven — not because the pianist isn't working, but because the work is shaped around the wrong thing.
Sound-shaped, mechanism-based teaching. The arm, wrist, and hand learning to coordinate around what the music actually asks for — so the hours you already practice start to compound.
I've been teaching piano for over twenty-five years — in the Netherlands and in China.
Conservatory-trained, rooted in the Rubinstein tradition, and still — after all this time — the thing that gets me to the piano every morning is sound.
How it's made. Why it carries. Why one pianist can play the same notes as another and leave a different kind of silence afterwards.
That is what I teach. Not shortcuts. Not tricks. The patient, specific work of building a technique that serves the music — so that what you hear in your head can actually reach the room.
That work has a shape. It is what the next section is about.
You've played for years — sometimes decades — and you've never quite felt you understood why one passage works and another doesn't. You want the mechanism, not the memorization.
You've hit a wall. Tension, speed limits, uneven tone — and the suspicion that working harder isn't going to fix it.
You played years ago and want to come back — this time with better habits and a clearer sense of what your hands are actually doing.
If you want to play a piece for a wedding next month, this is the wrong place. The membership is small on purpose — twenty or so serious pianists, working slowly. The work compounds. It doesn't shortcut.
If you have practiced for years without the progress you expected, the reason is almost never effort. It is instruction.
Most piano teaching treats technique and music as two stages — first you drill the mechanics, then, eventually, you make something musical out of them. Piano Fantasy does not separate them.
The technique work here is shaped by the sound you are trying to make. The sound work is grounded in how the hand, arm, and ear are actually coordinating.
That is the transfer the method trains — from a clear Musical Intention, through Prepared Coordinated Movement, into the Sound you meant to make. Everything on the site sits inside that loop.
The technical work is shaped by what you are trying to hear.
Every note has a physical moment that precedes it.
Arm, wrist, and fingers working together — not drilled apart.
Piano Fantasy Pro is where the instruction gap closes — deliberately, with a teacher who can see your specific situation and a small community working at the same depth.
Courses, live lessons, written feedback on what you're actually practicing. The membership is small on purpose — around twenty serious pianists. The price is honest. The work compounds.
Try the first technique. Do the first exercise. If you don't feel the shift in how your hand sits at the keyboard, full refund inside 15 days.
“Amazing teacher. Due to Lars' method of arm and finger technique, my piano play has improved a lot. He goes into great depth and that gives me a lot of joy in playing the piano.”
“I have learned with Lars how to solve technical problems. I also became better at my rhythm and improvisation. Lars is really an excellent pianist and also a very good teacher.”
“This program has given me renewed interest in approaching my piano and long loved pieces. I now play with new enthusiasm into my super fingers.”
Piano Fantasy is a piano-teaching platform built for serious adult pianists — the ones who care how they play, not just what they play. The teaching focuses on the mechanism layer: how the arm, wrist, and hand actually produce the sound you want.
It is run by Lars Nelissen — twenty-five years of teaching, conservatory-trained in the Rubinstein tradition, working with adult pianists from beginner-returners to advanced.
Against private lessons: a fraction of the cost, and faster feedback when you actually need it. A year of weekly private lessons typically runs around $4,000 — roughly $100 an hour, forty weeks. The Pro Membership is $479 a year. Almost ten times cheaper. And when you hit a wall mid-week — a fingering that won't work, a passage that resists — you don't wait seven days for the next lesson. You post in the community, upload a short video showing what's happening, and get an answer within a day — from me or from other pianists who've been through the same wall.
Against other online piano courses: most are courses only. No live interaction, no personal time with the teacher, no path to ask the question that's actually blocking you. The Pro Membership includes both — the structured course material and the weekly contact. And on the teaching itself — few methods actually teach a complete piano technique the way the Super Fingers method does. It is the approach the great teachers have always used: how the arm, wrist, and hand coordinate to produce sound, taught as a complete system rather than piece-by-piece tips.
No, it doesn't have to. Piano Fantasy can sit alongside in-person lessons very comfortably — as long as your teacher is open to it.
That said, Piano Fantasy is designed to be used without a separate teacher too. So whether you have one or not, the teaching works.
Yes — any time, from your account page. The first month carries a 15-day guarantee: try the first technique, do the first exercise, and if you don't feel the shift in how your hand sits at the keyboard, full refund.
After the guarantee window, cancellation cadence depends on the plan you chose at signup — monthly, quarterly, or yearly. You can cancel at any point and the membership simply ends at the close of the current billing period. No retention call, no friction. Renewals are not refundable, which is the standard membership pattern; the guarantee covers the first decision, not the standing one.
Probably not. Piano Fantasy is built for adult pianists who have already been playing — often for years — and have hit a wall they can't think their way past. The teaching assumes you can read music, sit at the instrument with some fluency, and have a piece you're already working on.
If you're starting from zero, a different teacher is the right first step. Come back when you can read music, sit at the piano comfortably, have a piece you're working on, and a specific frustration you can name.
Yes — and most of what's worth reading is on the blog. That's where the longer pieces live: technique walk-throughs, repertoire notes, the kind of writing that takes more than a minute. There's also a little bit on YouTube, and the Piano Fantasy Minute newsletter — twice a week in your inbox, free, no upsell inside the emails themselves.
What the free path can't give you is structure. The blog is browse-it-when-you-want; the newsletter arrives in pieces. The Pro Membership is the same teaching laid out in a coherent order, with the exercises you actually do, the live lessons where you can ask the question that's blocking you, and personal guidance when you get stuck. The free content is real — it isn't a sample. The Pro Membership is a different shape of teaching, not a more-of-the-same upgrade.
Recent writing on technique, sound, and the work itself.
Most uneven trills come from the fingers alone. Trill speed actually comes from forearm rotation — the forearm turns, the fingers ride that motion, and the two notes share the weight.
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Replaying a passage that went wrong only makes the wrong version familiar. There are two kinds of repetition — one builds skill, the other quietly works against you.
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Every note can be right and the line still sounds flat. The missing piece is a phrase breath — a release of arm tension. Here's where it goes and why.
Read More →