About James
I’m James Gosling—award-winning film composer, piano obsessive, and late piano bloomer.
After studying music at the University of London, I went on to earn an MA in Music for the Screen from the National Film and Television School and the Royal College of Art. My career has included composing for film and television, working on projects such as the BBC’s Merlin, LEGO’s Nexo Knights, and the feature film The Hallow, which won the Golden Skull Award for Best Score at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival in 2015.
But the piano has always been something far more personal.
Like so many people, I began lessons as a child, quickly became bored, and gave up. Years later, after discovering film music and deciding to study composition, I returned to the instrument out of necessity. I worked hard enough to reach the minimum standard needed for university entrance, but only just. Looking back, I realise I knew very little about how to practise effectively. Progress came slowly, pieces were never memorised but “read” clumsily, and I quietly assumed that anyone who hadn’t started at the age of four would always remain at a disadvantage.
For years I accepted that assumption.
The real transformation came later, when I began discovering a collection of straightforward, replicable practice strategies that changed not only how I practised, but how I thought about learning altogether. I discovered the remarkable phenomenon of muscle memory, the importance of consistent fingering and strategic repetition, and how understanding the simple patterns that lie beneath the music could reduce seemingly impossibly long passages to something surprisingly manageable. Little by little, pieces that had once felt completely beyond me became achievable.
Those discoveries eventually grew into a toolkit of techniques, habits and ways of thinking that have taken me far beyond what I once believed possible as a late starter. More importantly, they changed my understanding of what learning the piano really is. It isn’t about talent nearly as much as it is about attention, focus, process, patience and perseverance.
The short film below offers a glimpse of where those discoveries eventually led.
It was recorded during a week spent preparing and playing repertoire with my university friend and fellow composer, Russell Marsh. We’d often talked about preparing repertoire and then locking ourselves away for a few days with nothing to do but play together, so eventually we did exactly that. Richard Rodney Bennett, Saint-Saëns, Gershwin and more. By the fourth day, with a phone balanced somewhat precariously on whatever happened to be nearby, we began recording a few moments simply to remember the week. If you’re wondering whether these methods really can take someone who stumbled over Grade 7 to a genuinely satisfying level of playing, perhaps this little film provides the answer.
Over the years I’ve met countless people who’ve told me they wish they’d stuck with the piano, or wish they’d had the opportunity to learn in the first place. The conversation almost always arrives at the same conclusion:
“It’s too late now.”
My own experience has convinced me that we’re all capable of going far further than we imagine, and PianEasy grew out of that conviction. It exists to share the approaches that transformed my own relationship with the piano, and to help others discover just how far they too can go.
If you’ve always wanted to play, always wanted to return, or simply feel there’s more music in you than you’ve yet discovered, then PianEasy was created with you in mind.
It isn’t too late.
You can start from where you are.
And you can almost certainly go much further than you think.
The Brews Brothers…me on the right.