A Sumner company selling instructional piano DVDs now has a series of programs being distributed directly to cable subscribers’ homes.
Piano For Life, owned by husband-and-wife team Mark and Nancy Almond, has sold videos instructing customers in piano for about 13 years, beginning with first installment “Piano for Quitters,” which was partially taped in a dairy freezer in a barn in Sumner.
The videos took a unique approach to learning the piano by eschewing initial lessons on notes or technical music theory, and diving right into harmony and simple structures of music.
Almond insists in person and in the history lesson/introductions to his videos that his method is simply the basic method that the masters learned by, before note-and-theory based programs were popularized in the 19th century.
Regardless, the series proved popular on the home catalog market in both its original VHS and current DVD formats. Some of the most frequent purchasers are homeschool families trying to incorporate a music program into their curriculum.
“With the harmony-based system in the program, home school mothers who don’t know how to play the piano are able to guide their children in lessons within a few hours,” Almond said.
Almond’s programs were picked up by Mag Rack video-on-demand (VOD) service, which is available through cable and satellite companies in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
“Piano For Life” programs became available, complementary to viewers, on Comcast OnDemand July 17.
Almond supplies four shows at a time. The first eight consist of the introductory lessons in his DVD set, and subsequent programming is supplementary to the DVDs.
The venture makes money for Mag Rack and the Almonds through advertisements for the DVD sets before and after each lesson.
Orders from the Mag Rack shows go through a special phone line that notifies the Almonds to split the revenues on that sale with Mag Rack.
The most recent report shows viewership of the Piano For Life lessons is rising.
A deal is in the works with Charter Communications to make Piano For Life programming available in St. Louis and Almond’s agent is pursuing similar deals with Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications.
Outside of the cable video-on-demand ventures, Piano For Life is localizing its business model to include more in-person seminars geared toward piano students and teachers interested in learning and teaching by the harmony method.
Almond continues to teach classes in Seattle and Portland, as well as a few in dining halls close to the office in Sumner.
Nancy Almond is working with the Sumner Downtown Association in promoting events like the Sweetheart Wine Walk.
“A lot of people see our videos and don’t realize we’re here in Sumner,” Almond said.
Piano For Life’s office is in the Sumner West building at 800 Main St.
