Payam Khastkhodaei thought it was the biggest achievement in the world when he placed second in a state-level piano competition. Then his students started sweeping competitions across the United States. 

The 32-year-old son of Iranian immigrants has come up with a new method of teaching that has students loving their piano lessons and performing at high levels. Khastkhodaei says his students have higher success rates and are learning more quickly than students learning piano via traditional methods. 

"Our students don't just learn piano, they love piano," Khastkhodaei said. "And that's one of the biggest keys to it."

What sets Payam's piano teaching methods apart?

In nearly every room of a converted home in the Seattle suburb of Bothell, Washington, Khastkhodaei and his team of young teachers — all former students of his — are giving piano lessons, and having fun. Students are charged from $75 to $100 per lesson, and range from preschool beginners to high school talents.

"In piano we have this thing called the diploma, which is sort of like the black belt of the musical world," Khastkhodaei said. "Traditionally, about 1-2% of students reach diploma level, and it takes them about 12 years. In our school, 96% reach it and it takes them about four years."

The "Payam Method" begins not with sheet music, but with ABCs and 123s, and with actually writing numbers on piano keys.

"They're not reading notes. They're not even sometimes looking at sheet music. We're playing a game. And it's fun for them," Khastkhodaei said. 

Students are shown numbers to play, not notes.

"What they're doing is building this coordination," Khastkhodaei said.

Students eventually shift to sheet music as they move through the 18 levels of the curriculum and, all the while, they're learning to play — and write — songs they enjoy.

Most of Khastkhodaei's students don't aspire to be concert pianists, but his playful approach seems to have them loving their lessons. What really sets him apart is that he's also teaching his students to compose original songs at very young ages. Delara Rahmatian, 12, recently showed off her third-ever composition. 

Even when they're learning other people's compositions, Khastkhodaei's students are encouraged to play around with tempo, style and mood.

"Try it once and you'll understand," Khastkhodaei said he tells any skeptics.

Bringing the "Payam Method" to students across the U.S. 

The Payam Method is spreading thanks, in part, to Hadi Partovi, the father of one of Khastkhodaei's students and the co-founder and CEO of code.org. Partovi sees a lot of parallels between his platform, which has been used to teach coding to hundreds of millions of students, and the Payam Method.  

"One is, we don't teach coding with ones and zeros or, you know, angle brackets and semicolons. We teach it with blocks and dragging and dropping to make it easier," Partovi said. "Similarly, Payam Music teaches music starting with ABCs and 123s before you learn the code of how music is written."

Partovi is now CEO of Payam Music, with the goal of taking the tiny school, now with just a few hundred students, national. 

Partovi's son, Darius, began lessons with Payam Music seven years ago. Partovi says he knew from day 1 of his son's lessons that he wanted to help scale up Khastkhodaei's operations. The plan is to have schools across the country, each with five to seven music rooms to be able to support around 150 students. 

"It'll take us about 100 schools to get to 10,000 students," Partovi said. "The question is, how quickly can we get there?"

He's raised money to fund the expansion from an impressive list of investors, including Hans Zimmer, the Oscar-winning composer behind the musical scores for more than 150 films. Before he became a renowned composer, Zimmer was a frustrated music student who was kicked out of eight music schools. 

"To this day, I just remember these piano lessons as being horrible. And here's a man who figured out a way of giving children this opportunity to have absolute happiness, you know? To love music and love themselves," Zimmer said. 

The composer said he's drawn to the playfulness in Khastkhodaei's method. 

"It's exactly what I wish I could've had," he said.

Zimmer visited Khastkhodaei's first new location, in Santa Monica, California, and listened to star pupils play their compositions, including one by Partovi's son, who now writes his own music.

"Over time, we'll be able to convince the music establishment that this new way of teaching is better," Partovi said. "But right now, we just need to convince parents. And the easiest way to convince parents is when they watch their son or daughter fall in love with music."

The "Payam Method" payoff 

Khastkhodaei's teachings are producing award-winning pianists. In 2024, 41 of his students submitted original compositions to the National PTA's Reflections program. Nationwide, around 300,000 students were competing, so his students made up just a small fraction of the participants. 

"But we won 13 out of 15 district winners, we won five out of five Washington state first-place winners. And then those five students went on to compete nationally and four of them won four of the 14 national medals that were awarded," Khastkhodaei said. 

Parents say the lessons have been life-changing for their kids, showing them learning can be fun.

"The best decision I made," mom Shahrzad Salestani said. 

Mom Saswati Sanyal said her 15-year-old daughter Aaniya has gained confidence from the lessons. 

"And you feel good about yourself," Sanyal said. "So that is really different about this school."