Getting the most from this great hobby!
Working out which fingers to use on piano is a very necessary skill for pianists at all levels. Many of us rely predominantly on fingerings given in the music we buy. However, these don’t necessarily always work well – especially if you have smaller hands. Therefore, we need to understand the Art of Piano Fingering. I’m...
"The Art of Piano Fingering by Rami Bar Niv – Review"Continue reading
This is the second post discussing how to get better at recognising chords whilst playing piano. The first covered some ideas of how to get familiar with recognising them in terms of actual notes played at the piano. This post introduces some ideas of how to quickly recognise the dots on the page in front...
"Converting dots into chords quickly and easily"Continue reading
As we discussed in this post, being able to quickly recognise chords will dramatically improve your sight reading and make memorising much simpler – and that’s just for starters. It also improves your general appreciation of theory and harmony … almost by osmosis … and even helps enormously if you want to play by ear. However,...
"Mastering chords for classical pianists"Continue reading
My last update on my YouTube journey thus far was back in September 2018. So I thought it about time I posted a further progress update. Important Numbers If you watch YouTube, then you’ll be familiar with the adverts that play before, during and/or after some of the videos you watch. This happens when a...
"YouTube Progress Update – May 2019"Continue reading
There are lots of occasions when we try to find out how difficult (or easy) a piece of music might be. We might need to do this when we are: trying to decide whether or not we think we could tackle something looking for new pieces to learn within our current ability range searching for...
"How difficult is this piece? Henle can help"Continue reading
Clair de Lune is one of those iconic pieces that many of us decide to learn on piano before we’re really ready. Both the beginning and the ending sound deceptively simple. The middle section gets progressively more and more difficult and it can be awkward to control properly. It might take a very long time...
"Learning Debussy’s Clair de Lune"Continue reading
When I started to re-learn piano and work out my practice regime, I decided not to bother with sight reading. I think the main reason for my decision was the title (sight reading). Particularly the ‘sight’ part. I have always associated sight reading with the traditional interpretation of playing a piece of music for the...
"The hidden benefit of Sight Reading – why we should all practice it"Continue reading
Playing at speed is probably the one thing that I’ve always found the most difficult to do. Short bursts of notes (such as in mordents, turns and the like) aren’t so difficult to pull off, however, anything that involves longer passages is something I’ve always found both difficult to manage and extremely prone to tension....
"Piano speed building ideas"Continue reading
In a recent blog post, I explained the basic process creating an orchestral backing track that you can use to play along with your piano. This first piece – to which I made a free MP3 download – was using Gounod’s Ave Maria. This is based on an almost note-for-note version of Bach’s well know...
"Saint Saens ‘The Swan’ – Play Along with your Piano"Continue reading
An essential part of learning piano is listening. Listening to piano music helps us to discover new repertoire. It also helps us get an initial understanding of pieces we’re trying to learn. It also keeps us inspired through the sheer joy of hearing beautiful works played amazingly well. We have traditional radio and TV where...
"Streaming Services for Classical Music"Continue reading