Getting the most from this great hobby!
I was introduced to a fabulous quote from Louis Kentner when I first read Graham Fitch’s eBook series on Practising the Piano. Kentner purports that: “There is no such thing as difficult music, it is either easy or it is impossible. The process by which it migrates from one to the other is called Practice.”...
"The Three Stages of Learning a Piece on Piano"Continue reading
One annoying thing I have noticed is that that pieces I previously thought I had mastered (or as close as I’m likely to get to mastery) seem to subsequently deteriorate over time. Why, once we have overcome the hurdles, isn’t it ‘in the bank’? I think I found the answer to this in William Westney’s...
"The Piano Performance Account – and how to keep it in credit!"Continue reading
One thing about returning to piano after a very long break, is that suddenly learning does feel much more difficult. As a teenager, I could pick most things up relatively quickly. However, what happens when we’ve left a skill to one side for a very long time. My experience has been that it certainly feels...
"Four Step Piano Process – Great for Returners"Continue reading
I recently reviewed The Perfect Wrong Note by William Westney. As I was reading the book, I started to mentally join several other dots too. One of these dots was that quite often, not only do I play wrong notes, I often don’t even know what the right notes should be – even in music...
"Do we even know what the right notes should be?"Continue reading
I was chatting with a pianist friend I met through the Practising the Piano Online Academy (of which I’m a member). During our conversation he mentioned a couple of ‘must read’ books. The first of these was The Perfect Wrong Note by William Westney. On returning home, I fired up my iPad and ordered it...
"The Perfect Wrong Note – Review"Continue reading
On returning to piano, sight reading wasn’t something I really bothered with. I’m not preparing any exams so won’t need to demonstrate it. I don’t accompany other musicians and so don’t need to sight read in those circumstances. However, one thing that I quickly discovered is that when playing from music, my actual reading...
"Celebrating 200 hours of sight reading"Continue reading
An old boss of mine had a favourite expression (which he attributed to Einstein). It was ‘the definition of insanity is constantly repeating the same action and expecting a different result’. It was an expression that always made me smile. I still remember the first time it suddenly occurred to me that by this definition...
"Insane Pianist?"Continue reading
This might look like a somewhat odd title for an article. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to introduce you to a ‘walking dead’ equivalent of piano playing. I’ve adapted a borrowed expression ‘Zombie Learners’ to Zombie Pianists to describe an interesting phenomenon. Over the past weeks, I have come across a number of...
"Zombie Pianists"Continue reading
Heinrich Neuhaus, in his book The Art of Piano Playing, makes a curious statement. He states that a certain type of piano practice should be viewed as an Emergency Exit for pianists. By this, he explains that it is something that should be used ‘in extremis’ (when all else fails). He likens it in fact...
"Emergency Exit for Piansts"Continue reading
We are often told that listening to recordings is good for piano students. Yet, recently, on one of my favourite Piano Facebook Groups, there was an interesting post. It came from one of the Admins (Rami Bar-Niv). He posted that in his view, one of the most over-used and least useful pieces of advice proffered...
"Is listening to recordings good for piano students?"Continue reading