Where Piano Playing Retirees Get Information and Encouragement
Unlike jazz and popular music, classical music is meant to be played exactly as written. Improvisation is rarely used in classical music. The question though is that if classical music is meant to be played as written, do you have to play every single note written. The answer is yes if you are planning to … Read more
Getting the rhythm and timing correct is really important, no matter what style or genre of music you are interested in playing. Even though it can be quite hard for some to master (or at least it was hard for me to master when I was the piano student), it is important to work at … Read more
When I was a music student, I learned that mezzo staccato means moderately short and detached. To me, this made sense because my understanding of mezzo meant moderately and staccato meant short and detached. For the longest time, the definition seemed quite suitable. However, it seems that in the last few years there has been … Read more
I have quite a while to think about this and I have decided that whilst a correct hand positioning is important for everyone that learns to play the piano, it is even more important for middle aged people and older to have a correct hand position. This is not scientific fact as far as I … Read more
Maybe it is just me, but when I was learning to play the piano, I often really struggled with learning to play anything from the Baroque Era (which was from about 1600 to 1750). For me, this meant quite a bit of Handel and J.S. Bach. For those of us that studied classical music, you … Read more
Yes, the ideal is to practice every single day, but we all know that while that might be the ideal, it just simply doesn’t always happen. There are genuine reasons why piano practice doesn’t happen in the short term. Those reasons are often because of sickness or due to travelling. The very first thing that … Read more
It is well and truly obvious that to learn to play the piano, or any other musical instrument, you need to practice regularly and the more regular it is the better. In fact, I think that it is much more important to practice for a few minutes every single day than an hour once a … Read more