Where Piano Playing Retirees Get Information and Encouragement
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
Recently I have seen online various adverts that talk about secret knowledge of being able to successfully remember how to play pieces of music that you have already learned months or even years ago. It is no big secret, it is just using what is called muscle memory. (As an aside, it is purely a … Read more
Keeping a beat is important, but so is playing the right notes and adding adequate expression. But keeping the beat is possibly the most important aspect, for a number of reasons. The first reason why keeping the beat is important, is that it maintains the flow and integrity of the piece of music. This is … Read more
This can be a bit tricky to work out whether you should follow the fingering or not on any given piece of music. On top of this, everyone also seems to have an opinion on what is best practice, so here is what I think should be the case. First of all, if you have … Read more
The answer to the question of whether you need to learn any music theory in order to play the piano, the answer is simply yes. Many ads for online apps that can teach you to learn to play the piano will tell you otherwise. Yes I am saying that they are not being completely honest. … Read more