Tips Archives | Piano Lobby
How to Practice. General Tips

How to Practice. General Tips

HOW TO PRACTICE Practice. This is a word that fills the heart with dread amongst many pupils and students learning a musical instrument the world over. I think that this is such a shame as practice can be enjoyable. Practice can be really hard...

Names of the Internal Parts of a Piano

Names of the Internal Parts of a Piano

Hello Everyone, I hope you have had a good start to the year. It’s February already! Last month the post named the outer parts of the cabinet of an upright piano. Here’s the followup naming some of the inner parts of an upright piano...

Names of the External Parts of a Piano

Names of the External Parts of a Piano

Hello Everyone! Happy New Year. I hope that Christmas was a joyful time for you all. When someone is kind enough to come and view a piano I am sometimes asked to identify the names of various component parts of the cabinet. Rather embarrassingly...

Playing Legato at the Piano

Playing Legato at the Piano

A piano pupil I have been teaching for a little while now, but still a relative beginner  expressed in a recent lesson that legato playing is REALLY difficult. We have worked on this aspect of playing with many exercises and while not yet...

What does an accompanist do?

What does an accompanist do?

Hello everyone. Recently I have done much more accompanying at the piano. This as far as I am concerned is great. Playing accompaniments and working with others is simply the best fun. Often greatly challenging but hugely rewarding. Well, I see...

PIANO BRANDS AT PIANOLOBBY. Part 2.

Hello everyone. As promised in my previous posting we are continuing our discussion about piano brands that we are stocking at Pianolobby. In the previous blog I mentioned that we will no longer sell Kingsburg or Lippmann pianos but Barber and...

HOW TO CARE FOR YOUR PIANO

HOW TO CARE FOR YOUR PIANO

One of the most common questions I am asked is, “How should I care for my piano?” I always thought this a slightly odd question. When I started Pianolobby, I had never considered how a piano ought to be looked after. The sum total of...

How to Adjust to Different Pianos.

Hello Everyone. I hope you are all very well and enjoying making wonderful music on all your pianos. We have all spent a lot of time choosing the very best piano we can afford in the space we have and yet we never perform on it, or do gigs on it...

NEW PIANO BOOKS

Hello everyone, I’m not a huge fan of practical music exams generally, they have their place for piano pupils and role to play, for sure but they have to be treated with care. The danger, it strikes me is that they can become THE reason to...

Preparing For a Piano Concert

Many piano teachers organise piano recitals for their pupils and these may take place in a school or in a teacher’s house, the list of possibilities is nearly endless . For piano pupils these are useful platforms to try out pieces. It might...

PIANO PRACTICE

PIANO PRACTICE

  We have all used the phrase practice makes perfect. We also know that we need to put in time in order to make progress. As a teacher I have been increasingly encouraging my younger pupils to think how they practice and to maximise the time...

Top Tips for Sight Reading

Top Tips for Sight Reading

In the 19 years I have been teaching piano the one aspect that seems to put fear into the vast majority of my piano pupils has to be sight-reading. I have spoken to other teachers about this and it’s the one thing we seem to completely...

A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT PIANO FINGERING

A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT PIANO FINGERING

As a child my piano teacher talked a great deal about fingering and how important it is to establish good fingering. I have to confess that I was a bit nerdy as a child about my piano playing and enjoyed the lessons where we worked on this. It...

MUSIC BENEFITS OUT HEALTH

MUSIC BENEFITS OUT HEALTH

My life has been spent with one musical activity or another and has a great deal of meaning for me. As I am now entering my middle years the actual value of music to my own well being has become more apparent to me. This came into sharper focus...