Hello Everyone, I have touched on this subject before, but it is an area I find really interesting from the position as pianist, piano teacher and retailer. As you may know from previous blogs, I did fall into teaching piano rather by accident...
I have to admit that I started teaching piano quite by accident. It wasn’t really on my mind as a career path when I left Music College and only began because the son of a friend of a friend wanted lessons. This soon grew into a thriving...
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...
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...
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...
Hello Everyone, The purpose of this post is just to tell you about a fun few days in Frankfurt at the Musik Messe. It is a show for the music industry to show all its products. There were musical instruments of every kind imaginable, sheet music...
Hello everyone, In my role as pianist, the playing work I have enjoyed the most is as chamber musician collaborating with other musicians and singers. As a student at music college I did learn much of the core solo piano repertoire, but I have to...
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...
Hello everyone. Over the last few years we have been working hard to offer good pianos for rental. This has helped many people have a piano who would not have been able to have a real piano in their home. Pianos being complicated tools are...
It is that time of year again! The new academic year is upon us and I thought I would post something positive about music lessons! Students and probably teachers are looking forward to the start of the new academic year with perhaps a little bit...
Hello Everyone, In my previous posts we discussed the inclusion of new piano brands to Pianolobby, Hailun and A.Geyer which we are very excited to be promoting. They are superb pianos and superb value for money in their price brackets...
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...
Hello Everyone, As with all businesses, and everything else for that matter, things change and develop. A local garage near where I am staying as I write this is a place I have known for about 35 years. In this time it has been a main dealer, if...
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...
I have been learning to play for rehearsals and performances of Puccini’s Tosca. It is a great work in every way. Wonderful music, rich sumptuous score, tragic story and……. long. It has been a fun challenge to learn it all and...
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...
Music lessons are important. Children who learn to play piano experience all kinds of benefits which will stay with them for the whole of their life. There is a great deal of evidence which supports the thought that learning a musical instrument...
Playing piano just isn’t natural! We are not born with the ability to play piano, it has to be learned. Due to the physical nature of playing the piano and the repetitive nature of practice, injuries can occur. Even the most relaxed...
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...
Learning a musical instrument is hard work, time consuming too. Put in those terms, it is amazing that anybody learns instruments, especially today when there are so many wonderful and exciting distractions. However, I firmly believe that...
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...
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...
I have a number of adult pupils. Recently another adult pupil has just started having lessons with me. She did learn for a while as a child and on and off has played and had occasional piano lessons throughout adulthood. Her children are now...
Learning piano is an exciting journey and like life itself is full of ups and downs. It is difficult at times and a good relationship with your piano teacher is very important. As in all human contact, not every piano teacher is suitable for...
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...
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...
WHY TAKE MUSIC EXAMS? ‘Enjoyment through achievement’ say the ABRSM, gaining a ‘certificate is a rewarding experience’ they continue. There are a number of exam boards, the ABRSM is the biggest, followed by...
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...
Musical instruments are expensive. This is a simple fact and the reasons are fairly straight forward. Pianos for example are the most complicated and have 1000s of moving parts which have to work perfectly. Woodwind and brass instruments are much...
This week we are talking about technique. There are very many books talking about all the various aspects of piano technique, there are also many 1000’s of words written on the internet as well. What is technique? Technique is simply the...
Why do we play piano? Surely it is easier to put on a CD, listen to a download or even go to a concert. Perhaps I am missing the point… The Arts exist in part to shine a light on our existence, showing us how the world is and also to...
