Top Tips for Choosing Piano Fingering
Top tips for finding and choosing the best piano fingering for your hand!
Stolen Time & Musical Expression
We tend to think of rubato as being largely associated with the romantic period, but elements of what we would call rubato can be traced back to as early as the 9th century! It was an established part of music performance in both the baroque and classical periods. This week’s blog post explores the origins of tempo rubato and how composers such as CPE Bach and Mozart incorporated it within their works.
Top Ten Tips for Amateur Pianists
In this week’s blog post, Graham Fitch shares some tips and suggestions for amateur pianists based on several recurring themes arising from his experience in working with them in lessons and tutoring on piano courses.
Write it Out!
I first published this post way back in June, 2013, and it has been buried in the archives ever since. I decided to update it and republish after the subject…
A Useful Research Tool
I was working with someone on the Appassionata Sonata of Beethoven this week. The rhythmic organisation of the trill in bar 3 was not clear to me, so I asked…
On Rhythm: Classical v Romantic
Have you considered there might be a different way of playing rhythmically depending on the style period? I’m not talking about rhythmic conventions (such as double dotting, rhythmic assimilation, etc.),…
Pedalling for Resonance
In the days before the piano was invented, harpsichordists did not have any sort of sustaining device and so created resonance using the technique of overholding (or finger pedalling). On…
6 Helpful Tips for Using Our Products & Services
In order to continually improve our products and services, we regularly review correspondence and support queries from our readership. Therefore we thought it might be helpful to compile a listing of…
Practice Tips from Itzhak Perlman
There are many parallels between piano playing and string playing, and a lot we pianists can learn from violinists about phrasing, timing, tone and much more besides. One of the…
Shifting Accents
I was brought up with a very craftsmanlike attitude to practising, and was shown concrete practice tools that I was supposed to implement between lessons. When I pass these on…