Cool Piano Projects for Warm Summer Days

Summer has definitely arrived in the UK with a vengeance! If it’s as warm where you are, spending some quality time at the piano is a great way to escape the sun. In this blog post, we share some ideas for summer piano projects and resources to inspire and help you along the way.

Optimise your practising

Whether you’re juggling your playing with many other holiday activities or are planning on spending significant time at the piano, make sure you get the best results from your practising with Graham Fitch’s Practice Tools! This blog post has a variety of creative ideas for making your practising more fun and engaging. Graham’s video lesson series and accompanying workshops will also help you make your sessions more enjoyable and be delighted by your progress!

Grow your repertoire

If you’re planning on learning some new pieces and are looking for some repertoire inspiration, our Pieces to Play series provides showcases of popular pieces and hidden gems with video previews, performances and marked scores for many of them.

You can also visit our repertoire library for resources to help you learn over 300 works. These include videos focussing on specific aspects of a piece through to detailed video walk-throughs of complete works and annotated study editions.

Touch up on your technique

Although it’s a means to an end, technique is important for being able to express yourself at the piano. If you’re a beginner or are returning to the piano, then you might want to have a look at Penelope Roskell’s Foundations in Piano Technique. This online course shows how to establish a sound technique from the earliest stages and can also serve as an excellent refresher!

We’ve also recently launched a new online course for intermediate pianists by Fred Karpoff which could make for an excellent summer undertaking! The first part of Mastering Intermediate Technique introduces the core principles of a whole-body technique and lays the foundation for expressive freedom. The course will ultimately feature twelve parts covering everything from essential fundamentals through to laying foundations for more advanced aspects of playing.

The Online Academy’s technique library contains a vast array of technique resources, from advice on using studies and exercises to improve specific areas through to general tips for improving your technique.

Preparing for performance

Sharing your playing with others is an incredibly rewarding endeavour and an excellent way to both energise and improve your playing. Adina Mornell’s Secrets of Experts workshop series draws on the latest discoveries in psychology and performance science to help you develop your own recipe for rewarding performances. Through nine workshop recordings, it offers a collection of tools for confident performance and adopting the mindset required to become your own best friend as a musician!

Develop your musical skills & knowledge

With the wonderful repertoire available to pianists, so much of our time is spent on learning notes to the neglect of developing other essential musical skills. Therefore, how about allocating some time this summer to train your ear or improve your sight-reading?

Or perhaps you might want to consider improving your knowledge of music theory? An excellent and practical way to approach this is through the study of keyboard harmony. If you’re looking to get started then you might want to work through Lona Kozik’s hands-on introduction to keyboard harmony. For advanced pianists, Ken Johansen’s two-part workshop series shows how to use keyboard harmony skills to learn, memorise and interpret advanced piano music more effectively.

Catch-up on workshops

We will be taking a break from our online events programme over the summer and resuming in September (be sure to sign-up to our mailing list to be notified of upcoming events!). In the meantime, if you haven’t yet watched the recordings for workshops that you signed-up for, head over to the events tab in your library to view them.

You can also purchase access to recordings and resources for any workshop that you missed from our store or find links to watch the recordings of our monthly practice clinics here.