Why a Healthy Technique is Important
This weeks’ guest blog post by Penelope Roskell looks at the importance of a healthy technique and how to go about acquiring it. *** *** *** Should we suffer for…
Q&A: How Can We Use Rotation in a Scale?
Q. You speak about forearm rotation in your eBook and in your YouTube video on scales and arpeggios, but I think of rotation as a large movement for things like…
Chess or Checkers?
I have written extensively about the subject of slow practice on this blog and elsewhere. Since slow practice is such a cornerstone of our practice routine I don't apologise for making a…
Some Thoughts on Mental Tension
When we think of tension in piano playing, we correctly label this as negative - it is a thing that hampers us and our objective should be to locate its…
Snakes And Ladders
In life, we repeat certain ways of doing things until they become habits - until we become unconscious of them and do them without thinking (and without the need to…
Eliminating Tension(2): Braced Conditions Of The Hand And Wrist
Yes, I know I was going to talk about forearm rotation this week, but inspiration took me elsewhere. I'll get to that soon, I promise! This post deals with how…
Eliminating Tension (1)
There are many reasons for tension at the keyboard. Faulty training is an obvious one, inefficient use of the body another. Yet tension does not always have its origins in…
More On Octave Displacements
Annoyingly, last week's post on eliminating tension (which was to be the first of two or three on the subject) has itself been eliminated. It disappeared into the ether when…
A Short Essay on the Life of a Pianist
After a recent post, I received a request in the form of a comment from a reader, suggesting I might expand on my last paragraph. The last paragraph was as…
Practice v Performance
A colleague put this quotation up on his Facebook wall this week, and while these golden words are from one of the greatest violinists of the last century, they apply…