The Online Academy Turns Five!

The Practising the Piano Online Academy turns five in October 2021! Thanks to the support of our readers and subscribers, the site has grown significantly over the last five years. Our content library now features over 1000 videos and we’ve developed several value-added offerings, including our highly popular online events programme and practice clinics.

During the course of the month, we will be celebrating by publishing various content updates and making a selection of popular videos from our premium content library freely available. Click here to sign-up to our mailing list for updates on new and free content!

Recent Highlights

The following are some of the highlights from new content published over the last year:

• Practising – New videos featuring practice tips from William Westney, an email course on how to start learning and practising a new piece and the next part in our Advanced Sight-Reading Curriculum. 
• Technique – Several modules on how to use exercises by Hanon, Czerny and Berens, in addition to more resources on mastering scales & arpeggios. 
• Learning Pieces – Our repertoire library grew significantly with video walk-throughs of over 100 pieces from all levels. We also kicked-off a new series called Beethoven on Board which will ultimately feature detailed videos on each of Beethoven’s 32 sonatas!
• Performing & Exam Preparation – Our project for the 2021 & 2022 ABRSM piano syllabus was completed and now includes videos for pieces from all grades and several supplementary videos with tips on preparing for other aspects of an exam.

Online Workshops & Practice Clinics

Our online workshops programme has featured over fifty events and has proven to be very popular. These events provide a live, interactive way to learn about various topics with opportunities for questions and answers. The workshops are recorded and we provide links to the video along with any relevant resources for the sessions afterwards. More information about how our online workshops work is available here.

Last year we launched monthly “practice clinics” in which Graham Fitch answers practising-related queries submitted by subscribers in advance. These are broadcast live on Facebook and are also posted up on our YouTube channel shortly afterwards. Click here to find out more or click here to view videos from past events.

What’s Coming?

We’re constantly working on extending and improving the Online Academy and look forward to sharing our future developments with you!

• Technique – Further installments in our technique library project focusing on improving technique and providing recommendations and guides to popular exercises, studies and regimes
• Practising – Extensions to our resources on effective practising with an index of practice tools and many additional examples in the context of repertoire of varying levels
• Learning Pieces & Repertoire – More guides and examples on how to apply practice tools to learn new pieces efficiently and effectively and numerous additions of varying levels to our repertoire library
• Sight-reading – Additions to our existing resources for improving sight-reading skills, including the final part of our advanced curriculum
• Examination Guides – Video walk-throughs of selected repertoire from the syllabuses of several examination boards, starting with Trinity College London

We will also be making several enhancements to the Online Academy to make it easier to find and interact with content as the library continues to grow. These include various navigation improvements and applying new video viewing and online course functionality to selected content.