Pianist Magazine produces a newsletter which wings its way into a reader’s e mail box every other month. It’s brimming with piano news and information, as well as a few piano articles. I write a regular ‘Piano Tips’ feature, and today’s post presents the most recent, which focuses on memorisation. I’ve written about this topic…
Tag: Piano Playing
A Weekend at Jackdaws Music Education Trust
I had the pleasure of tutoring a second piano course at Jackdaws Music Education Trust over the weekend. Jackdaws is dedicated to improving participation in and enjoyment of music through residential and one day instrumental and vocal courses, various education projects, a Young Artists Programme, as well as performances by world-class musicians. Piano courses, whether…
Meet the Judges Live Stream Interview
As you may have gathered, I’m in Chicago all week adjudicating at the Chicago AmateurPiano Competition. Judging starts today, but this competition offers an impressive events roster, a fairly unique concept amongst competitions, which runs in tandem, therefore proceedings actually started last night. Fifty-five talented pianists will play a short programme over the next two…
5 Top Tips to Improve Wrist Staccato
This is the second post exploring touch and articulation. The first focused on finger staccato (you can read it here), and today I’ll try to provide a few practice ideas for wrist staccato. Wrist staccato technique is generally used to play chordal passage work or groups of two notes or more in a very short, detached manner. A pianist friend and…
5 Practice Tips To Instantly Improve A Performance
Over the past few weeks I’ve been travelling around, teaching and adjudicating, providing the opportunity to hear a large and varied smorgasbord of piano playing. Whether pianists are young or old, beginners or very advanced players, and there has been an unusually large cohort of superb playing this year, several issues persist amongst pianists. With…
10 Top Tips to help Resolve Tension
A few days ago I published an article which was originally written for EPTA (European Piano Teachers Association) last year, and was published in the Piano Professional Magazine. This article focused on resolving tension at the piano, and many of you have subsequently contacted me asking for a few tips regarding tension, to remember whilst practising….
Resolving Tension in Piano Playing: Article for EPTA’s Piano Professional
We all know too much tension can ruin piano playing, yet alleviating this issue generally takes time and lots of work. There are many ways of dealing with the uncomfortable, tight feeling which often accompanies a fixed, tense disposition at the piano. The following article was originally written for the Piano Professional Magazine, an EPTA (European Piano Teachers…
15 Top Tips for Successful Sight-reading
Last weekend’s blog post featured the first article I wrote for the European Piano Teachers Association (EPTA), which appeared in the Piano Professional Magazine (Autumn 2013 edition). Continuing with this theme, the following article was published in the Autumn 2014 Piano Professional (pages 20-22). It focuses on Sight-reading. We all know how important it is to be…
Ten Top Tips for Effective Memorisation: The Memory Game
Next week I’m coaching at the Overseas Masters Winter Piano Academy held at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey (UK). My classes will focus on sight-reading, studies and exercises, and memorisation. To prepare, I’ve been re-visiting notes and articles on these topics and found the following on memorisation techniques; it’s the first article I wrote…
Between the Notes
‘Music is the space between the notes.’ Claude Debussy (1862–1918) An overriding issue for many students is the need for ‘breathing space’ during performance. This is seemingly such an obvious point, but it’s one which is often challenging to put into practice. Space can be created in many ways; both in the approach to a performance as…
Melanie Spanswick 