There are various systems grading difficulty of pieces. Rough guides, YMMV. Hinson’s Guide to the Pianists Repertoire and Friskin/Freundlich’s Music for the Piano. They both use level of difficulty as: Easy, Moderate, Moderately Difficult and Difficult Graded 1-5: https://www.pianolibrary.org/about/statistics/ Henle has a rating system of 1-9 The Great Britain ABRSM has a respected system. Canada’s Royal […]
I just read The Song is You, by Arthur Phillips. Usually I only write here about books concerning pianos and pianists, but this novel about music and art and passion is so good I wanted to make note. The story focuses on Julian, a young middle-aged director of commercials who loves his iPod, and Cait, a […]
Tagged books, inspiration, performersI like reading books about pianos and pianists. I sometimes write about them here. Turns out Joe Queenan likes doing both (the reading and the writing about it) as well (though he doesn’t write here). He seems to feel more strongly about it than I do.
Tagged booksCognitive psychologists have found that one process in human learning is automatizing: complex tasks, when practiced or rehearsed enough, become automatic, so they can be performed using little or none of a very scarce resource: conscious attention. Anyone who drives a car is familiar with discovering one has been daydreaming and not consciously paying attention, […]
Tagged books, practiceDon’t criticize my spelling: Mike Saville is British. And the blogger who publishes “How to Practise“, which is a site that provides a wealth of straightforward, often helpful practice tips, mostly in the form of exercises, drills, tricks (not really sure what to call them). Similar to a few books I’ve mentioned, like Practiceopedia, and […]
Tagged Learning, practiceI recently read Elfriede Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher. I previously had seen the arresting and controversial movie based on it, starring Isabelle Huppert. Jelinek is Nobel Prize winning novelist who writes in the post-war Germanic realist-nihilist style, often with graphic and disturbing sexuality. As a novel for pianists, this one disappoints. The main character Erika […]
Tagged books, novels, teachingI recently read two novels about pianists that my wife gave me for Christmas, and both were excellent. I will also briefly mention a third I read several years ago. I’m not going to try to write very thoughtful or complete book reviews here; I’ll briefly describe them and then point to reviews elsewhere. The […]
Tagged books, novels, performersPracticeSpot.com is a well-stocked site with resources for practicing, aimed at both music teachers and students (it is not specific to piano). The founder, Philip Johnston has published several books on practice, available for purchase here. But there are many free resources: drill sheets and exercises for chords, scales, pitch recognition, sight reading, etc. A […]