Blog
The Joys and Challenges of Getting Back To Learning Piano
Thinking about taking up piano, but don't know where to start?
- You're not alone!
When is the last time that you decided to start learning something new?
If you have been focussing on a career, or raising kids it might have been quite a while. You might wish you could play an instrument, but there is a chorus of voices in your head of why not to get back to piano. "I'm too old to learn something new", "I don't have time for it", or "I was never good at it in the first place".
Many of us ar…
PianoEasy Concerts
We regularly have 100 PianoEasy Players, adults and kids performing at our various PianoEasy Concerts. Below you can have a browse of how your fellow PianoEasy players are going. You'll find that everyone plays differently; different pieces, different styles, different arrangements. It's a gutsy thing to do, playing in front of an audience, but PianoEasy players couldn't be more supportive of each other.
Fake music - Sad
It’s a tragedy that nowadays people generally feel bad about their playing! It’s true! Most people who have had, sometimes years of piano lessons apologise and tell you they are not very good. Even performing musicians say they are scared of being found out for not being good enough. They often will tell you that they are just self-taught and can’t even read. Only a small percentage of our top players and some people who are blessed with a bit less of the “I care about what others think” trait f…
Communities with pianos
What Happens In The Early Stages With PianoEasy?
Just starting out with PianoEasy? Read through for a quick outline of what will happen in the early days of PianoEasy lessons.
- PianoEasy players become familiar with the mechanics of the piano and how the keys, strings, pedal and dampers work;
- PianoEasy players learn how to work best with their bodies in order to make the most beautiful music on this instrument (that isn’t very easy to adjust to your body);
- PianoEasy players become familiar with that wonderful pattern of 2 blacks and 3 blac…
How Long Does It Take To "Speak Music"?
How did you get so good at speaking English? Duh? By speaking it! To start off you were immersed in language. Your parents said "hello little sweetheart", but you also heard your siblings fight and overheard adult conversations, or the news in the background. Well, with music, that bit, learning to recognise and understand, you have already passed with flying colours! You have been exposed to lots of styles and songs, you know exactly what you like and you can hear instantaneously if there is a …
What to look for when buying a piano or keyboard
Wanting to get into the world of piano playing, but wondering what kind of piano is best?
If you are just starting; anything will do! There are a lot of unused pianos and keyboards in this world, so see if someone will lend you something that you can play "Raindrops" on and get used to playing your fingers 1, 3 and 5 learning chords. You can also find them at second-hand sales places, like Marketplace on Facebook, Gumtree or garage sales / swap meets.
Of course it is much more of a pleasure an…
Your REPERTOIRE
Your REPERTOIRE is your own special music collection.
Like how many Easter eggs or Christmas presents you have, or how many good holidays you can remember, or how many good friends you can count. The songs that you have learned and "kept alive" are unique to you, your tastes and your efforts. You can be very proud of it, because only you have shaped what it is today and you are in charge of what it will encompass over time. It is something that grows and changes, almost organically. In the firs…
Ten ideas to connect with your inner musician
Find ten new ways to reengage and motivate your piano playing!
- Open up to a fresh take on an old piece in your repertoire.
Pay close attention to the way you're playing each note, your posture and breathing, and think of how you are making those hammers hit the strings. Try playing loud, soft, fast, slow, sustained, snappy, straight, or swinging - see how the piece can change completely when you mix up the dynamics. You can also try changing the piece itself by adding notes or doubling up on …
Why Is it Nice To Start A Piano Club?
Research demonstrates lots of benefits to learning piano in a " Piano Club".
Have you heard of, or tried a "Book Club"?
They are nice, aren't they? You get the motivation to read, and you get the social aspect, the different perspectives and the normalising, by sharing your experience with others.
Piano Clubs using www.pianoeasy.online are just as nice! You just work through the lessons, and get together with others and show what you have been learning. You can share what you're not sure off,…
Put On Your Blues Shoes!
GET INTO IT!
Hold on to your seats (and listen for that I IV V, some grace notes and riffs):
Solo piano; young Luka Sestak (a few years ahead for most of you).
Here is Diana Krall, playing a blues in Bb “Baby Baby, One More Time"
Pinetop Perkins: Slow blues
Here is Elvis playing Blue Suede Shoes, (he is using A, D and E for his I, IV and V chords.)
Oscar Peterson C Jam Blues
Stormy Monday T Bone Walker
I like this Stormy Monday by Rose Winters too:
And by Johnny Joh…
Learning About Music With Piano Friends
Anastasia Beasley joined PianoEasy and wrote up a short blog about having a little "PianoEasy Club"; sharing progress and mistakes, the support you receive, and the joy in learning to play together.
At the beginning of this winter an ad crossed my Instagram feed saying I could quickly and easily learn piano. I wanted to learn piano but I kept scrolling because I thought I didn't have the time or money. The same piano studio crossed my feed again a day later, this time with a video of someone…
Mood Music: How making and enjoying music can benefit your mental health
Whether we write music for a living or have never touched an instrument in our lives, we all have our own special songs to listen to when we're feeling down.
It's widely accepted that music can have a positive effect on your mood, which is probably why Spotify was estimated to have 159 million active users by the end of last year - everyone loves listening to music, but what about playing it?
A child psychiatry team from the University of Vermont found that children who learned instruments had…
Feel the fear and play it anyway
I love all of my students. I am so proud of them and I am so happy that I have been able to help them on the joyous journey of musical self expression. Everyone grows together, we have times of fun and laughter, of exploration and celebration and of inexorable beauty when making music together surpasses anything words can say.
And then I go and ruin it all by saying something stupid like “end of year concert”. Actually I try and disguise the trauma by calling it our “end of year piano party”. H…
Pianos are your friend
Need a few reasons why pianos are the best instrument there is?
- Pianos are there for you whether you’re happy or sad or however you feel.
- Pianos connect you with other people, and people from other places and times.
- Pianos don’t judge you.
- Pianos make you sound good.
- Pianos are easy to learn to play, but impossible to outgrow.
- Pianos don’t get smelly when they get a work out.
- You don’t need to give up piano when you get old.
- Pianos don’t want to talk about football.
- Pianos don’t get l…
How to get there
With PianoEasy you learn a lot. Within a few months people are playing around with their repertoires, making up their own blues or working with all their chords playing pop songs. Some people may already be composing their own song. Within two terms some people are doing lots of improvising; with the blues, with our jazz chords, with all those flat and minor chords. Within a year people are also reading quite advanced pieces and no one’s repertoire is the same. Within two years PianoEasy player…
Learning more than music
What happens in the early stages of the wonderful PianoEasy program?
- PianoEasy become familiar with the mechanics of the piano and how the keys, strings, pedal and dampers work;
- PianoEasy players learn how to work best with their bodies in order to make the most beautiful music on this instrument (that isn’t very easy to adjust to your body);
- PianoEasy players become thoroughly familiar with that wonderful “2 blacks 3 blacks” pattern and soon learn all the twelve note names around tho…
How pianos became what they are today
A piano is an incredible invention! Its design has been perfected over hundreds of years and continues to be improved upon even now.
Before humans had anything recognisable as a piano, we had the harpsichord and hammered dulcimer.
The harpsichord is like a piano in that it has a keyboard and strings, but the strings are plucked instead of hammered so it produces a very different sound.
The hammered dulcimer is like a piano because, as the name suggests, the strings are hammered. This produces…
Improvisation
Being able to make things up as we go along is a great skill to have in life, and it's equally important in playing piano. A great example of that happened at a Ray Charles concert in 1958 when Charles and his band had played all of their songs and still had time to spare - he improvised a song he called "What'd I say?", which some say was the first soul song. It became so popular that he ended all of his performances with it from then on.
Some piano players (like Ben Folds) make up whole songs…
Where Traditional Music Education Went Down The Wrong Path
Being completely besotted with playing the piano myself, I believe that unfortunately Western music education, that is generally focussed on teaching people to make music by teaching them how to read, has created a society where now there is this mythical idea that making music is only either for those who are mysteriously gifted or for people who started at 3 years of age and practise for 8 hours a day…
it always struck me that I commonly meet two types of piano players:
- People who have h…
Purple with pride
PianoEasy kids played the Freo Dockers song today in support of our city’s team winning the prelim finals… GO DOCKERS
The Empty Road Project
The PianoEasy “Empty Road” project is an initiative to help people with mental health difficulties find joy making music.
This song “Empty Road” was written in 2017 by WAM nominee and PianoEasy student Lily Kate. It says “Life does not have to be an empty road. Sometimes it’s best to know that you have a song. Follow me and you can sing my song. It won’t go on for long. Life is a song”.
Lily Kate is one of quite a few experienced PianoEasy Players who now finances her studies by teaching an…