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Pianodao is the piano music, education, and wellbeing website of teacher, writer, consultant, and composer Andrew Eales.

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Playing Advice Online

Pianodao features hundreds of FREE articles and reviews to support pianists, teachers, and students everywhere. Explore recent highlights:

Spring Repertoire Project

There’s perhaps no better time than the Spring months for embarking on exciting new piano projects, but let’s also remember to give our perennial ‘Active Repertoire’ a timely spring clean…

Written in partnership with musician and broadcaster Jack Pepper, with a foreword by Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, ‘Music We Might Have Played’ brings together nineteen stunning piano solos for early advanced players.

The Three-Dimensional Pianist

Understanding the importance of the three dimensions of musical learning, Musical Mind, Body, and Soul, empowers us to teach, learn and practise music holistically, making effective and lasting progress.

ADHD • Insights for Pianists

ADHD has had a huge impact on my piano journey. And my wife has three decades clinical experience treating ADHD. Together, we have created this page to offer expert advice and support.

10 Piano Resolutions for 2026

HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2026! And good news for piano players looking to turn over a new leaf in the coming weeks and months: there’s no shortage of positive goals that we can embrace…

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First Steps Piano

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Darragh Gilleece is an Irish pianist, composer, and educator. His distinguished career includes serving as an examiner for the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM). His original music appears in their grade syllabus, bespoke method books, and now in two collections published by Forsyth Music.

The first book includes 16 original pieces suitable for students from around (UK) Initial to Grade 2, while the second ranges from around Grades 2-5.

Gilleece’s music in these collections is traditional with a modern twist. Pieces are highly appealing in their tone, packed with valuable learning content, imaginative, and well-crafted. My review below includes the composer’s recordings of a couple to give a flavour.

Spring Repertoire Project

Active Repertoire Project

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

The Spring season is a time of dynamic reawakening and renewal. That which has remained quietly dormant is reborn, joining the fresh abundance of new life. I’m surely not the only one who finds this the most vibrant and beautiful time of year!

There’s perhaps no better time for embarking on exciting new piano projects, but let’s also remember to give our perennial Active Repertoire a fresh ‘spring clean’.

Our Active Repertoire is the music we can play with confidence, fluency, and expression, for our own and others’ enjoyment, and preferably from memory.

Through my teaching, and here on Pianodao, I encourage players to always have three or more pieces that are performance-ready, and to support this goal I offer a quarterly project sheet for you to freely download:

Spring Repertoire Project Sheet

Our Active Repertoire is our point of peak strength as pianists. Even so, some pieces can become tired and worn, in need of refreshment, while some others we might simply want to replace.

Instrumental Music Education

The Pianodao Bookshelf

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

‘Instrumental Music Education’, newly published by Bloomsbury Academic, is a compendium of well-researched articles written by a team of 27 authors, all associated with the music department at the University of York, compiled and edited by Elizabeth Haddon.

For those interested in academic insight into instrumental teaching trends, this is a wide-ranging and thought-provoking book sporting 19 chapters, each a distinct article covering an area of special interest.

An endorsement of the book from Professor Stephanie Pitts, University of Sheffield explains that:

“This collection offers insights on topics as varied as dealing with transfers from one instrumental teacher to another, overcoming barriers to practice, and understanding cross-cultural differences in teaching philosophies. There is inspiration here for new and established teachers, as well as for music education researchers seeking an up to date overview of research-informed pedagogy.”

Instrumental Music Education is available as a FREE ebook here, with open access funded by the University of York. This gives you the chance to explore it for yourself without further commitment, while of course guaranteeing that the publication wins five stars for ‘value for money’.

Bloomsbury have also produced physical hardback and paperback editions. My review is based on the handsomely presented hardback (whose excellent aesthetics I think justify the price) but I will focus attention on the content, common to all versions, and recommend readers sample the ebook in the first instance.

Patience: The Greater Peak

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

This succinct and beautiful verse has set me thinking about the true benefits of learning to play the piano. It’s called Gazing At The Peak, and was written by the Chinese poet Du Fu, who lived from 712-770:

“Who can describe the Great Peak?
The province is not yet green,
yet nature gathers its divine beauty
and yin parts from yang at dusk and dawn.
I bare my chest to the living clouds,
strain my eyes toward the birds flying home.
I will climb to the very summit
and shrink many mountains within a single glance.”

Translation by Deng Ming-Dao,
from his book Each Journey Begins With a Single Step (2018):

So what does this ancient poem have to do with the benefits of piano playing, or with developing patience? Well, let’s explore and find out…