Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales
The Pianodao website launched on 1st August 2015 with a flurry of articles that I had been preparing behind the scenes in the previous weeks.
Ten years on, and Pianodao has an established and growing readership from around the world, and hosts more than 700 free articles and reviews, presenting advice on piano playing, teaching, wellbeing, and a library of music reviews for players at all levels.
I am hugely grateful for the encouragement of friends and colleagues, the support of readers, the donations which have helped to fund this growth, and the positive reception the site has received from across the piano community.
The story so far…
Several years ago, I began to develop an interest in Daoist philosophy, which led to me taking up Qigong practice. These were personal pursuits motivated by a desire for self improvement and enhanced wellbeing. But I quickly found that my piano technique, playing, and teaching were changing in tandem with my new worldview, health, and lifestyle practices.
My original vision for the Pianodao site, encapsulated in its name and logo, was to create a niche personal blog exploring the intersections between my continuing journey at the piano and my growing interest in dao and related wellbeing practices.
That initial concept provided a fairly discursive canvas to write about a broad range of topics, and before long I was reviewing music and resources that I found helpful, friends were contributing guest posts, and the site became a popular space within the piano blogosphere.
Pianodao especially gained recognition for informed reviews, and to organise these effectively the Pianodao Music Library was born, providing an expanding resource for players and teachers to discover the best sheet music and educational publications. Through my enthusiasm for well written piano music, I have met some wonderful, creative people and developed many great new friendships.
But it soon became clear that having one website for my teaching practice, and a separate one for my writing activities wasn’t sensible. Alongside that, I recognised that peoples’ use of the internet was rapidly shifting.
This led to my decision to close my studio site, and repurpose Pianodao as the online showcase and home for all my teaching, mentoring, writing, and creative activity, removing much of the older (and guest) content, and focusing the spotlight on my educational writing and work.
Having written a wide range of articles, I have been able to celebrate ten years of the site by launching ten Key Topic pages, including a new Piano Teacher Hub, enabling readers to quickly find advice, support, and information about the following areas of piano playing and teaching:
The Top Articles
Judging by website analytics, readers enjoy my annual roundup of the top ten most popular articles of each year, but what about the most widely read of all time?
Here are the top twenty for those interested. I have left out reviews to focus just on articles and blog posts, and inevitably, articles which have been on the site for several years have accrued more traffic.
For fun, I have hidden the all-time top twenty behind numbered buttons, leading up to the most popular. So if you are interested to know which articles made the biggest impression, or want to catch up with any you missed, here they are:
What’s coming next?
As I enjoy the ‘Late Summer’ phase of my career in piano education, I am happy that Pianodao now includes such a range of material. I could leave it at that. However, I’m still full of ideas and have more to share. I enjoy writing, and as long as readers remain interested in the site, I think I will keep going!
In addition to reviewing new publications, adding fresh articles, and blogging when inspiration strikes, I have been planning a whole new series:
‘Style & Interpretation’ will include audio recordings and advice about playing music from different periods and genres.
There’s also some unfinished business. I want to explore those intersections between Qigong practice, Daoist philosophy, and piano playing more deeply. That is what inspired the original vision for Pianodao, after all. It is time to return to those roots, and reignite that intention!
Thank You!
Have you enjoyed the site? Which articles and reviews have helped you the most? Please contact me here or leave a social media comment to let me know!
And I hope you will stay with me on this journey a little longer. If you’ve not yet done so, please consider joining the Pianodao Music Club online community, and subscribe to free email notifications so that you never miss another post.
Would you like to go further and show your appreciation of the site and support its continuing growth? If so, please consider making a one-off or regular donation by clicking the appropriate button below.
Finally let me say it again: Thank you!
Thank you for joining me on The Way of Piano.
Happy Piano Playing!
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