Pathways for Playing

ABRSM Performance Diplomas

Supporting Your Piano Playing Journey
Written by ANDREW EALES

A few months ago I brought news that exam board ABRSM had announced their intention to replace their range of diploma assessments in performance, teaching and direction with a new set of digital qualifications from 2024.

The popularity of that article underlined the point that these diplomas are not just of interest to several of my regular students, but to a far wider community within the piano playing and teaching world.

Now, with additional information available from ABRSM, it’s time to retire my previous post and bring you this updated one to replace it.

Active Repertoire, Winter 23/24

Active Repertoire is the music we can play any time, any place. These are the pieces we can perform without notice, without any embarrassment, and even from memory.

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ACTIVE REPERTOIRE DOWNLOAD • WINTER 23/24

We often fret about the things we can’t do, the music we can’t play. It can lead to a negative spiral that leaves us feeling defeated and deflated.

But what if we recalibrated our expectations and turned our focus positively towards what we can do, and what we can play?

The Active Repertoire Challenge is all about rediscovering our enthusiasm for playing our favourite pieces, developing confidence, and even sharing the music we enjoy the most with others,

The challenge encourages piano players to develop their own Active Repertoire of three or four pieces which can be played any time, any place: without notice or embarrassment, and hopefully over time from memory.

Take up the challenge, download your FREE Active Repertoire Challenge sheet, and make a decision that will change your piano journey forever. By making Active Repertoire our top priority, we can:

start our practice sessions positively, with music we enjoy
more quickly memorise our favourite pieces
overcome our anxiety and feel more at ease playing to others

Winter 23-24

A new Active Repertoire challenge sheet is issued each quarter, and can be freely downloaded here on the Pianodao website. For the coming months, the sheet includes sections for the following:

My Active Repertoire
Use the spaces here to list pieces which you can play to performance standard. To find out more about how to continue working with these pieces, read the Getting Started Guide below.

Pieces I am working on
These are the pieces that you are currently practising, and which are not yet ready to perform.

Warming pieces for colder evenings
Each quarter the sheet includes a more imaginative and thought-provoking section. For these coming months, consider which pieces remind you of warmth, home, comfort. List any that you can play or would like to play here.

Piano Goals for 2024
This season sees the move into a fresh year, and as always it is good to consider what our goals are. This section could include ideas you want to discuss with a teacher, mentor or piano friend, and which excite you as ongoing possibilities.

Disney @100 – my favourite songs
This year we have marked the Disney centenary year, with a wide selection of sheet music available for pianists to explore. Do you have a few Disney songs that you especially enjoy? List them here!

The Active Repertoire Challenge offers an exciting pathway to a more motivated and truly rewarding piano journey.
Are you ready to take part? If so, here’s your FREE sheet to plan and track your progress:

ACTIVE REPERTOIRE DOWNLOAD • WINTER 23/24

Printing directly from the web may work, but it’s best to save the download as a PDF file, and when printing check the “scale to fit page” and “plain paper, best quality” options.

Please also check out the Getting Started Guide, which includes full instructions for how to use the sheet to support your piano journey in the coming year…

ACTIVE REPERTOIRE • GETTING STARTED GUIDE

Your Active Repertoire is at the heart of your piano journey!

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Music Theory • Online Courses

PATHWAYS FOR PLAYING

Supporting Your Piano Playing Journey
Written by ANDREW EALES

It is vital for musicians to understand the music we play: its history, context, structure, style and the conventions of music notation used to write it down.

Like many piano teachers, it is my priority to ensure that such knowledge is embedded as a relevant component of lessons. But like many, I find that written work can be difficult to fit into a practical music lesson. Not only so, but some elements are better suited to the classroom context, or to self-directed learning.

Many of my students want to dig into the subject in more depth, learn aspects of theory and composition that go beyond the obvious remit of a piano playing session, whether to develop a broader understanding or simply to pass a Grade 5 Theory exam as a prerequisite to taking one of the higher ABRSM practical grades.

I have always been ready to recommend additional resources and courses that meet the need for a more focused academic approach to learning music theory. And whether for an exam or otherwise, I find that students who develop a more in-depth knowledge of music quickly see benefits in their ongoing playing.

I have previously recommended Dave Hall’s excellent study book and video series There’s More to Playing the Piano, which my students have found helpful, but for those wanting more in-depth support I have been enthused by the number of excellent online courses I have seen recommended.

Keen to know more about suitable options for my students, I have recently interviewed four leading educators delivering music theory courses online. I wanted to compare what they offer, get a feel for their approach, and give them an opportunity to present their courses in their own words…

Active Repertoire • Autumn 2023

Active Repertoire is the music we can play any time, any place. These are the pieces we can perform without notice, without any embarrassment, and ideally from memory.

And for the Autumn, Pianodao has a new FREE challenge to download and take part in, aimed at giving you positive, realistic piano goals that will enable you to thrive and develop confidence…

Why use Graded Anthologies?

PATHWAYS FOR PLAYING

Supporting Your Piano Playing Journey
Written by ANDREW EALES

It’s hardly a secret that I have long had a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards graded music exams. Certainly, many of my students have found them positive, and over the years it’s been a joy to watch players that I have taught getting distinctions, with plenty of success stories across all eight ABRSM grades and beyond.

But while supporting independent assessment for its recognition and celebration of achievement, I am less enthusiastic about the extent to which a syllabus can skew the curriculum and compartmentalise learning. Worse, pressure (explicit or implicit) to take regular exams can for some cast a long shadow over what should be a joyous journey.

When it comes to Graded Anthologies, I have a more unequivocally positive view. As a general rule, these seem to me to offer most of the benefits of a progressive graded system, with few of the problems that mitigate against effective musical learning, and none of the exam-based issues that can so easily discourage and demotivate players.

Without further ado, here are four key benefits of using Graded Anthologies which I value, and which students have clearly found helpful over the years:

The Three-Dimensional Pianist

PATHWAYS FOR TEACHING

Supporting Educators • Promoting Learning
Written by ANDREW EALES

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

Paying attention to all three dimensions in equal balance gives us a solid educational philosophy, a foundation for practice, and the insight needed to foster deeper learning. Teachers have long done exactly this, knowingly or intuitively, to deliver a well-rounded music education.

While the concept of a “three-dimensional” pianist may sound new or even exotic, it really isn’t. All successful musicians engage Musical Mind, Body and Soul in their performance. The purpose of the terminology and perspective shared here is simply to illuminate more clearly what it is that makes some more successful at the piano than others.

In this article I will consider these three dimensions of musical learning in turn, explaining how we can nurture and monitor each, and suggesting how our recognition of Musical Mind, Body, and Soul can help us develop as teachers, learners, and players.

Our Commitment to Music

PATHWAYS FOR PLAYING

Guest Post by PETER NOKE

In this acutely observed and beautifully nuanced guest post, well-known pianist, educator and examiner Peter Noke deftly explores the links between examination concerns and the musician’s timeless commitment to live performance and personal connection.

“We risk recorded playing from the bedroom or the front room becoming mistaken for performance, its sense of occasion, its vital exchange relegated to something only professionals do in large concert halls.”

Banner image: Ateneul Român Romanian Athenaeum, Bucharest.
Photo credit: fusion of horizons

The Thinking Pianist 2023

PATHWAYS FOR PLAYING

Supporting Your Piano Playing Journey
Written by ANDREW EALES

After having a wonderful time at The Thinking Pianist course last summer, I am delighted to be joining the faculty once again this year. Read on to find out more…

The Appeal of Einaudi’s Music

PATHWAYS FOR TEACHING

Supporting Educators • Promoting Learning
Written by ANDREW EALES

The inspiration for this article came from a discussion with my wife Louise, who is a clinical specialist in mental health; I am immensely grateful for her insights, which are peppered throughout.

I was recently amused by a message I received from a parent of one of my teenage students, who contacted me saying,

“I thought this might make you smile. Over the last 7-10 days I have never heard the piano practised so much. A beautiful piece which I am told is called Nuvole Bianche. When I enquired why I was hearing more practise I was told (and I quote) ‘it’s a proper piano piece’.”

It’s a story which I am sure could be echoed by many of my colleagues, both in communities up and down this country, and far beyond. And yet, many of my musician friends seem to regard Einaudi’s music with a sniffy contempt, a disdain that appears out of proportion to any offence it could possibly have caused.

In some cases this is undoubtedly rooted in a sense of injustice that he has enjoyed such commercial success from doing, in their view, so little.

More often perhaps, they are baffled that music so lacking in the complexity they themselves enjoy could be so highly prized by others. According to this view, Einaudi’s work is, at best, a gateway that might lead the uninitiated into the more rewarding musical territory that they inhabit, albeit a gateway they personally prefer to position themselves a very long way away from.

To adopt such a viewpoint is potentially to deprive ourselves of a deeper understanding of what it is exactly that makes Einaudi’s music so very appealing, and to so many. And if we can understand that, we might be better equipped to perform and teach Einaudi’s music with sympathetic intelligence, and more effectively decipher and communicate with audiences when promoting other music.

Keeping Your Own Piano Journal

PATHWAYS FOR PLAYING

Supporting Your Piano Playing Journey
Written by ANDREW EALES

In my book How to Practise Music, I wrote the following to suggest adult learners keep a piano journal:

“Older learners often like to keep their own journal in which they write a more reflective account of their practice journey, which may or may not be shared with a teacher. These can be excellent tools for structuring practice sessions, probing for solutions, or looking back on previous work.”

It is a suggestion I unpack a little in the book, but in this post I want to explain the concept and potential benefits in more depth, as well as offering some practical tips to help you get started…