Effective Learning

Patience: The Greater Peak

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…

True Fun at the piano

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

Piano teacher discussions can sometimes assume the appearance of a boxing match between, in the one corner, experienced stalwarts who stress the point that learning the piano should be a serious business, and in the other corner, teachers keen to emphasise inclusion, and the need for learning to be ‘fun’.

It is understandable that we neither want playing the piano to be cast as laborious, nor as lightweight. But can’t ‘fun’ be a serious business?

In her outstanding book The Power of Fun (2021), award-winning science journalist and author Catherine Price gives a lengthy but glorious exposition of what she calls ‘True Fun’, and to my mind she resolves the confusion. In this post, I am going to share and comment on a few highlights.

ADHD • A Pianist’s Guide

ADHD • Insights for Pianists

Education Strategies • Andrew Eales
Clinical Expertise • Louise Eales RMN, NMP

ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, has become a hot topic of discussion in recent years, the apparent explosion of both child and adult diagnoses much commented on in the media and society at large.

This article has been cowritten with my wife Louise, who has three decades clinical experience working with children, and latterly adults, who have ADHD. She is now an advanced practitioner at ADHD 360, a leading private ADHD diagnosis and treatment clinic. We gratefully acknowledge that the Clinical Director has peer-reviewed this article prior to its publication here.

For my part, I have lived with this condition for a lifetime, only belatedly recognised and formally diagnosed in my fifties. ADHD has had a huge impact on my piano journey.

Our shared aim is to provide pianists and educators with a unique, relevant, and practical perspective which combines Louise’s clinical expertise with my personal experience, and which specifically addresses the challenges those with ADHD face in the practice room, piano lesson and at live events.

The article which follows addresses many common questions, explaining what ADHD is, its causes, history, the signs and symptoms. We then go on to apply this to piano practice, lessons and performance, offering strategies to help those with ADHD and their teachers. Finally, Louise outlines the process of diagnosis and available medications.

Download This Article as a Printable PDF

The Importance of Notation

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

In a trend that will worry experienced music educators, community musicans and professional performers alike, the importance of notation is increasingly coming under fire within the piano education community.

The charge is often led by those who prefer teaching popular music, have a limited music education background, and perhaps don’t fully understand the long-term needs of other music students. But the trend limits opportunity, and we must challenge and resist it for the benefit of all our students.

Starting and Staying on Track

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

Whenever we teachers have the privilege of taking on a new beginner, we assume an important role in setting the course of their musical journey, especially in the case of children taking up the piano; we must endeavour to do so in a way that will enable them to stay on track.

This week’s Fermata post is especially for colleagues who want to reflect on this, although I hope others might find the topic of interest…

Putting the PLAY back into Playing the Piano

Pianodao Articles • Full Archive

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

A Radical Manifesto for Piano Education

According to Plato, “life must be lived as play”.
How might this attitude to life benefit piano education?
We teach others to play the piano, but what do we really mean by play?

The Three-Dimensional Pianist

Pianodao Articles • Full Archive

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

Understanding the importance of equally training, nurturing, and developing our musical mind (understanding), body (technique), and soul (musicianship) empowers us to teach, learn, and practise the piano holistically.

Paying attention to each of these 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 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 their importance can help us develop as teachers, learners, and players.

The Gamification of Musical Learning

Pianodao Articles • Full Archive

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

The rise and rise of electronic video, console and computer games over the last two decades has been spectacular. From Pokémon to Grand Theft Auto, and from Minecraft to Wii Sports, games have become hugely popular and lucrative, and some academics even suggest that they are now the dominant cultural form of the 21st century.

In his much-discussed paper Manifesto for a Ludic Century, Eric Zimmerman suggests that while the twentieth century was the age of information and of moving pictures, the twenty-first is the ludic (game-centric) century.

Zimmerman enthuses,

“Increasingly, the ways that people spend their leisure time and consume art, design, and entertainment will be games, or experiences very much like games.”

We certainly see growing evidence of gamification in music education, and in this article I will be considering and reflecting on the transformative impact this may be having, for better or worse…