Play – Pianodao

True Fun at the piano

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.

The Landscape of Play

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

In my article Putting the PLAY back into playing the piano, I set out what I described as a “radical manifesto for piano education”.

That article was a watershed moment that brought together many of the ideas previously proposed on Pianodao, and outlined a fresh, positive future for piano education. Concluding the article, I wrote,

“There will long be those who value a piano journey which ventures beyond a prescribed series of sequenced tasks, levels and achievements, who long to depart from the digital learning super-highway to explore lesser-travelled, but astonishingly beautiful and fascinating byways.”

Naturally, as readers have considered Dr. Stuart Brown’s seven properties of play and their application in piano education, many have asked what this looks like in practice.

Humility and Wonder in Play

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

Running across the fields, the sun shining on the horizon, the world is ours. Until we run out of breath, that is. As Ian Bogost puts it,

“Play cultivates humility, for it requires us to treat things as they are rather than as we wish them to be.”

Bogost’s book Play Anything (2016) is a rich feast of insight. Even so, the above statement stopped me in my tracks when I first read it, and you may want to take a moment to read again and ponder his point.

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 Playful Piano Teacher

Pianodao Articles • Full Archive

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

Are you a piano teacher? If so, let me ask you a question:
Do you enjoy your work? I mean – really enjoy it, all the time?

I’m fairly sure that most of us, if we are honest, will recognise that while we love our work in general, there are times where fatigue, impatience, distraction and even boredom can set in, even very fleetingly. And while we may feel a little guilty or inadequate in those moments, the reality is that in any job (however wildly fulfilling) we all experience “off days” and times when our heart isn’t quite so far into it as usual.

To counter the negative feelings that this can produce, I invite you to consider this wonderful quote from Buddhist teacher Haemin Sunim:

“Those who work in a playful, relaxed manner
tend to work efficiently and creatively;
Those who work non-stop, driven only by stress,
work without joy.”

Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down (2012)

In this post I am going to consider what it might mean to “work in a playful manner”, and how this could make all the difference for our students.

Playing the Piano “For Fun”?

Pianodao Articles • Full Archive

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

I recently asked the members of an online piano teaching forum the following question:

“I want to learn to play piano for fun…”
What do you think when pupils/parents say this to you?

Perhaps it’s no surprise that answers ranged from “Get a trampoline!” at one end of the spectrum, to “Great, that’s the best reason!” at the other. And the constructive debate which followed certainly proved illuminating.

With this in mind, I would like to share a few of my own views and hope this will encourage further thought and ongoing discussion.