Avoiding Excess, Cultivating Balance


Pause • Reflect • Sundays on Pianodao
Written by ANDREW EALES


In this week’s Fermata post, I want to address our need for a balanced approach to our piano practice and playing. But first, let’s take a step back and consider some more universal principles.

It seems to be our Western way of thinking to categorise and put everything in separate boxes. We are not always so adept at making connections. We explain our world using artificial constructs that polarise, and that fixate on opposites. We speak of good and evil, black and white, hard and soft, male and female, hot and cold, fortissimo and pianissimo, night and day.

We may think that these opposites are mutually exclusive, but our experience of the world around us teaches a different lesson.

Just as positive and negative ions charge the air we breathe, so too energy, movement and a living narrative are all impossible without the interaction of opposing forces.

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The Pianist’s Motivations


Supporting Your Piano Playing Journey
Written by ANDREW EALES


  • What is it that motivates us as pianists?
  • Why did we start learning to play the piano? ..
  • And why do we continue to play?
  • What are our piano goals for the future? ..
  • And how do they excite us?
  • How can we motivate and inspire our students?

Ask these questions to a hundred pianists, and there’s a good chance you will hear a hundred different answers, but common themes will likely emerge.

In this article I am going to consider the many and complex motivations we all experience in life, focussing in on the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, and how each pertains to our piano playing.

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