Piano, finally
Piano Finally is a podcast by an old bloke who is learning the piano, finally. I cover the process of learning the piano and music theory as an adult learner. I also review piano books, hardware and other materials from an adult learner's perspective.
Piano, finally
Episode 38 - Move On
Welcome
G’day, and welcome to Episode 38 of Piano, Finally! If you’re new here, I hope you enjoy the episode. If you’re a returning listener, thanks for coming back!
This week, I’m recording on Saturday instead of Sunday because tomorrow, I’ll be attending my first Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert of the year. The program includes a new work by Australian composer Carl Vine, the Elgar Violin Concerto, and Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 3, plus a pre-concert lecture. I’ll share all the details in next week’s episode!
YouTube Recommendation – Words Unravelled
I recently came across the YouTube channel Words Unravelled, presented by Rob Watts and American academic Jess Zafarris. Like RobWords, it delves into language origins, and the episode I watched was What’s the Difference Between a Violin and a Fiddle?.
The episode explores the history of instrument names, including how piano is a contraction of pianoforte, which itself comes from gravicembalo col piano e forte. It also looks at the names of string and brass instruments—you might be surprised where trumpet fits in!
Check out the episode here: Watch on YouTube
Essay – Move On
This week’s essay is inspired by one of my favorite Stephen Sondheim songs, Move On, from Sunday in the Park with George. The song encourages artists to keep moving forward despite external opinions—a message that resonates deeply with me as a piano learner.
One of the biggest challenges I face is transitioning from learning a piece to performing it. In practice, I stop and correct mistakes, but in performance mode, I need to move on without disrupting the flow. It’s a skill I’m still working on, and it’s reassuring to know that even professional pianists make the occasional slip but recover seamlessly.
Book Review – The Musician’s Way
My piano teacher, Devi, recently lent me The Musician’s Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness by Gerald Klickstein. Written by a performer and teacher with over 30 years of experience, this book offers practical advice for musicians.
It divides practice into three phases:
- New material – Understanding the piece before even touching the instrument.
- Developing material – Refining technique, articulation, and dynamics.
- Performance material – Preparing for a confident and seamless presentation.
One of Klickstein’s key insights is to include articulation and dynamics from the start, so you don’t learn an incorrect version first—a piece of advice Devi often gives me!
If you're interested, the book is available here: The Musician’s Way on Amazon
Progr
You can contact me:
- via email at david@pianofinally.show; this is probably the best option
- the show website, www.pianofinally.show
- Instagram and Threads @pianofinally
- and on YouTube
- all the podcast directories - list
- here's the RSS feed
Some of the links to books and other items mentioned in the podcast are affiliate links for Amazon or other providers. If you use one of these links, a commission may be paid to me at no additional cost to you. Thank you if you use a link.
All reviews of products, websites and services are unpaid, and no sponsorship has been received for any content on this podcast.
Episode 38 – Introduction
G’day, everyone. I’m David Reidy; welcome to Piano, finally, a podcast by an old bloke who is getting around to learning the piano, finally.
[Crab Canon]
Welcome
Welcome to show thirty-eight. Thank you very much for being here. If this is your first time hearing the podcast, I hope you enjoy the episode. If you’re a returning listener, then thanks for coming back. If you’re learning the piano or another musical instrument, let me know how you’re going with it. You can contact me at david@pianofinally.show.
This week’s episode is being recorded on Saturday rather than Sunday. Tomorrow, I’m going to the first of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra concerts I have subscribed to for this year. There will be a new piece by Australian composer Carl Vine; this will be its third performance, the Elgar Violin concerto and Vaughan Williams’ Symphony Number 3. There is also a pre-concert lecture. I’ll give you a full run down next week.
[Crab Canon]
YouTube - Words Unravelled
I regularly watch the RobWords YouTube channel, and so it was not surprising that the YouTube algorithm suggested another channel that Rob Watts presents, Words Unravelled. This channel is presented by Rob and American academic Jess Zafarris, and similarly to RobWords it looks at the origin of language. The episode YouTube suggested is entitled What’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle? and it looks at the origin of instrument names and other musical terms.
I’m sure we all know that a piano gets its name from a contraction of pianoforte, which is itself a contraction of gravicembalo col piano e forte, but what about all the other instruments in the orchestra, or the word orchestra itself. They look at the stringed instruments, most of which are named after variations on violin, and the brass instruments being variations of tubes. You might be surprised at where the word trumpet fits in.
It’s a fun episode of a really educational YouTube channel and well worth a watch. And yes, they do explain the difference between a violin and a fiddle. There’s a link in the show notes.
[Crab Canon]
Essay – Move On
The title of this week’s essay is also the title of one of my favourite Stephen Sondheim songs. Move On is from the second act of Sunday in the Park With George and if you’re going to get a version to listen to, find the original Broadway recording with Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin, it’s amazing. But what does that have to do with piano playing, apart from the fact that I would like to be able to play that piece myself one day?
The song is about moving forward as an artist and, to some extent, ignoring the opinions of others regarding your art, and I was thinking about how, as a piano learner, we continually need to be moving forward with what we are learning and performing. But that’s not my immediate application of the Move On message.
Instead, Move On is what I need to do when I’m practicing, and it’s proving harder than I expected. As I’ve explained before, I like to think that there are three main phases when I’m learning a new piece of music. I start at “what does this even sound like” and that leads on to learning the notes. It usually involves getting any of the sharps or flats in the key signature wrong the first time through, shifting my hands to a new position for some of the piece, then forgetting to shift them back. Eventually, I will have a reasonable idea of how the piece will go together.
Remember that we’re not talking about long pieces at this stage. I am yet to play any piece that involves turning a page while playing, or using the pedal for the iPad. Actually, I’m not using the pedals on the piano either, none of the pieces I have learned so far has pedal markings, I think they come in at the next level up.
The longest part of the practice journey is where I start to get the dynamics and articulations into place, and this is the spot where having Devi as a piano teacher is great. I will hear if I play a wrong note, but she will hear everything else I get wrong as well, such as incorrect dynamics or none at all, incorrect note durations, and me changing fingerings halfway through. Once she has made me aware of them, I’ll usually notice them myself when I’m next practicing at home, so I can stop and go back and correct them.
When I’m at this stage of practising, all the advice is to stop when there’s a mistake, correct it and then repeat the correction a number of times until you’ve played it correctly many more times than you’ve played it incorrectly. I will usually try to get it right five times in a row before moving on. I have no problem with this, and there is certainly a sense of accomplishment when I do finally get it all working correctly.
The problem comes at the next stage. Once I’ve got a piece where I can play it correctly, remembering the dynamics and articulations and consistent fingerings, it moves on to performance mode. Well, not really performance mode, but I’m calling it that to indicate that the goal is to have it playable without errors at the indicated speed. This is also the stage where, after a week or two, it will move to the “only two play-throughs per practice” list.
And this is where “Move On” comes into play. When I make a mistake, I stop. That’s what I’ve been doing in all the practice for this piece up to this point, but if this is going to be for performance, then you can’t stop, you have to move on. And this is where I’m having problems. The idea is that, if you make a mistake, you should be able to get back to the score without it being really obvious, in particular, without messing up the rhythm.
At the moment, I can’t do this. I am just about able to stop myself from going back to before the mistake and repeating the notes, but it’s a struggle, but coming up with something inventive to cover the gaff is something that I am really going to have to work on. I hope it will come as I gain more confidence with scales and automatically know which keys it is ok to play, rather than having to stop and carefully analyse.
Of course, the perfect solution would be to just never make a mistake while playing, but I’m pretty sure that I can’t rely on that. One of the things I’ve learned from watching all those pianist interviews from the competitions is that even they make the occasional error, but they are able to move on without it affecting the performance.
It’s great to know that there is still so much to learn, this is going to keep me busy.
[Crab Canon]
Book Review - The Musician’s Way
A couple of weeks ago, Devi, my piano teacher, lent me a book about practising. The Musician’s Way, A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness by Gerald Klickstein was published in 2009 by Oxford University Press. Mr Klickstein is a performer and teacher, and when he wrote the book, he already had over thirty years of experience helping musicians achieve excellence in their practice and performances.
The book is divided into three sections: the first covers how to practice, the second how to perform and the third looks at creativity as a performer. I’ve only read the first section so far, I’m not ready to perform, and I have been looking at ways of practising more effectively.
The book assumes that you are beyond the beginner stage of learning. It is not heavy on theory, but it does expect that you are playing pieces of moderate length and complexity, so many of the examples given are in that context. That doesn’t mean that the advice given can’t still be helpful to a beginner, it just means that you can skip some of the more complex procedures, as those situations don’t arise in the music beginners play.
Mr Klickstein divides practice into three phases: new material, developing material and performance material, and he details different approaches for each of these phases. He also has suggestions for what to do once you’re happy with the material in your performance zone. His advice includes strategies for memorisation, ways of breaking down complex or difficult passages, and ways of keeping your playing fresh.
One of the first pieces of advice Mr Klickstein gives concerns how to go about learning a new piece. Remember that he is aiming this at intermediate players. He suggests that even before touching the keys, you should listen to recordings of the piece you want to learn. His reasoning is that you need to know where you are heading in your practice if you’re going to practise the correct way.
This is very similar to the advice that Devi has been giving me, include the articulation and dynamics from the beginning, so that the incorrect version of the music is not the one you learn first.
The book includes lots of advice for particular instruments and singers, but most of it is still relevant for keyboard players. The terminology used is largely the US forms of notation, so sixteenth notes rather than semiquavers, but everyone is pretty adept at moving between the two systems.
If you can’t find The Musician’s Way at your local music store, it is available on Amazon in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle formats. There’s a link in the show notes.
[Crab Canon]
Closing
Well, that’s it for this week.
If you’d like to contact me, email is the best way. You’ll find me at david@pianofinally.show and the website at www.pianofinally.show. In both cases, pianofinally is all one word. The show is also on Facebook and Instagram and available as audio-only on YouTube. You can subscribe via any popular iOS or Android podcast application or from directories such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. I also post an excerpt and link for each episode as an Instagram reel.
If you’re learning an instrument, let me know where you are in your journey. What’s going well, and what are the challenges?
And so, until the next episode, I hope your piano stays in tune and you enjoy your time at the keys.
[Crab Canon]
Progress
The three pieces in this week’s progress section are: Daniel Gotlobb Türk’s Bagatelle in F, and Andrew Craggs Afternoon Snooze and Blackout Blues. This is just the beginning of Blackout Blues again, I’ve been concentrating on getting both hands to work together, and getting the correct rhythm with the chords. The link to the next phrase is proving tricky.
All the recordings were made using the Kawai NV10 as the keyboard and Pianoteq 8 running on the M4 Pro Mac Mini. Pianoteq is set to a New York Steinway D piano in player mode.
[Practice pieces]
