Episode 39 – Choosing Music
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.
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Welcome
Welcome to show thirty-nine. 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.
I’m preparing this part of this week’s show a week early while sitting in the foyer of the Sydney Opera House, waiting to go in to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert. It’s going to be a busy week as I will be away with our Year 7 student camp from Wednesday to Friday, then taking students to the semifinals of the Public Speaking competition on Friday night. Saturday, I get to have a go at piano tuning, a real one with strings. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Ben Laude has made an announcement on YouTube that the Chopin Podcast will return this week, with a monthly release schedule in the run up to the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnSFlVqRyNfIJDsmpkcY57w/community?lb=UgkxxsHi2WRsEjM6Mf_J92xlJiuSif_68KKs
The second series of the ABRSM’s Start Here podcast has also started up again. The series is presented by composer and ABRSM artistic director Alexis Ffrench. Each episode looks at a different genre of music, and although ABRSM is known for its classical music examinations and syllabuses, this is a long way from Beethoven’s symphonies, although they did cover classical repertoire in series one. I’ve found it to be a great way to find out a little about types of music I never listen to.
https://www.abrsm.org/en-gb/news/our-new-podcast-for-the-musically-curious
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YouTube - Howard Piano Industries
Howard Piano Industries is in the business of maintaining pianos, supplying tools and materials to professional piano technicians, and hobbyists. They are based in Tampa, Florida, but they service piano tinkerers all around the world. With my upcoming piano tuning adventure, I’ve been watching some of their huge range of videos covering all aspects of piano care and maintenance. They’ve also recently added a podcast to their resources.
There are three episodes in their podcast feed so far, the first covers the birth of the piano, starting with the harpsichord and working up to the modern day form of the instrument. It is a fairly standard run through of the development of the instruments many of us play today.
The second episode is much more closely aligned to the company’s products. It looks at the resources you will need if you want to learn to tune, regulate and repair pianos. The episode is a comprehensive guide to the books available, some of which are easily obtainable, and some of which are out of print. If you decide to buy one or two, be particularly careful as some of them are considered collectors' editions and have a fairly high price tag. On the Australian Amazon site, Pianos Inside Out is listed at $551.00, from Howard, it is $72.95.
The third episode looks at the Broadwood Piano company, from its origins to the present day. It is an interesting look at the development of both the business and their products from before the invention of the piano up to the present day. The episode also teases that there will be an upcoming episode from a modern day piano factory.
If you’re looking for some interesting listening that is tangential to piano playing, but which is still fascinating for pianists, give the Howard Piano Industries’ podcast a listen. There’s a link in the show notes.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/@howardpianoind
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Essay – Choosing Music
I mentioned Bill Hilton’s YouTube channel a while back and the amount of material he makes available to his supporters, and so I’ve been a member of his piano learning community for a while now. Bill has a Discord server, which is one of the perks of being a Patreon supporter. It’s a great community of learners, many of whom are adults and it’s pretty much the only Discord site I visit regularly. This week’s thoughts came about because another member asked a question about learning real music as part of learning to play the piano.
Over the weekend, I was visiting friends. I was talking to my friend’s eldest daughter. She has just started at university and has decided to go back to learning the piano, which she had briefly tried out many years ago. She showed me the book her teacher had recommended, and I was a bit surprised that half of each page was filled with colorful pictures and very, very simple passages to play. Clearly it was aimed at a student much younger than her.
This is even more of a problem the older you get. As most piano learners are young, it is not surprising that there are many books aimed at them, so it can be difficult to find material for an older learner, especially if you don’t have a piano teacher who might be able to suggest material of a suitable level, but which isn’t too childish. In other words, where can I get some music that sounds musical, but which is at my learning level so it’s not so complex that I’ll get frustrated?
It is possible to just go looking. There are lots of collections of music which are designed for early learners. They are often labelled Easy Piano or Really Easy Piano, and they’re a good starting point. If you can find them for music that you enjoy, then they are a good way to be playing something musical which is also fun. I have a Hal Leonard book that has forty Taylor Swift songs for easy piano, which I’ll review properly in an upcoming episode. They are fun to play, slightly challenging for the level I’m at, and as I like a lot of Ms Swift’s music I’m enjoying trying the pieces.
Using these Easy Piano books also means that there is scope later on to move to more complex arrangements of the same pieces when your skills improve. I’ve said before that one of the reasons I’m learning the piano is to be able to play songs for others, and this might be an easy way to get started at that.
Of course, the downside of this approach is that these books are not made for learning, so the levels of the pieces may be quite variable, and I find it difficult to judge as I’m just starting out. So how do you choose pieces that are not too hard, not too easy, but which are just right. Get someone else to make you a list. And fortunately there are a whole lot of people who have done just that, made graded lists of easily available pieces to play - and you can get the lists for free.
Those generous people who give their time to compile lists with no thought of reward, are the various musical examination boards. Wait, what’s that, you have to pay to do the exams? Well forget about that “no thought of reward” bit. The examination syllabuses are easily found on the internet, and they contain curated lists of pieces carefully selected to be at the appropriate level for students.
Let’s look at one example: The new ABRSM piano syllabus for 2025/26. It is available on the ABRSM site, free of charge. I’ll just look at the level one pieces that are set for the examination. There are three lists, each containing sixteen pieces. Each entry lists the composer, the name of the piece and the publication in which it appears. The first three pieces in each list are published together in the ABRSM’s own exam piece book.
The range of music is extensive. List A contains more traditional repertoire, with works by Handel, Leopold Mozart, Purcell and Türk. Lists B and C are much more eclectic with pieces from video games, John Lennon, some works specifically written as teaching pieces, and Disney, including music from Frozen. There would have to be one to suit anyone’s taste, probably more than one.
Of course ABRSM are not the only exam board and although there is some overlap, other examination boards publish their lists of graded pieces too. I’ll put links to some of them in the show notes.
So if you’re looking for something to play that is musical as well as being educational, the exam board syllabuses and their associated publications are probably a good place to start.
https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/Piano 2025 & 2026 Prac syllabus 20240524_access.pdf
https://anzca.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2022-24-ANZCA-Piano-Syllabus.pdf
https://rcmusic-kentico-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/rcm/media/main/about us/rcm publishing/piano-syllabus-2022-edition.pdf
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Review - The Piano Doctor’s piano tuning kit
As I mentioned recently, I am looking at learning how to tune a piano, mainly because it’s something new and would be a useful skill if I ever get around to buying a conventional acoustic piano.
The tools required are not complicated if all you want to do is a simple tuning. You’ll need some rubber or felt mutes to let you silence the strings you are not tuning, and a tuning hammer to adjust the tuning pins. Although it’s called a hammer, the tuning hammer is actually a wrench with a socket designed to fit the tuning pins used in most pianos. The amount of tension in piano strings means that the tuning hammer needs to be fairly substantial. You need a wider selection of tools and materials if you also want to perform piano repairs too.
It is pretty easy to go onto Ebay, Amazon or AliExpress and find a tuning kit for twenty or thirty dollars, but I’m not sure that these would be up to the task over a long period of time. There are around 230 strings in a standard piano, so even one tuning is going to subject a tuning hammer to a lot of use. I have watched a number of the Piano Doctor’s YouTube videos where he repairs pianos and enjoyed seeing the process, and it turns out that he has an online store where he sells a simple piano tuning kit. So I decided to support the channel and buy from him, there’s a link in the show notes.
https://thepianodoctor.shop/?srsltid=AfmBOorBLmXvsoklmcgMYehNTZ8hwXdPRzQkJF_Yzn795Q8PrpNE1WBZ
The kit contains a tuning hammer, two mutes, and two more rubber mute ends. It costs US$80 and comes in a red velvet pouch. It took a bit over a week to arrive here from the US.
The hammer has a solid wooden handle and a fixed-angle head holding the star socket. The socket has an eight-pointed star opening, which gives you a bit more flexibility when putting it on a tuning peg. It seems very solid and you can apply a good deal of force without it feeling flimsy.
The mutes included are rubber wedges attached to twisted wire extensions so you can more easily manoeuvre them, and there are two additional rubber ends you can use on the easier to reach strings. As I’m going to try tuning an upright piano, I will need to get another device called a Papp’s mute to more easily work on the highest treble strings.
I have had a small try-out of the equipment, and it seems to be working well. Unfortunately, my plans for the weekend got changed, so I didn’t get the chance to try a full tuning, but we’re organising that for a few weeks' time. But I’m happy with the equipment, and I’m looking forward to giving it a try for real.
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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.
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Progress
There hasn't been a lot of progress this week, after my lesson on Monday, I was away with the Year 7 students on camp. The camp facilities are great, but there wasn’t a piano available, so there was no opportunity to practice. I haven’t been at home for the weekend, so I only go to sit down at the keyboard just before recording the podcast for this week. I’ll include the three pieces I have in the performance phase, the Canon by Spindler, the Bagatelle by Türk and Afternoon Snooze by Andrew Craggs.
All the pieces were played using the Kawai NV10 as the keyboard and Pianoteq 8 running on the M4 Pro Mac mini emulating the Siguru Kawai SK-EX in player mode.
[Practice pieces]
