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.

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Piano, finally

Episode 81 - Play What You Like

January 11, 2026 • David Reidy • Season 1 • Episode 81

Welcome to show eighty-one! It's scorching here—hitting 43°C—and I'm busy prepping for the new school year. I’m recording early this week as I’m heading to Queensland to assemble a 3D printer for the grandkids!

YouTube Review: Matthew Cawood - 30 Piano Techniques Matthew Cawood's video "30 Piano Techniques Explained in 15 Minutes" is excellent revision. He covers everything from basic articulation to ornaments and bass patterns like the Alberti bass. I even found a few new ones, like "octave legato." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH8BxXAHnWs

Essay: Play What You Like Inspired by a David Snyder short, I discuss why adult learners should prioritize music they enjoy over strict syllabuses. Whether it’s "Blackout Blues" or an ambitious "Moonlight Sonata," playing music that motivates you is key.https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jSMyRu7ujo0

Review: Businesses I conclude my channel reviews with these businesses creating great content:

Merriam Pianos: Stu Harrison produces top-tier, unbiased comparison videos.https://www.youtube.com/@MerriamPianos
Living Pianos Videos: Robert Estrin shares engaging stories and tips from a life in music.https://www.youtube.com/@LivingPianosVideos
Andertons Synths: Jack Duxbury brings high energy to reviews and blindfold "shootouts." https://www.youtube.com/@AndertonsKeyboardDept
Bonner's Pianos: Tony offers performance-heavy reviews, great for hearing the instruments.https://www.youtube.com/@bonnersmusic
Alamo Music: Ted Barsalou offers unique insights and interviews with other musicians.https://www.youtube.com/@apianogallery

Progress "A Wild Chase" is becoming more consistent, though I need to speed up the middle. "Trumpet Tune" is improving with a focus on articulation. "Sea Song" is slow going with its complex rhythm, and "Moonlight Sonata" is on hold until I return from my trip.

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Episode081: 0:00

G'day everyone, I'm David Reidy. Welcome to Piano Finally, a podcast by an old bloke who's getting around to learning the piano, finally. Welcome to show number 81. Thank you very much for downloading the show. If you're a regular listener, then thanks for your support. But if this is the first time you're hearing the podcast, I hope you enjoy what's in the show. And if you like what you hear, consider subscribing. Are you also learning a musical instrument? If you are, let me know how you're going with it. You can contact me at david@pianofinally.show. It's still the school holidays, and I've been spending some of my time getting ready for the new school year. The weather has been quite hot over the past few days, with temperatures reaching the 40s and 43 degrees Celsius today. It's meant to get cooler in the coming week. There was a minor glitch with last week's show. The short pieces of Bach's Crab Canon that I used between segments were missing, replaced by the same length of time in silence. I'm not sure how that happened. The segments are in the correct spots in the computer files, but there was just silence. Maybe the ghost of John Cage interfered. Once again this week, the show is being recorded on Saturday. I have the choir rehearsal tomorrow, not today, as I said last week, and then I leave for Queensland straight afterwards. I'll get the podcast all set up and ready to go and just push the publish button on Sunday evening. I wasn't planning a Queensland trip until this week when the 3D printer I bought for Nixon, Halle and Ace arrived and no one knew how to put it together, so I'm heading up north. I'll have to record next week's show while I'm away, so it might be missing the progress section. If I don't get a chance to record my progress, I do have an idea I can use in its place. We'll see how it goes. I've mentioned Matthew Cawood's YouTube channel on the podcast before. Matthew makes a wide range of videos, including really specific topics, analysis of his subscribers' keyboard playing, and reaction videos, where he looks at other YouTubers' videos. It's a great channel to follow, and one of the ones I recommended on my list recently. One of Matthew's recent videos is called 30 Piano Techniques Explained in 15 Minutes, and it does exactly that, although it takes 16 and a half minutes, and there are 32 of them. As he says at the beginning, you probably know some of these already, and I did, but Matthew's demonstrations at the keyboard are really clear, and a bit of revision never hurts. Matthew starts with touch and articulation. He demonstrates the different types of legato and staccato playing, in each case showing what it's supposed to sound like, as well as just playing something using it. After two years of learning the piano, you'd think I would have at least heard of all the techniques, but this isn't the case. I'd heard of the first few but hadn't come across octave legato as a playing technique and there were others. After articulation the next section is ornaments. I've just started with trills in the trumpet piece so I was interested to see what else there is in the future. It turns out there are many more ornaments to come. Matthew illustrates both the playing technique and the notation and points out the differences between ornament types. For example, he shows how an appoggiatura and an acciaccatura differ from each other In the next section, Bass Patterns and Textures Matthew starts with the Alberti bass and moves on through the oom-pah-pah pattern A term I didn't know was official Each of the patterns is shown in a piece of music where it is used For example, in a Chopin Waltz for the oom-pah-pah Matthew shows voicings and gives hints on how to make the different notes stand out The final section looks at different pedaling techniques Again, with examples of each Rather than put a camera on the floor Matthew holds up an electronic pedal and works with it in his hand while explaining There are two bonus techniques tacked on to the end One of which I had never heard of before But I won't spoil it here All in all, this is a really great video with lots of useful content and examples. It's one of those pieces that is worth coming back to again and again as you progress in your learning. There's a link in the show notes. Play what you like. If you use YouTube a lot, you'll know that it spends a lot of its processing power finding other videos for you to watch. In particular, it promotes shorts. It would be nice to have a way of turning many of his suggestions off, but even paying for YouTube Premium doesn't allow that. I rarely watch the shorts, preferring the longer-form content, but one caught my eye in the new year, so I watched it. It's a short called When You See a Piano at a Christmas Party by David Snyder. There's a link to it in the show notes. And it's David being asked to play something Christmassy, so he launches into some appropriate music, only for it to be unappreciated by his audience until he lands on jingle bells, which he doesn't enjoy playing. It's a fun little piece, and David is clearly a good piano player, which is not surprising, as he has a touring show. It got me thinking about how, as learners, we choose the music we play, or how it's chosen for us. Thinking back to my first piano lesson, which was a bit less than two years ago, I had no idea what music I would be playing. At that first lesson, my teacher, Finn Pursell, got out a copy of Denes Agay's The Joy of First Year Piano, and we started working through it. It turned out to be a really good choice. There was no way this music was going to be used for anything other than learning, but all the tunes were musical and pleasant to play, which meant I got enjoyment of being able to make music rather than just notes at the piano. Why was this important? Well, if you're just starting out, you occasionally want to show people what you're up to. So being able to play something that sounds like a tune is much better than demonstrating that you can play a scale. I'm saying this as an adult learner. A child learner really doesn't have to justify what they're doing. Learning a musical instrument is a fairly standard thing to do if you're under 10 years old. But as an adult, other adults are usually curious as to why you have started. Being able to play something a bit musical lets them see that you are actually achieving something, not just messing about. Over the next year, the choice of music stayed pretty much as a learning path. Much of the time, it was simply getting used to the keyboard and working at translating printing on the score into finger movements. It was still important to me that whatever I was playing was musical. One of the ways I monitor my playing is to know what the music is meant to sound like. Once I have a grasp on how it should sound, both melodically and rhythmically Then I can easily notice mistakes as I play and go back and try and fix them After a year of learning, I made a minor change to the way I select pieces They still have to be musical, but they should also be teaching me something new As you'd know from previous shows, I buy a lot of books from the different examination boards Because they are already at around the right level and they are genuinely musical and they include techniques that I should be at by that level. With Devi's advice and encouragement, I have also been a bit more adventurous in choosing the pieces. I've said before that jazz and blues are not my favourite music genres. I can appreciate them from a musical and technical point of view and I have great respect for the musicians who can put together such complex performances. But it's not my first choice. When Devi suggested the Blackout Blues piece, I was a bit hesitant, but it had a more interesting rhythm and sound than the pieces I had been playing up to that point, so I gave it a go. Blackout Blues quickly became one of my favourite pieces. It had an interesting sound, and it was recognisably different to the usual learning pieces. It became one of those pieces I would play when asked to show someone how my piano playing was coming along. as one of the main reasons I'm learning to play the piano is so I can play for other people, finally having a piece or two that could fill that role just a little felt like real progress. As my skills have improved slowly, I've been able to consider a wider range of pieces. I'm still learning and will be for a long time yet, so I can't be too ambitious, but the pieces in the different books are starting to sound a bit more complex and interesting. If you've been listening to the progress sections of the shows, you'll know that I've added a piece that is well outside the range of my skills at the moment. Adding Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata makes no pedagogical sense but I'm really enjoying learning it. If I was strictly following a curriculum this piece is many years away but that's not why I picked it. I picked it because I like it and I can handle it well enough that the first few bars sound good. Every time I play it I enjoy the experience. The skills I'm picking up are useful Though they are coming quite slowly But it sounds like real concert piano music And that's great The new grade 1 pieces I've selected also sound interesting They are educational too But if I'm going to spend hours and hours practising them Then I have to like them too There's certainly a place for learning syllabus pieces Of course they will more quickly advance your learning But I'm not a younger student hoping to get through all the grades before I leave school. I can choose pieces that I enjoy and stray away from the quickest path to look off into the distance. So if you're an adult learner who is primarily learning for enjoyment, then forget the most efficient path and play what you like. For the last part of the review of YouTube channels I watch regularly, I thought I would include some of the businesses I follow. When I'm looking to buy equipment or accessories, I spend a lot of time looking at unboxing videos and reviews,