Episode 86 - The Entertainer

G'day everyone. Welcome to show number eighty-six. If you're a regular listener, thanks for your support, and if you're new here, I hope you enjoy the show.

This week, things have taken a vocal turn. Following my enjoyment of the Belong choir, I've signed up for another community choir—one that didn't require an audition! I've found myself in the bass section, managing up to middle C for now. It's proving to be great fun and an unexpected detour on my musical journey.

YouTube - Stefan Wyatt - How to play ornaments on the piano Ornaments seem to be in the air lately. Stefan Wyatt recently posted a video on his "Piano Tips" channel that is distinct from Matthew Cawood's recent coverage. Stefan’s approach is practical, based on his beginner's course, and offers clear explanations of grace notes (appoggiaturas vs.acciaccaturas), mordents, turns, and trills. He also clarifies a point about accidentals and trills that was new to me. It is a great introduction for beginner and intermediate players.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxXgEUE5xm0

Essay - The Entertainer My new choir is rehearsing for a full concert in July. While listening to practice tracks for "Pink Pony Club" by Chappell Roan, I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole of cover versions.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR3Liudev18

Despite the lack of financial incentive in covering songs, people do it for the sheer joy of performing and sharing. This reinforces my belief that live performance has nothing to fear from AI. Whether it’s 120 people in a choir entertaining each other or a solo pianist, the goal is to be the entertainer. That desire to share our love of music is what gets us through the endless Czerny exercises and scales.

Review - Sydney Theatre Company - The Normal Heart Theatre is back for 2026! I caught Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart" at the Sydney Theatre Company. Set in mid-1980s New York, this production in the Drama Theatre was excellent. It featured live musicians on stage—Michael Griffiths on piano and Rowena McNeish on cello—which was a lovely touch. It is an important story and a great production well worth seeing.https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2026/the-normal-heart

Closing Things are settling into a rhythm with lessons and rehearsals. If you are learning an instrument, I'd love to hear how you are managing your time and what pieces you are enjoying.

You can contact me at david@pianofinally.show or visit the website at www.pianofinally.show.

Until next week, I hope your piano stays in tune, and you enjoy your time at the keys.

The contents of this podcast were entirely generated by David Reidy. These show notes were created by Gemini

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Some of the links to books and other items mentioned in the podcast may 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.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:15 Welcome
• 1:30 YouTube - Stefan Wyatt - How to play ornaments on the piano
• 3:39 Essay
• 7:45 Review - Sydney Theatre Company - The Normal Heart
• 9:44 Closing
• 11:03 Progress

Transcript

Episode086: 0:00

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. Welcome to show number eighty-six. 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. I mentioned last week that I was looking into joining a choir, having enjoyed the Belong choir experience so much. This week I signed up for another community choir, one that doesn't require an audition, and have found myself in the bass section. I can manage up to middle C at the moment, the left-over effects of radiation therapy making anything higher difficult. I'll look for a singing teacher in the next few weeks to see if there's anything I can do to get a few more notes out. This is proving to be great fun, and not somewhere I thought piano playing would take me. If you've got the time for rehearsals, I'd recommend you give a community choir a try. I suppose that there must be something about ornaments in the air at the moment, which is a bit strange as I always associate ornaments with Christmas time. This week, Stefan Wyatt posted a video on his "Piano Tips" YouTube channel about playing ornaments. You might remember that a few weeks ago, Matthew Cawood also covered the topic. Stefan's approach is different as he is basing the video on his beginner's piano course, and so it is aimed more at the beginner piano player rather than looking at the history and development of ornaments. Stefan's explanations are really clear and are aimed at getting you to understand how to play each of the different types of ornaments as well as how they differ from each other. He doesn't go into the different variations that developed over time, just a single way of handling them when you come across them in a modern printed score. Grace notes are the first topic with Stefan explaining the difference between how to play an appogiatura and an acciaccatura, and how to understand the notation of each. Upper and lower mordents follow, then turns and trills. For each, Stefan looks at variations and the notations. Each of the different techniques is illustrated at the piano, with Stefan using an overhead angle so you can clearly see what he is doing and copy his technique. The final section of the video looks at the use of accidentals with the different ornaments, and this is something that I hadn't seen before or thought about. If you are expected to start a trill on the note above the one written, how do you know if it's the note a tone or a semitone above? It turns out that it's the next note in the scale, unless it has the ornament marked with an accidental. See, you learn something new every day. This video is a great introduction to playing the types of ornaments that appear in beginner and intermediate-level pieces. It's quite practical and points you in the direction you will go as you progress. It's well worth a watch and there is a link in the show notes. The Entertainer performance in July, and this isn't just part of a bigger event; this is a whole concert, with twenty-four songs in the lineup. I have heard about half of all the ones that they have chosen; they are mostly pop songs from the 1970s onwards, with a fair few from this century. Those are the ones I know less well. The choir provides sheet music for all the songs as well as practice tracks for each of the voice ranges. I've said I'll give the team that makes the practice tracks a hand as it's done electronically rather than with live recording, and I have the software that I use for the podcast. Good though the voice tracks are, I still need to listen to the songs as performed so I can learn how it all fits together, and that's where I came up with the idea for this week's essay. One of the songs that we sang at the last rehearsal was "Pink Pony Club". I knew that this song existed, for many months, it has been high on the list of promoted music scores in the spam mailings I receive. I don't think I had heard more than a few bars of it, so I went looking for some examples. I found the official music video by Chappell Roan and started there. But I didn't stop there. We're doing a choir performance, and I found a performance by One More Chorus, a Melbourne-based group which is much closer to the version we were singing. Of course, by that stage the YouTube algorithm was suggesting many other versions of the song. As you would expect, there are lots of them, and I think some of them are better than the original. And that got me thinking. Every one of these performances is different. They are all the same song, one of them takes some liberties with the lyrics, but they are all recognisably "Pink Pony Club", so why are these different versions all around, and why are they all so successful? The original music video has over 120 million views, but many of the alternative versions are also in the millions, and many more are over 100 thousand. It's all the same song, so you might expect that there would be one definitive version and that would be it, but we all know that isn't the case. The difference is the performers. These alternate performances all work because there is a person or people adding themselves to the music. I doubt anyone is making a cover version of a current pop song in an effort to make a lot of money. By the time you've paid licensing fees to use a piece of music and taken into account the incredibly small amounts of money paid to performers by the streaming services, covering a song is not a path to riches. But people do it. And they do it for the joy of performing, the joy of entertaining other people. Every cover of "Pink Pony Club" is there because the performers wanted to share the song with their listeners. Given the lack of financial incentive, it must be because they like the song and want to share it. It's why I think live performances have nothing to fear from Al. At the first choir rehersal we were learning the parts for "MacArthur Park" when the choir leader just told everyone to go for it for the next few bars. And so everyone did, and it was amazing, even though we were only entertaining each other 120 people managed to create something really special for a few moments. And isn't that one of the reasons we learn musical instruments? So we can be the entertainer who gets to share our love of music with others. It is the goal of eventually being the entertainer that helps us get through Czerny exercises, endless scales, arpeggio practices and practice pieces. Eventually we will reach the level where our playing becomes entertaining, and we can share all that hard work with the world. Theatre is back for 2026, and I went to see the first of the Sydney Theatre Productions for 2026. As February is Mardi Gras time in Sydney, the STC often puts on a production of interest for the LGBT community to start the year. This year, the production is Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart", a play set in New York in the mid 1980s. It's a well-known work and, as always, the STC does an excellent job. The production is in the Drama Theatre at the Opera House, where the larger stage gives the play a lot more room. I have been getting used to productions using recorded music, so it was nice to see two musicians on stage as part of the play. At the back of the stage was a piano, which was played by Michael Griffiths, who also had two acting roles in the show. He was joined by cellist Rowena McNeish, and together they provided the background music throughout the production; it was a nice touch and fitted perfectly. The Opera House is a favourite destination for tourists so it is common for there to be groups being led around on organised tours. I think they might also have something in place for tourists to see a production, as this is the only reason I can think of for half the front row being taken up by a group of Mandarin-speaking tourists, including children. Perhaps they were unaware of the content of the play (which, of course, was in English) and how it may not be suitable for children even if they don't speak the language. At the first scene change, after two of the male characters had kissed in the opening scene, they all got up and quietly left. If you have a chance to see it, this is a great production; the acting is excellent, the story is important, and all in all, it is a great time production, and it's always a good time to see some live theatre. There's a link in the show notes to more information. This week I've got a piano lesson on Monday, it will be later than usual as I have an after-school meeting that popped up unexpectedly, Mondays are usually free. Choir rehearsal is on Thursday night again, and I have to remember to take some biscuits for the break. Things are starting to settle into a rhythm. I wonder what will get in the way. 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 available on Spotify and as an audio-only stream 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? How are you managing your time? What pieces are you enjoying the most? So, until next week, I hope your piano stays in tune, and you enjoy your time at the keys. Progress has been slow this week. I've been late home most evenings, so only a few minutes of practice get done each day. Thursday is now choir practice also, but I'm counting that as music practice for that day. As I am singing in the bass section, I'm getting much better at reading the bass staff. so that's an advantage. Devi has added some inversions to the chords I'm practicing. The fingering is now much more comfortable apart from the F7 chord but it's getting there. I'm using the Nord for the chord practice and playing around with different settings. This week I'm using the newly added Astoria Grand Piano. It was another of the free add-ons Nord releases for their keyboards. I'm still working on Sea Song and Moonlight. I'll include those too. They were recorded using Cubase 15 running on an M4 Pro Mac Mini with Piano Tech 9 emulating a Shigeru Kawai SKEX Grand Piano in concert recording mode. I also used the Kawai NV10 to play the notes. Piano plays