Dawlish Piano

01/04/2025

I should've shared this earlier really:

You'd be a fool to miss our new syllabus! 👀🤣

30/01/2025

Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag, in January. It's on this year's Grade 8 syllabus, and it's a lot of fun to play, but requires some stamina, especially if you do the repeats:

This month I’ve been learning the Maple Leaf Rag (Scott Joplin), which is in this year’s Grade 8 syllabus. The Maple Leaf Rag is one of Joplin’s best-known pieces, along with The Entertainer. I’ve …

16/01/2025

Catching up with old blogposts: October's What I'm playing

I fancied playing something grand in October: sometimes it’s nice to have some drama when you’re playing the piano! However, it’s difficult to play something showy if you don’t know the piece well,…

17/12/2024

What have I been playing in December? Christmas carols, of course! Merry Christmas, everyone!

December is obviously the time to dust off the books of Christmas music, and it can really help to give you that festive feeling. I’ve got various books of Christmas tunes at various levels, so I c…

15/11/2024

What are the piano pedals for? Well, it depends on the piano, but here's an article about three common pedals on a grand piano. My piano has three pedals, but instead of the middle one being a sostenuto pedal (which is a bit too fancy for an upright), it has a practice pedal that shifts to the left to hold it down. Like a volume switch, for when you're practising your scales 😉
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/piano/why-three-pedals-what-they-do/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGkndJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdn1SFNkKMIbt5kP7jPVLLjHgjzCIEI8t8I921KVxmvIZxXK21ATe_iFnQ_aem_vw08mL5zrG7kia3ruP2yNQ

Most pianos have three pedals, but what do they do? We take a look at what is actually going on.

01/11/2024

Chord chess! 😆

Me and Gregory trying out Jacob Collier's Chord Chess game! Was a lot of fun trying this out :) ...

22/10/2024

Sometimes you need a bit of help when you're playing Rachmaninov...

16/10/2024

Common chord progressions in jazz:

I’ve spent some time learning common jazz chord progressions this month, in particular the 4 – 7 – 3 – 6 – 2 – 5 – 1 progressions, which are an extension o…

07/10/2024

Latin groove with Blue Bossa:

I keep coming back to Blue Bossa. It’s a fun, 1960s jazz standard that moves quickly, with a bouncy latin rhythm. The structure of the piece is more straightforward that other jazz standards, which…

03/10/2024

Ok, so I have a bit of catching up to do. Here's May's 'What I'm playing' post, and it's about my varied musical tastes. So more of a 'What I'm listening to'.

Q: What sort of music does your Friendly Local Piano Teacher listen to? A: A very varied bunch of genres. Being a classically trained pianist, I grew up listening to a lot of Classical music and so…

16/05/2024

I've come across an interesting track this afternoon, and it's particularly interesting for its genre (house music). The time signature is 7/4, so you count to seven in the bar. Naturally, we like music to be divided into groups of 4, so this gives the effect of running slightly faster than you'd expect, which creates a somewhat eerie effect. Have a listen and see if you can count the 7s.

Subscribe: https://bit.ly/SubscribeKlangphonicsYT KLANGPHONICS - Heliosphere Buy the E.P. - https://klangphonics.bandcamp.com/album/songs-to-try . Stream th...

08/05/2024

Something a bit different in April. I was mixing, rather than playing:

Your friendly local piano teacher departed from her usual fare in March, and turned her hand to a bit of mixing house music. Strong beat, lots of energy — what’s not to love? It might seem wildly d…