MG Music School

05/06/2026

04/06/2026

Physicists said it was impossible. Pianists said they could hear the difference. A century of argument. The pianists won.

Published May 28, 2026, scientists finally settled a debate that has divided musicians and physicists for over 100 years: can a pianist's touch actually change the tone colour of a single piano note, or does the same key always produce the same sound regardless of how it's pressed?

Physics says a piano hammer hitting a string at the same speed should always produce the same tone. The only thing that should change is volume. But pianists have insisted for generations that HOW you press the key, the angle, the speed profile, the finger contact, changes something about the quality of the sound.

The scientists confirmed: the pianists were right. Using precision acoustic measurements, they demonstrated that subtle variations in how a key is depressed produce measurable differences in the harmonic spectrum of the resulting note. Not just louder or softer. Actually different in tonal colour.

The mechanism involves micro-variations in how the hammer contacts the string, timing differences in the damper release, and interactions between simultaneous notes that create different resonance patterns. A century of "you're imagining it" just got overturned by the data. The musicians could hear something real that the physicists couldn't measure until now.

(Source: ScienceDaily, May 28, 2026 / Acoustics)

12/02/2026

21/06/2025

I recently stumbled across an old video of me practicing as a teenager. It was pretty cringey on multiple levels, but a part of me continued to watch anyway, much as one might look at roadkill on the side of the road. 😂

Because it was sort of fascinating to see the level I had gotten to – even though I clearly had no idea what to do with my practice time!

What could I have done differently?

A 2021 study (Suzuki & Mitchell) of piano performance majors at an Australian conservatory provides some clues.

The researchers selected two short pieces by Faure for the pianists to learn in two one-hour practice sessions split over two days.

At the end of the second day of practice, the pianists recorded a performance of the two pieces, which was evaluated and scored by three members of the piano faculty.

And did the top rated pianists do anything different in their practice?

One of the big themes that emerged was that the top two pianists did a lot more practice planning than the others.

The “planners” sight-read through both pieces first and the highest-rated pianist made sure to identify the parts that were “difficult” and “harmonically interesting.”

The “non-planners” mostly began working through the pieces page by page and tended to practice more reactively.

Either they’d just play things until they ran into a problem spot, at which point they’d stop and work on it. Or, they’d just repeat the difficult parts without any particular plan.

All the pianists focused more on notes and technical issues on Day 1, but the top pianist began focusing on expressive musical elements on Day 2, like “shaping, dynamics” and more.

They even played through both pieces slowly, while “[over-exaggerating] all the articulations and dynamics and expressive things.”

All of the pianists alternated between moments of active playing and “non-playing” in their practice. But the lowest-ranked pianists tended to spend more of their time just playing continuously without any pauses or breaks.

The top-ranked pianist spent significantly more of their time engaged in non-playing practice – 24% to be exact, or almost a quarter of their total practice time!

They marked up the score (45 markings vs. 5 for the next-highest pianist), they did some singing, they were the only pianist to do any score study, and they were also the only one to record themself and listen back.

For me, the big takeaway is how important goal setting is to the whole practice process.

Before you start practicing, see what happens if you take a moment to look at the music, and put together a rough plan for what you can get done in the time you have. Even if you don’t follow the plan exactly, it’ll still probably put you ahead of where you would have been without it! 😅

There were actually a lot of differences between the top and lower-ranked practicers beyond the few points above. Click through for all the nerdy details!

https://bulletproofmusician.com/how-do-effective-practicers-make-the-most-of-their-practice-time/

31/05/2025

19/02/2025