A warranty claim was refused on environmental grounds and it turned out the conditions were in the paperwork all along. What matters. What humidity actually does Wood moves. Too dry and soundboards crack, tuning pins…
Half an hour most evenings. What actually happens is that I warm up vaguely, play through the piece I am working on from the top, stumble in the same two places, go back to the beginning because that is satisfying, and…
Adult beginner, about two years in. I can name every note on both staves without hesitation if you point at one. Put a piece in front of me and I still read it note by note, like spelling out a word letter by letter,…
Most acoustic pianos have a flat wooden section immediately to the left of the lowest key, and a matching one at the right hand end. It is a noticeable piece of the instrument and I have never seen it explained. It…
There is a persistent claim that music tuned with A at 432 hertz rather than the standard 440 produces a measurably different effect on listeners: described variously as warmer, calmer or more natural. I can see two…
I have been learning piano for a few months. There is a simple piece I can play comfortably except for one transition a single bar into the next: where I stumble every time. The frustrating part is that I can play the…
I have seen classical guitarists produce vibrato with a rolling motion of the left hand finger, very similar to what a violinist does. On a violin that makes sense to me: the finger stops the string, so moving it along…
Four months in, ten minutes of scales at the start of every session, mostly C, G and D major, hands together, two octaves. I can play them and they are getting smoother, but I cannot point at a single thing in the…
I am planning to lead a song for a mixed group and I want as many people as possible to actually join in rather than listen. The song as written spans roughly an octave, from D below middle C to the D above. I do not…
I can play a handful of intermediate pieces from memory, I practise most days, and I have not felt myself improve since about month fourteen. Sight reading is bad, my technique feels like something I invented, and I…
Returning after fifteen years off. I went from about thirty minutes a day to three hours over roughly six weeks because I finally have the time, and I have been working mostly on scales and one Chopin etude. Now my…
Someone at work is giving away an upright from about 1920 that has been in a garage for two years. Alternatively I have 900 saved for a weighted digital. Second floor flat, neighbours on both sides and below, and I will…
Adult, somewhere between beginner and intermediate, looking for a lesson every two weeks. The £25 teacher advertises grades one to five for children; the £70 one has a conservatoire background and mostly teaches…
Broken chord accompaniment in the left, melody in the right. Hands separately I can play both cleanly at 92. Hands together at 60 it is fine, at 66 the left hand starts creeping ahead within about four bars, and by the…
The joint nearest the fingertip buckles inward on the fourth and fifth fingers, only in the right hand, and only once I am ten or so minutes into practice. Cold, at the start of a session, everything holds fine. There…
Fluent enough in C and G to read simple pieces at tempo. Put three or four flats in front of me and I stop dead, and I can feel myself spelling out each note by name and then translating it to a key. I have been reading…