Category: scales

El Cerrito, Fresno, humor, pianist, piano, piano instruction, piano teacher, scales, Shirley Kirsten, tennis, Uncategorized, you tube

Alex breaks the choke hold on his scales (You Tube video)

arioso7: Shirley Kirsten

Alex, a high school senior and varsity tennis player takes his piano lessons very seriously. He's diligently working on perfecting his technique so nerves won't cause his scales to crash and burn. Today we couldn't have had a better soap opera script in progress, when Alex confessed to losing his composure right before a tennis… Continue reading Alex breaks the choke hold on his scales (You Tube video)

arpeggios, baseball, football, humor, memoir, music, Oberlin Conservatory, New York City High School of Performing Arts, performance anxiety, pianist, piano, piano instruction, piano teacher, pianoaddict.com, public school 122, scales, Shirley Kirsten, sports, Steinway piano, tennis, Uncategorized, you tube

Sports and Piano Technique: How about chunking–On You Tube

arioso7: Shirley Kirsten

It's a no brainer to compare piano study to athletics. Both have been my passions throughout most of my life. At age 6 I competed with my brother for music lessons but lost out. Nearly five years my senior, he got first licks at studying the clarinet, quashing my hopes of holding a shimmering saxophone… Continue reading Sports and Piano Technique: How about chunking–On You Tube

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Scales and Arpeggios with videotaped replay

arioso7: Shirley Kirsten

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji_7tJyJ9JQ I often think of piano technique as in the same league as sports. Why not? I practically grew up in the bleachers at Ebbets Field watching the Brooklyn Bums battle their adversaries. And not to forget that I was a tomboy who copied everything my big brother did. I even tried to break the… Continue reading Scales and Arpeggios with videotaped replay

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A Piano Teacher’s Worst Nightmare!

arioso7: Shirley Kirsten

In a routine Yahoo e mail search for a Kawai USA technician I had spoken with a year ago, I stumbled upon a document that I had drafted out of sheer desperation. It related to the decline of my sustain pedal which had been mercilessly pounded by a student who had serious impulse control problems.… Continue reading A Piano Teacher’s Worst Nightmare!

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Teens, popular music then and now, Taylor Swift, throw in Five for Fighting “100 Years”

arioso7: Shirley Kirsten

Today was by no means a first for me, a long-haired musician raised on Bach, Beethoven and Brahms teaching a teen some pop tunes by John Ondrasik and Taylor Swift while I sailed through the universe of "Liz on Top of the World" with another student. Videotaping portions of piano lessons was the natural result… Continue reading Teens, popular music then and now, Taylor Swift, throw in Five for Fighting “100 Years”

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After the Fall

arioso7: Shirley Kirsten

It was easy to predict that I would have violated my own ban on making more you tubes. My cold turkey withdrawal was just an overnight phenomenon eclipsed by my hankering to tweak the tripod, move the camera in all sorts of directions, and get a better angle of the piano for the next posting.… Continue reading After the Fall

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A Day in El Cerrito and my return to Fresno

arioso7: Shirley Kirsten

To El Cerrito and back, and what happens in between, in greater detail.