AI-Companion comes to Zoom with a Lesson Summary

At first, I was a bit wary of an AI invasion of my remote, transmitted piano lessons. Would the Deep State snatch every last crumb of data attached to me and my adult brood? Was it the final nail in the coffin of free, unchained, libertarian, creative expression? Would teacher and pupil be subjected to…

A revisit of a timely topic about the human voice and piano lessons

https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/piano-study-and-the-value-of-singing-against-a-cultural-backdrop-of-vocal-inhibition/?page_id=14563

Online Piano Lessons: Patience and Planning Amidst the Unexpected

Bundled into the universe of teaching piano Online, is the necessity to prepare for the unexpected. This means knowing what resources to dip into when there's a substantial video or audio freeze. Face Time and Skype, for example, might occasionally not deliver, and when it becomes apparent that lesson continuity is at a virtual standstill,…

Online lessons are coming into their own in the age of Corona virus

For years I felt like a duck out of water, barely floating outside the mainstream as an Online piano teacher. My isolation was intensified by boomer generation colleagues who insisted on face-to-face mentoring as the gold pedagogical standard. I could empathize before 2010, when I'd journeyed for years through traditional teaching circles without a second…

Practicing Contrary Motion Scales (Video tutorial)

I often use scales played in opposite directions to reinforce posture and the body's ability to lean in either direction toward the highest or lowest octave without bench wandering, or dizzying head movements. Since the third octave in these excursions is not within eye range, the advantage of a pull toward the keyboard, (even without…

Domenico Scarlatti and trills!

What would our precious Domenico be without his Baroque era adornments, embedded trills, heart-throbbing melodies in gypsy, folkloric framing! And who can overlook the flamenco guitar, rhythmic castanets and tambourines in full keyboard orchestration under Portuguese and Spanish royal influence. Yet the very first Scarlatti sonata given to me by my beloved NYC mentor, Lillian…

Phrase relationships: Questions and Answers

At my alma mater, Oberlin Conservatory, through a four year Theory course regimen, students were saturated with Antecedent and Consequent relationships. The pairing was readily explained as 4 measures of "Question" followed by 4 measures of "Answer." And lending support to such indoctrinated phrase SYMMETRY were harmonic underpinnings that bundled in a Half cadence of…

Weaving threads of melody through W.A. Mozart, K. 545-Allegro

I've come full circle back to a "signature" piece that has grown over decades as I've worked with students discovering its many challenges. The so-called "facile" Sonata in C, K. 545, by W.A. Mozart that's quickly retrievable from my memory-labeled archive, is not "easily" dismissed as a thinly composed romp through C Major. With its…

Piano Practicing: Phrasing in Groups of notes

Many students complain about getting stuck at junctures of scales, or in the midst of passagework in a variety of pieces. As mentor, having observed these glitches from an objective distance over cyber or through person-to-person contact at my studio, I've concluded that note-to-note "vertical" playing can snatch continuity from the mind down to the…

The “Best Interview” with Seymour Bernstein

Seymour's fan club encompasses a vast array of e-list recipients who feel the pulse of the pianist's response to a universe of infinite wonders. In a steady stream of emails FROM: see.less (not more--mour), TO: his many cyber-connected admirers, a cascade of attachments might contain a photo display of newborn puppies snuggling with a feline…