Welcome to show number ninety-eight. In this week's show, I'll review Matthew Cawood's latest video, talk about the myth of multi-tasking and let you know how last night's performance went. During my voice lessons on Monday, we found that I can now get to the D# above middle C reasonably consistently, and the E above that occasionally. This week's piano lesson was longer, and we spent a good bit of time on A Mingus Among Us. Thursday night was the choir rehearsal, but the highlight of the week was the performance on Saturday at the International Convention Centre.

Review - Matthew Cawood Matthew Cawood's latest video, How to open any piece of music and just play it, looks at sight-reading. Matthew starts by explaining the difference between sight-reading and learning a new piece. He moves on to the two levels of sight-reading: recognising individual notes and then recognising patterns. He provides a list of things you really should know before attempting to play a piece: the key signature, the time signature, the performance markings, dynamics, and articulations. He also suggests that you should be practising just on the edge of failure to get the maximum benefit. Matthew has a new project, The Practice Room, designed as a community for adult learners.

Essay - One thing at a time Multitasking is a myth. When most people attempt two complex tasks at the same time, the quality of both suffers. When I started singing with the choir, I found myself much better able to name the bass clef notes. Why? Because using my voice is automatic, so all my attention can go into note reading. If I'm at the piano, moving the right fingers on the right keys is already a complex task, leaving little room for analysing notes. The only way to deal with this is to practise so that you only need to do one complex thing at a time. For the piano, getting the correct fingers on the correct keys moves to automatic, and it's no longer part of the multitasking.

Sydney Children's Hospital Charity Ball Performance On Saturday, I was part of the choir performance for the Emerald Ball fundraiser for the Sydney Children's Hospital in the ballroom of the International Convention Centre. The choir's job was to accompany the end of a video presentation detailing the story of a young patient. We sang A Million Dreams over the montage section. After a 4:30 pm sound check and a lot of waiting around, the performance went without a hitch! I even discovered that the choir's event manager, Terry, and I had been in the same production of Oliver back in 1974.

Closing & Progress Next week, I won't be at the choir rehearsal on Thursday as I am taking a group of students to Macquarie University for a science lecture. I am continuing progress on A Mingus Among Us.

The contents of the podcast were entirely generated by David Reidy, but these show notes were created by Gemini.

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G'day, everyone! Welcome to show number ninety-seven. In this week's show, I discuss getting back to learning scales, the changing way society approaches learning music, and last week's pretty special Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert.

Progress Update I had my piano and voice lessons on Monday. Finding time to practice the piano has been a bit of a challenge lately, so progress is slow, but the singing is coming along nicely! I can now reach some notes that were previously out of my range. Our choir is more than halfway through the repertoire, and we are now doing full run-throughs of some numbers as we are only two months away from the performances.

Review - Scales I have two excellent reference books that list all the piano scales: https://amzn.to/4whjbsm https://amzn.to/48Ms6ln Instead of reviewing them, I wanted to share the approach Devi, has suggested for my practice. Playing scales straight up and down is pretty boring, so adding variety makes the repetition much more bearable. I'm focusing on C major and G major across two octaves. Aside from getting the fingering right, the main focus is on keeping a strictly even tempo and getting exactly the same loudness for each note. I'm also practising them staccato in both hands, using contrary motion, and—quite trickily—playing staccato in one hand and legato in the other.

Essay - Tradition There is a long tradition of learning and playing music, stretching back thousands of years—from the songlines of Indigenous Australians to the singing bards in Homer's Odyssey. But times and traditions are changing. I used to buy a new CD every week and chat with the staff at the local classical music shop. Today, for less than the cost of one CD, I have access to almost everything ever recorded via Apple's classical catalogue. I am curious to see what new traditions will emerge around modern music listening.

SSO Concert: The Planets Last weekend, I attended the Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert at the Opera House with Nigel Westlake's percussion concerto, When the clock strikes me, performed brilliantly by Rebecca Lagos. We also heard Charles Ives' Unanswered Question, followed by Holst's The Planets. The Holst piece was particularly interesting because it was a "Symphonic Cinema" performance. You can find out more here: https://www.sydneysymphony.com/events/symphonic-cinema-the-planets

Closing We have an extra rehearsal for a charity event next Saturday, where we will be singing A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman. I'm also hoping to check out a second-hand music score shop I found in Sydney. Contact me at david@pianofinally.show or visit www.pianofinally.show.

The contents of the podca

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You can contact me:

• via email at david@pianofinally.show; this is probably the best option
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• all the podcast directories - list
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Some of the links to books and other items mentioned in the podcast may affiliate links for Amazon or other providers. If you use one of these links, a commission may be paid to me at no additional cost to you. Thank you if you use a link.
All reviews of products, websites and services are unpaid, and no sponsorship has been received for any content on this podcast.

Welcome to show number ninety-six! In this week's show, I'll discuss money and music, and let you know about an amazing free resource I've found on YouTube. You may have noticed that the last show came out a day early, and the week before that, there wasn't an episode at all. That was because I was called out to help with the St Vincent de Paul van. Sometimes, other things just have to take priority!

In it for the money I was listening to the Music Show on the weekend, where a quote by Stephen Sondheim was mentioned. When asked what the difference between a musical and an opera is, he answered, "A musical is a way of making money and an opera is a way of spending it." This got me thinking about the influence money has on how we approach music. Comparing productions like Opera Australia's Turandot and the musical The Book of Morman, the audience experience is very similar, but the financials are not. The opera relies heavily on government funding to stay afloat, while the musical breaks box office records. Opera is marketed as elite entertainment, meaning it doesn't really have to go out and sell itself to a wider audience.

How does this affect us as piano learners? It is likely the reason why exam syllabus books almost exclusively feature classical or classical adjacent pieces. Piano learning relies heavily on hundreds of years of musical tradition instead of having to promote itself from the ground up.

Hal Leonard Choral My SATB (Sopranos, Altos, Tenors and Basses) choir encourages practising outside of sessions, but finding a proper SATB score for a song can be tough. Luckily, the music publisher Hal Leonard has six different YouTube channels where they show the score of a piece of music perfectly synced with a high-quality performance. The choral section has genre playlists containing hundreds of videos, making it very easy to follow along with the score and learn the music. It is an amazing resource! https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hal+leonardhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f37Uf5Apj9w

Progress and Closing It is going to be a busy week with voice and piano lessons, school debates, and choir rehearsals. Because of this, very little piano practice got done this week. This week I'm including Daniel McFarlaine's Titans, recorded using the Kawai NV10, with the Kontact Claire Piano emulating a Fazioli grand piano in concert mode, via Cubase 15 and a Mac Mini Pro.

Send me a text message.

You can contact me:

• via email at david@pianofinally.show; this is probably the best option
• the show website, www.pianofinally.show
• Instagram and Threads @pianofinally
• and on YouTube
• all the podcast directories - list
• here's the RSS feed

Some of the links to books and other items mentioned in the podcast may affiliate links for Amazon or other providers. If you use one of these links, a commission may be paid to me at no additional cost to you. Thank you if you use a link.
All reviews of products, websites and services are unpaid, and no sponsorship has been received for any content on this podcast.