The Piano Lab Blog
Featuring fresh ideas, tips and inspiration for piano teachers and students. Find older posts by category or keyword by visiting the Categories and Tags sections in the right sidebar. Welcome!
Digital Pianos Overview 2023
What’s new in the world of digital pianos in 2023? To find out, I spoke with Justin Johnson, the digital piano expert at my favorite local piano store, Portland Piano Company. What’s new with digital pianos at Portland Piano Company these days?I think the biggest news...
Performer Spotlight: Eric Shechter
This is the first of a series of interviews with working musicians. Eric Shechter is a keyboardist who gigs in Southern California. Eric, did you learn to play classical and jazz simultaneously, or classical first and jazz later (as is often the case – it was with...
News for 2023
Portland Piano Lab currently has three teachers: Doug, Ian and John. While each of us uses the essential “play, understand, create” methodology that distinguishes our creative approach from other schools, we each have our own specializations as teachers. Portland...
Taking the Lead on a Piano Lead Sheet
There are three essential aspects of music: rhythm, melody and harmony. A lead sheet is a form of music notation showing a bare bones representation of these three essential aspects: Rhythm or feel is the beat of the song – that feeling that you dance to – and is...
Sight-Reading Strategies That Really Work (and Some That Don’t)
How can piano students radically improve their sight-reading skills? Find out in this enlightening discussion with sight-reading specialist Manu, a piano and violin teacher in Australia, and founder of Piano Sight-Reading. What is Piano Sight-Reading, and how can it...
Recreational Music Making
In this enlightening guest post, Megan Desmarais, a piano teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, discusses her experience as a teacher of recreational music making for both children and adults. Thank you, Megan! I run a large in-home piano studio with 2 unique twists: Most of my...
Homage
Today’s brief post is an homage to Chick Corea, one of the great jazz pianists, who passed away in 2021. I was fortunate to catch Chick’s concert with the Oregon Symphony about a year before his death. Still spry in his late 70s, wearing tennis shoes, and refreshingly...
A Preliminary Approach to Polyphonic Sight Reading
In this guest post by Juan Jose Rezzuto, you’ll learn basic strategies for sight reading, or what I prefer to call "sight playing," since that is actually what we are doing – playing at first sight! When we face the challenges of reading music composed for a...
The Magic of Slow Practice
Ruth Slenczynska, 97 years young as I type this sentence, is the last living student of Sergei Rachmaninoff (above), one of the great pianists of the 20th century. She tells the story of arriving for a lesson with Rachmaninoff, standing outside his door, and hearing...
The Digital Dynamic Dilemma (or “Don’t Pump Up the Volume”)
Practice on a digital piano? In this post you’ll learn how to set your instrument’s volume in order to optimize your keyboard technique. To become a GPP (“Good Piano Player”), developing the ability to consistently play a gradation of dynamics (volume) is vital. On...