Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
🎹 🦶Have you been taught pedaling wrong?
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When I was 10, I was learning the Haydn D Major Concerto. I was already taking my piano lessons very seriously. They were the highlight of my week. During one lesson with Mrs. Moore, we worked on nothing but pedaling in the Haydn. That was it. When my mom picked me up and asked "how was your lesson?" I answered with a smile and a sense of pride: “Great. The only thing we worked on was pedal.” At the time, I thought that meant I was ahead. That my playing was so solid that we could focus on something “extra.” It took me years to realize that was not a compliment. It was a clue to something I didn't understand yet. What it actually revealed was that I wasn’t really listening. 🤦♀️ Back then, I didn’t know: This is exactly what I’m building a workshop around. It’s called 50 Shades of the Damper Pedal. More soon. |
Lisa Spector, Piano Ninja
Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
I thought my competition days had ended more than 30 years ago. Apparently not. 🤷♀️ There are very few international piano competitions with no age limit. I only know of three.I've been recording for one of them this past week. I love the preparation. What I didn't love was what happened last week. The maximum submission length was 15 minutes, which isn't much time to make an impression. My plan was to submit Brahms's left-hand arrangement of the Bach Chaconne. It's an extraordinary piece,...
I started this weekly newsletter 6 months ago and have been searching for the right name for it, followed by a logo. And here it is, sitting at the top of your email. PRACTICE NOTESunfiltered. It didn’t go perfectly. I knew when I landed on the name (after 48 iterations) but I originally started with a completely different design direction. It just wasn’t landing. So I scrapped it and went somewhere entirely different before arriving at the logo you see now. And as soon as I had it, I knew....
Your score tells you when to pedal down and when to release. You know what it doesn't tell you? How slow or fast to pedal. 🐢 🏃♀️ That gap is where most of your pedaling decisions are happening on autopilot and you don't even know it. In this YouTube short from the recent 50 Shades of the Damper Pedal workshop, I'm playing 24 seconds of Debussy Reflets dans l'eau. I'm describing what to watch and listen for. Watch my foot. You'll notice it doesn't always move at the same speed. Sometimes fast....