The Body - Wiser than the Mind?

Gesture in a Piano Lesson

Resources & links Click here for links to open domain scores for the work featured in this video. Warm-Ups Revisited - Click here to view William Westney's two-part video lecture demonstrating an effortless process that takes only a few minutes to ensure successful daily practice. Practising for Long-Term Results - Click here to view a video by William Westney in which he shares a remarkably easy technique for mind and body to truly “digest” (and...

Sign in to view if you have purchased access to this content or see purchase options below.

Purchase options

This content is available as a separate, once-off purchase or as part of a subscription. Click "Buy" to purchase it or on "Subscribe" to get access to this content in addition to our growing library of over 300 articles for as little as £13.99 per month or £119.99 per year.

£25.00Buy More info Subscribe Back

PREV

Using Gesture to Express and Understand

View next...

Read Ahead - Level 1

Read Ahead is an exciting new program that helps piano students to improve their sight-reading ability. This unique curriculum is based on an extensive collection of carefully ordered compositions with related exercises and quizzes that help students develop the mental and tactile skills necessary for fluent sight-reading. This section features Level... Read >>

ReadAhead Practising

Read Ahead - Level 4

Read Ahead is an exciting program that helps piano students to improve their sight-reading ability. This unique curriculum is based on an extensive collection of carefully ordered compositions with related exercises and quizzes that help students develop the mental and tactile skills necessary for fluent sight-reading. This section features Level 4... Read >>

ReadAhead Practising

Advanced Sight-Reading Curriculum - Part 2

<h3> <a href="/content/pages/144-advanced-sight-reading-curriculum-part-2?bundle_url=online-academy&amp;last_viewed=true">Flexibility</a></h3>

To give an interpretation of a piece we have never seen before requires flexibility and demands a willingness to accept wrong notes, technical stumbles, and botched details, in the greater interest of maintaining rhythmic cohesion, following the broad outlines of the score. The second part of our Advanced Sight-Reading Curriculum... Read >>

Ken Johansen Practising

Advanced Sight-Reading Curriculum - Part 1

<h3> <a href="/content/pages/132-advanced-sight-reading-curriculum-part-1?bundle_url=online-academy&amp;last_viewed=true">Eye Training</a></h3>

Sight-reading begins with sight. Before the inner ear can begin to imagine the sound of a score, before the mind can start to decode the patterns it detects, and before the body can translate these sounds and patterns into physical gestures that transform written notes into music, the eyes must... Read >>

Ken Johansen Practising

Advanced Sight-Reading Curriculum - Part 3

<h3> <a href="/content/pages/184-advanced-sight-reading-curriculum-part-3?bundle_url=online-academy&amp;last_viewed=true">Playing by Ear</a></h3>

Although playing by ear might seem to be the opposite of sight-reading, we read with our ears as much as with our eyes. The inner ear helps us to navigate a new score, predict what is coming and improvise when the eyes haven’t had enough time to absorb everything. The... Read >>

Ken Johansen Practising

Music at Sight

Sight reading is a skill you can develop, but you have to know how. This introductory course teaches the five skills you need to become an excellent sight-reader!... Read >>

Lona Kozik Practising

Separate Practice

Learning a complex piece each hand alone before putting the hands together is a strategy favoured by the majority of piano teachers. While it is of course possible to practise a fugue hands separately, this misses the point. Rather than working hands separately, I advocate strands separately (playing each line... Read >>

Graham Fitch Practising

The Practice Tools Lecture Series

Without an understanding how to approach practising the piano, day-to-day practice can often be unfocussed and unproductive. In this series of video lectures, I identify and explore various practice tools that will help pianists of any level get the most out of their time spent practising.... Read >>

Graham Fitch Practising

Teaching & Developing Sight-Reading Skills

Sight-reading an interesting piece of music is like meeting an interesting person. We enjoy the pleasure of a new encounter, sense perhaps a mutual affinity, and look forward to a deeper acquaintance. This series of articles provides exercises and music aimed at developing confidence in playing at sight and enhancing... Read >>

ReadAhead Practising

Read Ahead - Level 3

<h3> <a href="/content/pages/27-read-ahead-level-3?bundle_url=online-academy&amp;last_viewed=true">Sightreading for the Modern Musician</a></h3>

Read Ahead is an exciting new program that helps piano students to improve their sight-reading ability. This unique curriculum is based on an extensive collection of carefully ordered compositions with related exercises and quizzes that help students develop the mental and tactile skills necessary for fluent sight-reading. This section features Level... Read >>

ReadAhead Practising

An Overview of the Practice Tools

This series of articles serves as an introduction to Graham Fitch’s practice tools, including how to approach a new piece and the Three Ss.... Read >>

Graham Fitch Practising

Mastering Polyrhythms

A polyrhythm (sometimes referred to as a cross rhythm) is the effect produced when two conflicting rhythms are played together and can prove very challenging indeed! This series of articles will help you tackle them in various ratios, starting with the simplest: two-against-three (2:3) or three-against-two (3:2).... Read >>

Graham Fitch Practising

Skeleton Practice

This series of articles will describe how to deconstruct a score and use skeleton practice by way of a number of examples. New articles and examples will be added on an ongoing basis therefore please do watch this space!... Read >>

Graham Fitch Practising

Advanced Sight-Reading Curriculum - Part 4

<h3> <a href="/content/pages/174-advanced-sight-reading-curriculum-part-4?bundle_url=online-academy&amp;last_viewed=true">Rhythm</a></h3>

Rhythm is perhaps the most important element in sight-reading and is the subject of the fourth (next) part of our Advanced Sight-Reading Curriculum. Using simple, effective practice methods and carefully-selected pieces with annotations and guidelines, we work on keeping a regular pulse while tackling challenges such as recognising underlying rhythmic... Read >>

Ken Johansen Practising

Quarantine-Spots

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If you have spots in your pieces that regularly break down you’re going to need to identify them and isolate these sections so you can do some quality, systematic practice on them. This process I call quarantining, and each extract... Read >>

Graham Fitch Practising

Read Ahead - Level 2

<h3> <a href="/content/pages/41-read-ahead-level-2?bundle_url=online-academy&amp;last_viewed=true">Sightreading for the Modern Musician</a></h3>

Read Ahead is an exciting new program that helps piano students to improve their sight-reading ability. This unique curriculum is based on an extensive collection of carefully ordered compositions with related exercises and quizzes that help students develop the mental and tactile skills necessary for fluent sight-reading. This section features Level... Read >>

ReadAhead Practising

Advanced Sight-Reading Curriculum

The Advanced Sight-Reading Curriculum is derived from nearly twenty years of experience teaching the freshman sight-reading class for piano majors at the Peabody Conservatory. It consists of an extensive collection of annotated scores dealing with every aspect of sight-reading, together with detailed suggestions on how to practice. It covers everything... Read >>

Ken Johansen Practising

Making Friends With the Notes

<h3> <a href="/content/pages/240-making-friends-with-the-notes?bundle_url=online-academy&amp;last_viewed=true">A Two-Stage Practice Process</a></h3>

William Westney presents a common-sense practising approach for achieving an underlying feeling of physical comfort and security at the piano. This powerful, proven strategy is easy to implement and frees us to play ANY piece of music freely, expressively and spontaneously. It can also lead to technical breakthroughs by thoroughly... Read >>

William Westney Practising

Practising for Long-Term Results

In this video, William Westney demonstrates a remarkably easy technique for mind and body to truly “digest” (and remember) what we’ve practised.... Read >>

William Westney Practising

Warm-Ups Revisited

<h3> <a href="/content/pages/164-warm-ups-revisited?bundle_url=online-academy&amp;last_viewed=true">A Body / Mind Approach</a></h3>

In this two-part video lecture, William Westney re-thinks warm-ups and demonstrates an effortless process that takes only a few minutes to ensure successful daily practice.... Read >>

William Westney Practising

Luxuriant Piano Playing

<h3> <a href="/content/pages/178-luxuriant-piano-playing?bundle_url=online-academy&amp;last_viewed=true">A Wellness Philosophy and Practice</a></h3>

In these excerpts from his presentation at NCKP 2021, William Westney shows that whether we are concert performers or beginners, we can all luxuriate in free-flowing, generous, comfortable, unfettered, and unforced movements that “feel great” at the piano.... Read >>

William Westney Practising

Slow Practice

If you’re serious about playing the piano, there’s no getting away from slow practice. It is a cornerstone of our work from the beginner stages right through to the advanced level, and a practice tool also used by professional pianists and seasoned virtuosos all the time. In this section, ... Read >>

Graham Fitch Practising