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Don’t get board!
There are many music exam boards for graded exams from near-beginner to advanced student. Two of the best known are Trinity College London and ABRSM. The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (now known simply as ABRSM) was founded in 1889. As a “board”, it was made up of the Royal Academy of…
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Dailyish Skills
This week’s Humoresque contains inspiration from two people with terrific insight. One is Seth Godin, whom I’ve mentioned before. He blogs every day, and many of his short tips really make me think. The other is Oliver Burkeman. Burkeman is a British journalist. His best-known book is Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Godin…
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Rocking The Recorder
Following yesterday’s Humoresque, in which my pupil Peter spoke enthusiastically about playing the recorder, this was brought to my attention: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002fvkx?fbclid=IwY2xjawLld-BleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFLWWczSWtnc2pycVdiejFkAR6Naz3O2uioHxWfA5zzuxpnIIofX3-dz1CvHm4QuGB0kI6-4bbXRkUANLUYIw_aem_M7M7rUKH0CyJGMGikDNYlA If any of you shudder at the memory of playing the recorder at school, or your children having done so, I urge you to listen to the recording of this programme, available on BBC…
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Work or Leisure? But Always Pleasure! (Well, nearly always…)
Last week I had an interesting conversation with Peter, one of my adult pupils. I have quite a few adults learning to play the piano, both gentlemen and ladies. Some of them learnt as children, but “gave up” and have re-started. Others never had the opportunity or the inclination before, but have begun learning to…
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Music for Cats
In a News post on 6th April, I announced my new blog, to be called “Humoresque”, and I promised you pictures of my cat. Three months later, I shall finally deliver on that promise! His name is Carly, and as you can see he’s quite a big cat. Carly has been brought up with music.…
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Learning versus Education
Have you heard of Seth Godin? He’s an American author and entrepreneur who specialises in marketing strategies. Godin has written books and articles on marketing strategy, and he writes a daily blog, which goes out free to his thousands of subscribers. Some of Godin’s blog posts are longish, but many are very short. I was…
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Did you get the message?
Not the messages that ping into your phone, nor the ones people leave on your voicemail, but…. …the messages you send to yourself. You’re about to perform at the Showcase. Or you’ve turned up at a particular venue to take your music exam. Or you’ve got guests in your house, and they’re all urging you…
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À La Mode
Remember to “View The Post” to get all the graphics! According to the Chambers Thesaurus, “À la mode” can be used to mean “elegant”, “fashionable”, “smart”, “stylish” or “sophisticated”. That’s all of us, right? In music, a mode is a type of scale. Did you know that the word “scale” comes from the Italian word…
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The London Eye
Before we get on board the London Eye, I want to point out that if you only read these articles in the email text, you miss some of the graphics. I didn’t realise this until a couple of weeks ago, and forgot to mention it in “How Many Ps?” last week. Please always click on…
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How many Ps?
Many of you will know that I like to differentiate between the three Ps of playing music (on any instrument). But in case you’ve forgotten them (surely not!) here they are: P is for Practice (= Progress) P is for Playing (= Pleasure) P is for Performance (= Plaudits) Look! Our three Ps just turned…