What is to be done with Debussy's Le Petit Negre? It is a good piece, but it is unusable with its current title.

There seems to be a view that 8 years old is a good age to begin piano lessons: by that age children have sufficient mental and physical capacity, etc. But is it true?

Many people struggle with sight-reading at the piano. But not all for the same reason or reasons. Here are some common problems, together with my solutions to them.

ABRSM Aural Tests assess students' listening skills by requiring discussion of a piece of music which is played to the student on the piano. In my experience, students are sometimes disadvantaged by a lack of vocabulary in discussing the music.

If your concert nerves get the better of you, take advice from the world of sports psychologists, and apply their techniques to tackling concert nerves: process goals, thought stopping, using imagery, and seeking social support.

There are too many scales in ABRSM piano exams: far more than for other instruments - and I have sat across the table from the chief examiner and told her so. Why are there just scales and arpeggios and not technical exercises, as for other instruments?

This book for beginners at the piano is a breath of fresh air. It is fun, amusing, and unlike any other beginner tutor I know of.

I recently came across a comment by Richard Egarr of the AAM, in an interview for the Cambridge Alumnus Magazine. Does anyone else do this? Ban pencils in rehearsals?

Old editions have their uses. The old Novello edition of Chopin Nocturnes has a very helpful table of the fioriture (fast florid passages) in the Chopin Nocturnes, with an interpretation by Frank Merrick of how to play them.

Does playing the piano make you brainy? Yes. It really does. On 29th September 2010, New Scientist reported recent research from several sources which explain how.

This page is a note about how I teach students how to practise. What areas they should include and what technique can help them improve pieces they are learning.

It seems to me that there are two problems with ornaments: technical and visual. The technical aspect is not just that students can't get their fingers around ornaments on the piano