Hi everyone! Despite being on holiday right now, I went back to Oxford over the past few days to get some coursework done. It was a pretty intense few days, so I'm quite behind on my admin! My apologies if this has affected you in any way. Just so you're aware, my exams will probably start around mid-May and will hopefully finish by early June. There may be one or two weeks without lessons for those of you who are having them. Honestly, I'm quite looking forward to the exams, or more specifically, the period after their completion! Just wanted to keep everyone updated. Thanks for your patience!

Benedict suggested I posted my practice notes... just finished a practice and here are my notes for the last few days

Ben has got me to practice this technique. As I understand it you pick a particular measure in a piece that you are having trouble playing. For 5 minutes you just keep repeating the piece non stop. I think after 5 mins you then go down to 4 then 3 and finally 2. I take the last note from the previous measure play the challenging measure and finish on the first note of the following measure. Hopefully Ben will read this and correct any false assumptions/errors I have made.

Wondering how to use your progress dashboard (notes page) for practice? This lesson clip shows how one is put together in real time. If you have any questions, drop them below. Do you use your progress dashboard? Is it useful?

Hi everyone! I was having a really interesting discussion with @Seamus McQuaid the other day; is anyone familiar with Carnival of the Animals (Camille Saint-Saëns)? One of the movements, hilariously, is called "Pianists". I've attached it to this post. @Lucia Viola, you were looking for finger exercises (always a good plan)--how do you like this? Oh, and this work has The Swan, of course--a very, very well known piece of music! When I was probably about 4 years old, I used to dance to the fossils theme, which, interestingly enough, uses the same theme as in La Danse Macabre. Perhaps that was Saint-Saëns' "Bones" theme? Have you come across this piece before? What do you think of it?