FinishMySong Blog

I just caught 10 minutes of a programme on BBC4 lastnight called Piano: A Love Affair, about people who are passionate about learning, playing and listening to the piano. The presenter, Alexander Waugh, seemed a bit more obsessive than passionate, if I'm honest, but the part of the show I saw was a good watch - I do hope the BBC repeats the whole programme at some point.

Some of the characters that Waugh caught up with included Jools Holland, a group of 'piano holiday makers' at the Malvern Hills Piano Holiday, some students in Sheffield who some months ago could not get their piano up the garden stairs to their house so instead had it bolted down to the pavement in the street outside (much to the annoyance of the local council and some select neighbours, but also to the delight of many local and national pianists who visit the city just to play this notorious instrument), and Damon Albarn (of Blur and Gorillaz) who's passion for the instrument goes much further than its use in Western classical and rock musics.

I think my favourite part of the programme (at least, of the bit I saw of it) was when Waugh attempted to teach a beginner to play the piano in 3 half-hour lessons. Attempting to side-step some of the more literal, academic issues such as notation, Waugh instead opted to look at improvisation techniques and made some bold but often overlooked observations about the nature of the pianoforte's timbre in its various registers, noting for example that notes that are close together on the lower end of the keyboard sound 'stodgy' when played together, so the advice to his new student was to try to separate the notes she chose to play in the left hand while note clusters in the right hand (further up the keyboard) worked much better.

Interesting stuff anyway.