Mizue's Blog

If you get backache after playing or practicing the piano for a while, you may be sitting improperly. You are probably holding your upper body mostly by your lower back muscle. So, I recommend doing these things: 

• Sit at the front edge of the piano bench, not in the middle or back. If you sit in the middle or back of the bench, you end up using your lower back muscle to control the balance all the time. If you sit...

Often I see a lot of piano students (or music students of any instrument) play a piece from the beginning through the end at home and think they are "practicing" the piano. But that's not a "practice." That's just that you played the music piece or song. Whether you played it once or many times, it's still just "playing." If you want to "practice," you need to do these things:

• Identify what spots are challenging in the piece.
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I usually write my blogs to piano beginners, teachers, and regular practitioners. But today, I want to write this blog to arrangers and composers who are considering putting their works out to the public. I've received several interesting questions from some arrangers and composers such as: 

• I want to sell my music, but how can I do it? 
• I want to sell my music. Should I give my works to big online retailers (such as musicnotes) so that they can take care...

Today, I would like to talk about how to play octaves more comfortably, especially if you have small hands. If you have big hands and still want to reach wider intervals comfortably, you can also benefit from this blog.

Some classical musicians who were also great composers in the past cut their finger webbings. Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Frederic Chopin, Robert Schumann, and Niccolo Paganini did that. And I've heard that some serious concert pianists still do that. But I'm guessing and hoping that there are only a...

I constantly hear from people who are trying to learn how to play the piano online for free:

• "I'm not improving from free online videos."
• "The keys (on the virtual keyboard) are moving too fast."
• "I don't know what they are talking about."
• "I've learned this song on the virtual keyboard on YouTube. But I forget all in a few days." 

Yes, I hear you all. First of all, learning how to play piano from a teacher in...