David Connors

Here are my notes on time spent on grade four. I’ve got a fair amount of detail written up in my post “How much should you study for piano grade exams?” and you might want to check that out if you’re after general advice. That post into the Trinity TQT numbers and whether or not… Read more: Grade 4

Here’s another piece of transcription homework. This is the drum part for You Get What You Give by New Radicals. This is my second homework transcription and once again I can’t describe how beneficial transcription of drum parts is as an exercise. The score is on MuseScore: You Get What You Give Source video for… Read more: Transcription: You Get What You Give

I took up the drums in January this year. I need to do a post on the difference between the two instruments – the drums are simultaneously a lot easier and a lot harder than the piano at the same time. Learning both instruments at the same time is a really interesting experience and there… Read more: Transcription: Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?

I set about to learn the piano on a whim on the 4th of April 2020, just over 1,000 days ago. I’m writing this post as a recap of what I’ve done in the past 1,000 days and also as a bit of a goal setting exercise for 2023. I am more accountable to myself… Read more: Reflecting on 1,000 days of learning the piano

Over the past two and a half years of learning the piano I have done three classical piano performance grades with Trinity and I’m nearly half way through the studies for my fourth.  I have really good notes on how much time I spent at the piano and so I thought I would write down… Read more: How much should you study for piano grade exams?

I am a stickler for using correct typography when writing. When I write a key with an accidental I normally go to Google and search for unicode sharp symbol then cut and paste that into my document. This morning, I was wondering if there is a generic search and replacement feature in iPadOS, iOS and… Read more: Correct ♯ and ♭ key symbols on Apple devices

I made these reference sheets in January 2021 when I was on a big scales binge. The images in the sheets came from pianoscales.org. What I was after was a single A4 sheet per type of scale that listed each of the scales, and the left and right hand fingerings. I still refer back this… Read more: Piano scales and fingering reference sheets

A Waltz Study in F minor is a short waltz I put together over the course of just under two hours last Sunday (9 Oct 2022) afternoon.  You can download the score as a PDF: Alternatively the MCSZ is available on MuseScore if you want to edit it: A Waltz Study in F minor. In… Read more: A waltz study in F minor

Background Conventional wisdom for the best way to practice sight reading is to just find material and keep reading. I said as much in my last post on the topic. The challenge as a beginner is that it is difficult to identify pieces of music that are at your level. You need pieces that will… Read more: My war on sight reading – Part 2

Sight reading is the broccoli of music study. Everyone knows it is good for you. No one wants it. My sight reading was (still is) lagging the rest of my musical development (except Aural – which is even worse) and I set about to fix that over the period of 6 months and I’m part… Read more: My war on sight reading – Part 1