Trinity College London Grade 8 Piano Syllabus 2023

Recently, at the end of September, Trinity launched its new piano syllabus. The core difference between the ABRSM and Trinity piano grades is that Triniy has some transcriptions of pop songs, video game, Anime themes that will appeal to the young learner. In the Grade 8 syllabus, this includes Here Hampstead Piano youtube channel has performed the core Grade 8 pieces with music notation you can follow. You can do performance digital submissions or 3 pieces + technical exercises and scales, all on a digital submission. The scale requirement is less than the full ABRSM requirement. Technical exercises are equivalent of 3 short etudes that will demonstrate your technical abilities and musicianship. The Heart Asks Pleasure First is from the 1993 motion picture film. It's one of my favourites. Dragon Ball Z, the anime series also has a piece featured too. 0:00 Etude no. 104 in G# minor (Montgeroult) 3:16 Scherzo (3rd movt from Sonata in A, D 959) (Schubert) 7:27 Erinnerung, op. 24 (Pejačević) 10:35 Valse, op. 64 no. 1 (Chopin) 12:50 Invention 1 (from Four Inventions) (Fitzgerald) 13:45 Investigations (Li) 16:31 A New Adventure (Choi) 19:14 Cha-La Head-Cha-La (from Dragon Ball Z) (Mori and Kiyooka, arr. Human) 20:47 The Heart Asks Pleasure First (from The Piano) (Nyman) 23:25 Hoe-down (Colley) 25:38 Vignette (Edis) 29:04 Armando’s Rhumba (Corea, arr. Wilson) Here's Sim's piano performing with view of the hands moving. If you enjoyed this blog post and want more blog posts to continue, smash that buy me a coffee link to encourage me!

Yamaha P-525 the digital piano flagship replacement to P-515

This month, Yamaha has announced the P-525, the replacement to the now 3 year old P-515 top of the line p range digital piano. Here's an introductory video highlighting the recent features. There seems to be a rhythm function as well so you can play along to drum beats. I don't recall this feature on the P-515, so it's probably likely to align their p series pianos to Roland's popular FP piano series which have rhythms. 

 

Here's a longer demonstration with the main voices 

Keyboard studio has also done a longer demo with the voices in action.

ABRSM Grade 1 and 2 C Major Contrary Motion Scales Tutorials

This blog will highlight two tutorial videos to help you from scratch become competent in the Grade 1&2 C Major Contrary Motion Scales. The main difference is that at Grade 1 - it is one octave, whilst at grade 2, it'll be two octaves. Grade 1 Tutorial on C Major Contrary Motion Scale Grade 2 Tutorial on C Major Contrary Motion Scale

Legend actor and pianist Christopher Plummer 1929-2021

Christopher Plummer, who played Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, was overdubbed in his singing rendition of Edewlweiss in the film.

Picture above of Plummer, playing piano at the Bristol Hotel, in Salzburg after shooting the Sound of Music Plummer was a talented pianist and was studying to be a concert pianist before turning to acting in his youth. Here's Plummer playing the piano (Rachmaninov) in between shooting the film Elsa and Fred in 2014. He's also playing some Mendelssohn here 1 minute in.

Wellerman - Sea Shanty Piano Tutorial for complete beginners

Hi folks, in case you've noticed, there's a Sea Shanty craze going on that started on TikTok. Check out the following mashup which has had over 3 million views! Ok so if you want to learn how to play please follow this tutorial, it's designed for complete beginning pianists.