Welcome to Piano Blocks!

Years ago, I had a blog. I enjoyed writing. It helped me process my thoughts and others seemed to find it an interest read. But life takes its turns and the blog stopped about a decade ago while I busied myself with other things:

A couple of years ago, I decided to start putting thoughts and materials back online. I keep a notebook when I’m teaching and practicing, and it felt like I had enough material to restart the blog.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t decide on a format. I briefly considered a YouTube channel (and I do have one!), but that didn’t feel quite right for what I wanted to do. I also considered a podcast, but there are already plenty of excellent podcasts in the world, so that didn’t feel right, either.

I also looked into a traditional email newsletter (some of you are receiving this because you subscribed to that), but I wanted for things to be available to anyone, not just subscribers, and people have become wary of subscribing to lists for fear of constant marketing.

Over the past few months, I’ve discovered substack. I subscribe to several and really like the format. It’s both an email newsletter and a blog at the same time. Much of what I’ll put here will be free, but I’ll also have some original music and editions of standard repertoire to offer to paid subscribers.

And that brings me to the name - Piano Blocks. I’ve always been a life-long student. I like reading about things, attending conferences, and talking to people about all sorts of different things. But I’ve never learned in a linear fashion, and I think there are a lot of other people like me who would rather do a deep(ish) dive on a random topic every now and then, then set it on a shelf somewhere in my head. Maybe I’ll revisit it, maybe it’ll just sit there. But I like collecting these “blocks” of ideas, whether I end up building something with them or not.

I intend this Substack to be the internet home for those blocks. The first block is ready to go. It’s about historical piano methods. I have another written about portato notation. There’s a draft of a prelude I wrote along with thoughts on the compositional process. At some point, I’ll probably talk about the business of piano teaching, and music teacher organizations, and the wonderful things many of my friends do. I don’t know exactly what the next month will bring, but the world of music teaching is certainly an interesting one, so I’m sure there will always be plenty to talk about. Consider subscribing to receive updates, but if you’d rather not, you can bookmark the site or get here from my website at www.jasonsifford.com

Thanks for reading, and happy teaching!