Piano Guidance
Piano Guidance
Photo: Jessica Lewis Creative
As 2021/2022 seasons come to an end, we reach a moment of realisation. Classical music audiences are vanishing… and they're not coming back. From talking to organisations and musicians across all levels of the industry, in person audiences are down around 30%.
Career Outlook. Like any career in the performing arts, becoming a successful Pianist takes years of hard work, dedication, persistence, and of...
Read More »
C4 Middle C (the fourth C key from left on a standard 88-key piano keyboard) is designated C4 in scientific pitch notation, and c′ in Helmholtz...
Read More »As 2021/2022 seasons come to an end, we reach a moment of realisation. Classical music audiences are vanishing… and they’re not coming back. From talking to organisations and musicians across all levels of the industry, in person audiences are down around 30%. My own experience of attending concerts certainly echoes this, with one well established classical event I went to having around 50% attendance, with one of the performances only having 38 people in the audience! Andrew Mellor has also written similar experiences that he and others have had in Classical Music magazine. This is also backed up by a recent study by WolfBrown and the League of American Orchestras that found the 26% of pre-covid concert attendees have said they’re not ready to resume live performances, and that we’re looking at 15%-20% long term non-returners. I imagine many non-returners won’t be taking the time to fill out surveys about something they’re not going to, so this figure is likely to be higher. Surely this significant drop is due to the pandemic? Sadly, this is not true. That same WolfBrown study found that less than half of non-returners cite health concerns as a reason for not returning. What is most striking though is looking at how other industries are coping in 2022 after the pandemic. Average Premier League attendance was higher in the 2021/22 season that pre-pandemic season of 2018/2019, and Glastonbury 2022 had its highest ticket sales for 15 years. Anyone who has travelled recently can testify that human behaviour is very much in a post-pandemic phase. Packed trains, buses, and planes, with no spacing and few masks… this is a very different world to 2020. The reality is that the significant and industry wide drop in classical music attendance is not due to COVID. We are now seeing the consequences of decades of systemic resistance to change, a stagnant and unevolved product, and unoriginal and out of date marketing. So, what now? For a second, we’ll take the classical music out of this. Any business that faced a 30% drop in annual sales would be in crisis. The panic button would be hit, extraordinary meetings called, the board would be demanding change. For a business in this situation there are three options available if they didn’t want to fail. Doing absolutely nothing and just repeating what has been done before isn’t an option for an organisation that wants to still exist. Can you imagine Apple suffering a 30% drop in sales and doing absolutely nothing? Or Nike? Or Manchester United? Or Amazon? Or Tesco? Or Disney? No! That would be insane, and we would think they are insane.
Musical training helps develop language and reasoning: Students who have early musical training will develop the areas of the brain related to...
Read More »
A pianist who is performing usually has both hands and sometimes both feet engaged. They also have to maintain a certain posture that restricts the...
Read More »So, what are organisations doing in the classical music industry in the face of 30% drop in audiences? Nothing… and this is insane. As I’ve already written about on this blog, orchestras not only are launching next year’s seasons in the same dull boring way as they always have, but they’re doing it the same as each other. As well as failing to capitalise on the incredible potential of digital and doubling down on outdated marketing strategies, at times they’re failing to even get the basics of social media right. There is also little evidence that the “product” of classical music has changed. I recently wrote about how we should be offering value for time and not value for money to attract young audiences, but that concept and that idea of adding value to the concert experience as a whole is vital to audiences of any age. The “regular” concert experience has been largely untouched for over 100 years, and with audiences vanishing it’s obviously not working. With the need for change screaming at us in the face, we should look at how other organisations have dealt with having to make radical changes in the face of ruin. There are plenty of examples we could look at. Marvel comics went from financial crisis to global phenomenon by switching its focus from paper comics to cinema. One of the most famous examples of a company that has repeatedly tried to reinvent itself is Nintendo. Originally a playing card company, they had some failed experiments at switching products (including instant rice, “love hotels”, and a taxi service), before becoming a toy company in the 1960s, and then a video game company in the 1970s. But in this blog, we’ll be looking at a business that has had similar struggles to classical music industry and adapted both its product and how it was marketed… Formula 1. In 2016, Formula 1 had a problem. The glamour of the last 70 years was wearing off and 2010 and 2015 Formula 1 global fan surveys had revealed significant dissatisfactions in the fan base. It was failing to attract younger audiences, the presentation of Formula 1 hadn’t changed in decades, it had failed to embrace digital, and despite several attempts Formula 1 had never managed to crack the American market. The number of people tuning in to watch fell from 600 million in 2008 to about 400 million in 2015 (a fall of about 30%... sound familiar?)
Pop songs (generally) stay in one key, are in 4/4 time, last between three and five minutes, are organized into chunks of four or eight bars, have...
Read More »
Different companies use different mechanical switches to build their keyboard, and not every switch is compatible with every type of keycap. The...
Read More »Despite being credited with the rise in popularity of Formula 1 in the 1970s, their CEO Bernie Ecclestone was now drastically out of touch with the modern world. In one interview he famously said: “I’m not interested in tweeting, Facebook and whatever this nonsense is. I’d rather get to the 70-year-old guy who’s got plenty of cash. So, there’s no point trying to reach these kids because they won’t buy any of the products here and if marketers are aiming at this audience, then maybe they should advertise with Disney.” You wouldn’t be surprised if this quote came from an orchestra in 2022. It was clear Formula 1 was not in the 21st century. Fortunately, in late 2016 it was bought out by Liberty Media who made an instant change… they changed Formula 1 from a motorsports company to a media company. Two years later, the cornerstone of this new approached launched. The Netflix series “Drive to Survive” was a whole new take on Formula 1 and an instant success, becoming one of the most watched shows on Netflix. Part docuseries, part operatic drama, it focuses on behind-the-scenes action and driver/team rivalries as much as on-track racing. In fact, only about 20% of Drive to Survive is actual racing. The presentation is totally different from what you have seen before for Formula 1 before, just have a quick look at the trailer for season 4.
MacDonald Stradivarius Viola – $45,000,000 In the number one spot for the most high-priced instrument of all time is the MacDonald Stradivarius....
Read More »
Apple cider vinegar is highly acidic, much like soft drinks and fruit juices, meaning it can directly cause erosion to tooth enamel. Erosion in...
Read More »
Flowkey uses note recognition technology as the primary way of helping students learn new music faster than traditional teaching methods. There are...
Read More »
Contrary to what you might think, in order to work as a self-employed private piano tutor you don't need to have any special qualifications. As...
Read More »
Promotion
Promotion
Promotion
Promotion