The other day I was thrilled to come across the concept of 'friction-maxxing'. 'Friction-maxxing' is a term recently invented to describe the conscious attempt to balance the high-tech smoothness of your life with other activities requiring old-school effort and...
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As a member of the Society of Authors in the UK, I was recently sent information about a new scheme - developed with the Authors' Guild in the US - which allows 'authors to register their books and download a ‘Human Authored’ logo to display on the back cover of...
We're having the windows of the piano room double glazed this week. For safety, the piano has been closed up, wrapped in blankets and swathed in plastic sheeting. To give the workmen more space to bring things in and out of the door (perilously near the end of the...
I've been watching some of the Winter Olympics on TV and marvelling at the way that the top competitors all seem to achieve times which are within a fraction of a second of one another's. Time and again the commentators point out that the winning margin is...
This morning I listened to a pleasing report on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, about a neuro-scientific experiment to observe a pianist's brain activity while he played the piano. The leader of the 'Glass Brain' study commented that playing the piano is one of the...
I learned something the other day when visiting the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow. In one of the rooms, there was an explanatory sign (see photo) about the word 'canon', meaning a collection of works recognised as being of enduring value and importance. I had never...
They were talking on the radio about the good things that reading can do for your brain. Reading a book, that is, as opposed to scrolling through social media. When you read, you read one word at a time. Your brain tries to guess the next word. the interaction between...
I've finished reading several novels I received as Christmas presents. All were enjoyable, but at least two of them seemed to run out of steam before the end. I won't say which they were, because it doesn't seem fair to books which were very well written overall, but...
At last, Seville oranges have appeared in the shops, which means it is time for marmalade making. Bob is the marmalade maker around here. Each January he tries to make enough Seville marmalade to last us through the year. You can make marmalade from other kinds of...
Historian Tom Holland was guest-editing the 'Today' programme on BBC Radio 4 recently. He spoke about his experience of AI 'hallucinations', that now increasingly well-known phenomenon whereby Artifical Intelligence makes up information in response to a question. Tom...
I woke up in total darkness early this morning and for a few moments thought I was back in my house in London. In the darkness I thought the wardrobe was on my right and the windows straight ahead at the end of the bed, as they were in London. I realised fairly...
Today's blog post is on quite a niche subject. When I was writing a short biography of pianist Sophie Menter (1846-1912) for Women and the Piano, I mentioned some of the extravagant things her fans used to do to show their adoration. When she played in Copenhagen in...
When I was playing in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago, I had an interesting conversation with a student there. (Birmingham University is rightly protective of its students' identities, so I won't name her.) She was studying aspects of the history of women playing...
I was at Steinway Hall in London the other day to try some pianos for a recording project later this year (of which more news soon). Chief technician Ulrich Gerharz had helped me - after discussing the repertoire and the venue - to whittle the choice down to two...
I was lying awake in the night, with music playing in my head as it usually does when I'm awake in the wee small hours. Sometimes I set the music going consciously, as for example when I'm 'practising' something I'm currently trying to learn or memorise. At other...