Welcome to Joe’s streaming lessons. Once a month, Joe will be live streaming a piano lesson so that you can join in. Subscribe to Joe’s Piano Lessons on Youtube to stay in the loop.
Welcome to the
Piano Project!
A platform for the teaching and ideas of pianist, teacher, and composer, Joe Bloom.
The map to a deeper connection in your musical life.
Joe's Live!
Music is more than entertainment, it carries the performer and listener beyond the structures of time, and classical music immerses us in the genius of some of humanity’s greatest minds, and makes them part of our own experience.
“A truly cultured and sensitive artist” – Henryk Szeryng (violin virtuoso)
“Joe has taught music theory and piano to my daughter since she was eight-years old. With great skill, infinite patience, and generous emotional support, Joe has developed the skills of a reticent beginner into that of a blossoming Musician.”
Who It’s For
Professional Pianists and Musicians • Teachers • Students of any Level
How It Benefits You
- Overcome obstacles to your playing.
- Receive step-by step-procedures of getting from an idea to a detailed end result.
- Gain an understanding of the body’s role in performing.
- Hear what you’re producing and what’s really happening in the music.
- Learn to evoke, sublimate, and control emotions for optimum performance.
How To Use The Site
- Explore the Video Collection to eavesdrop on lessons in which real students work on real issues in real time.
- Check out Joe’s Blog to get more insight on specific issues, ranging from body tension to Joe’s insights on the best recorded performances.
About Joe
Joe Bloom embodies a unique understanding of the deepest traditions of Western Classical Music. His background, his own pianistic gifts, and a lifetime of teaching, performing, and accumulating tens of thousands of pages of notes on piano technique and musicality has made Joe a true virtuoso as a pianist and teacher.
“His ability to get results with students at all levels is truly amazing; he is universally loved” (Norman Derby, Dean, Bennington College)
“His breadth and depth of music and performance skills is phenomenal. His patient persistence brings out the best in us – gives us confidence where there may be too little, and stretches our limits. He never settles for less when he knows he can get more, doing it gently and with kindness.” (Dr. Margaret Harrington)
Latest From the Blog
Joe Bloom
The entire body rings like a bell.
September 13,2020
We are faced with a division in the body: the core of the body, which remains largely whole unto itself and moves as a coherent whole. and the body extremities, particularly the arms and the hands which are constantly making motions that are externally dictated by having to adapt and conform to the horizontal expanse of the keyboard which expands logarithmically from the center.
The most effective piano playing results when this division is done away with, by establishing motions in the torso that conform in spirit to the motions of the arms and hands, and actually serve to reinforce the latter. As the large bell in a Zen monastery is perfected so that its entire body contributes to the sound that therefore emerges from the entire bell.
Read MoreTwelve ways of simplifying a passage physically.
September 09,2020
These ways all involve altering, in some specific way, the sequence of notes played in the passage; as through omission, magnification, or distortion. Once the distortion is brought back into focus we have a new understanding of what that part’s function is within the whole phrase. There is always something special about witnessing something in the process of coming into focus, that is taken more for granted when it begins already being in focus.
1. Simplifying physically by purposefully changing the loudness of certain notes. 2. Simplifying physically by changing the rhythm of the notes. 3. Simplifying physically: by leaving notes out and compensating by for the lost duration by holding other notes longer 4. Simplifying physically by omitting certain notes and thus revealing new connections between less proximate notes. 5. Simplifying physically isolating certain notes of a phrase and giving those notes a new and different expressive contour, thus revealing musical potential in a phrase hitherto overlooked. 6. Simplifying physically by transposing the octave range of certain notes and thereby removing large skips and jumps between notes in a phrase and modelling the cohesiveness inherent in the phrase. 7. Simplifying physically by holding down one note of a phrase while continuing on to play several of the upcoming notes: in order to homogenize and create greater unity to the sound of the phrase. 8. Simplifying physically by repeating some or all of the notes in the phrase so they sound twice or more in a row. Like a sculptor bringing out a three dimensional curve. Or doing the same to feel like one has more than an ephemeral moment to perfect how a note sounds. 9. Simplifying physically by placing a fermata on a certain note in order to suddenly increase appreciation of how that note functions in the phrase. 10. Simplifying physically by placing a fermat on the note that comes just before a note that is hard to reach or articulate. 11. Simplifying physically by eliminating the rhythm and playing each note with the same duration as every other note. 12. Simplifying physcially by first making it even more difficult, and then experiencing the relative ease when returning to the original degree of difficulty
Read MoreThe beginning is wherever we choose it to be.
September 08,2020
When a certain note in a passage gives you difficulty, start the passage with the problem note, as if there were no preceding notes eventuating into it*. So often it is the sequence of events and their context which creates the apparent difficulty. Taken out of context the problem note is seen as being just a note, like any other on the keyboard, played with one of the ten “usual” fingers.
* In computer program it is like putting in a “breakpoint”*. (From Google Chrome). In software development, a breakpoint is an intentional stopping or pausing place in a program, put in place for debugging purposes. It is also sometimes simply referred to as a pause. More generally, a breakpoint is a means of acquiring knowledge about a program during its execution.
Read More