u/Prudent_Tap4903

Hi guys,

I'm torn about whether to take private piano lessons and wanted to hear people’s opinions. I am UK-based, unsure whether I would prefer in person or online lessons.

I graduated from a pre-university music school in Russia about 10 years ago, after which I have practically not touched an instrument (classic trope if you’ve been traumatised by the Slavic teaching style since 4yo). My graduation programme was approximately grade 8 level.

I’m ready to get back to playing, and there are a couple of things I really want to patch up.

1. I’m absolutely horrible at sight-reading, to the point that everything I play needs to be learned by heart first, and it takes AGES, so the motivation to finish the piece is vanishing pretty fast. My piano teacher deliberately chose not to focus on sight-reading so we could pay more attention to my technique and style, which backfired terribly. I really want to get to the point of quicker read-through, so the fun of playing things I enjoy keeps me going and pushing to learn more. I’m relatively decent at sight singing.
2. Music theory is a non-existent category in my brain as of now, so I would really love to get the basics back so it would be easier to sight-read, but also improvise/arrange easier pieces to my liking.
3. I am not sure how viable this is, but ideally I don’t want to start with super easy repertoire because even though it's been terribly long, I still have quite good agility and intonation based on the only piece I can play right now being my graduation etude😂 Dreaming of teaching myself Rach, Debussy, Boulanger and other impressionists/romantics.

I would really appreciate any advice, especially from people with a similar background who got back to playing consistently and with joy. I terribly miss the butterflies you get when playing a passage that cracks your heart open!

Thank you!

Hi all,

Ordered myself a tester of Le Labo’s The Noir 29, and couldn’t stop thinking that its dry-out is reminding me of something I already have.

Turns out it is INCREDIBLY similar to Jo Malone’s Assam & Grapefruit. It’s a bit more pungent and harsh compared to The Noir, but overall has the same temperature and notes! A&G is currently discontinued but you can still find bottles on eBay for half the price of Le Labo, so just wanted to share!

Peace and respect to all the tea and greenery lovers🍵

Hello fellow warriors,

5 months of a biomed PhD left, nothing is written + I’m painfully burnt out and have no job lined up ahead (and visa concerns too). It's obviously time to sit down and grind the pages. Still, tragically, I'm also bound to ongoing lab experiments and can't “afford” to lock myself in and stare into the abyss of the monitor. The experiments I'm doing are also quite important because I couldn't run them earlier in my PhD due to external circumstances, and they are basically my last hope of producing meaningful data (doesn't help the anxiety).

Can you please share how you've survived the last half a year without spiralling down into psychosis and sleeping at least a little? How did you squeeze any meaningful words out of your burnt out, sad brain?

Current things I'm testing/using are going on runs, antidepressants + therapy, trying to calculate how many hours per week I should be writing and scheduling experiments around that, bribing myself with seeing friends/shopping/pastries, getting a proper home setup with a monitor, etc.

Would very much appreciate all the hinged/unhinged and healthy/unhealthy advice — let all our vivas be smooth, and word count hit!