Music Videos by Lawrence Estrey

Most of the time, I blog about creative writing or black and white photography, but I’m also a professional musician, a classical pianist.  I got my main music degree from Dartington College of Arts in Totnes, Devon, and did piano performance studies in London.  As you will probably guess from the link, I prefer romantic composers like Chopin to classical, although I’ve performed the major Beethoven piano sonata.

Check out my videos on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyuuH0a6i8BwC7q8g81hTUg/videos

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Happy 2013

Wishing everyone a happy 2013. 

I’m currently working on a third novel, another psychological thriller, and my first two books (Secrets by Lawrence Estrey, EggHead by Lawrence Estrey) are available  in paperback or e-book on Amazon.

In music, I’m currently studying Beethoven’s Pathetique sonata for piano and various works by Chopin and Scriabin. 

I haven’t had much time for photography recently, but here are a couple more pictures from my black and white collection:

And, of course, I almost forgot to add – I successful gave up smoking nearly six months ago!

Read Full Post »

Piano On YouTube

I’ve just started uploading static videos (single image over an audio file) to YouTube.   The videos include piano music by Chopin and Schubert.  In each video, I am the soloist.   You can check them out here.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Chopin Nocturne in A-flat, No 10 – An Online Recording

Managed to do a little more recording today, though extremely stressful due to recording equp’t. The following is my favourite nocturne played by myself on piano.  

To listen, click here.

Read Full Post »

Hectic Times

A very busy couple of weeks. I’m polishing the remaining third of my second novel, a psychological thriller, and am waiting to hear back from an editor on the first, same genre.

Meanwhile, I gave a piano recital a couple of weeks ago with works by Chopin, Mozart and Liszt. Received more than £200.  Not bad going, but doesn’t compare with the hundreds/thousands some artists get. I’m currently working towards another recital and learning three of the Chopin nocturnes.

Not much time for photography.

Read Full Post »

Finally Uploaded Online Recording To Last.FM

After days of problems with MPEG-4 and MP3 files, I finally managed to upload a recording of my piano playing to the Internet Radio Site, last.fm.

The online album covers a recording I made in 2004 of works by Schubert, Chopin and Rachmaninoff.

Read Full Post »

Another Online Recording With Last.FM

About a year ago, a technically minded friend recorded me playing the piano and gave me a copy of the CD a few weeks later.  Within a day of receiving the CD, I had copied the files to my computer, saved them to a portable device, emailed them to my various accounts and uploaded them to YUDU, a self-publishing site based in the UK.   At last, I had a recording  of my own, a recording that anyone with an internet connection could access.  It was an incredible feeling.  A genuine high.

Later, I uploaded the same recording to last.fm, an internet radio site.  I have always felt that last.fm is a particularly stable site, excellent in so many ways and free to use. I enjoy seeing the stats and finding that people from all over the world have listened to me play.

During lunch on Tuesday, a different friend lent me a CD of a piano recording I made more than six years ago, instructing me not to lose it because she enjoyed the music so much!   The person who’d helped with that particular recording deleted the files six years ago and I had no other way of retrieving the recording – until now.

After work, I set about making a digital recording, running into obstacles from the start. First, the files were MPEG-4 rather than MP3 unlike the files in last year’s recording.  This means they’re bigger and more difficult to upload/download.  It took me ages to email the files to my various accounts for back up purposes; even then, I hadn’t realised that I could download a free MP3 converter to make the task easier.

I still need to check the title for each track before uploading to a public site like last.fm, but I’ve finally managed to burn all the files to CD and make online back up copies.  The CD includes music by Chopin, Schubert and Rachmaninoff.

Read Full Post »

Today’s Piano Practice: Brahms And Chopin

I had a mammoth session at the grand piano this morning…the second Brahms Rhapsody from opus 79, the Brahms G minor Ballade from opus 118, Chopin’s third Ballade, and four of the Chopin Preludes, including the “gallop” prelude in G sharp minor.  I worked on various aspects of piano technique – lightness of touch, bravura.

Yesterday, I spent some time on the twelfth Hungarian Rhapsody by Liszt – a war-horse.

Read Full Post »

Musicians and Stage Fright

I was playing the piano in front of a few people tonight.   As I played, I thought a little about stage fright and how debilitating it can be for the performer.  Fortunately, I felt more confident than I have in the past, but here are some of the ways stage fright affects musicians:

• A feeling of unreality.  Pretty awful, especially when the keys of the piano seem to lose their distinctiveness
• Sudden shaking.  This happened a couple of times to me over the years, once in the middle of a Chopin polonaise, the other time towards the conclusion of a famous Scriabin work
• Memory lapses while performing.  Fortunately, this has never presented any huge problems
• A strong urge to get up in the middle of a piece and abandon the performance.  Pretty frightening and common, although I’ve never walked off stage
• light-headedness and nausea

I’ve heard other musicians say they feel particularly exposed in front of a smaller audience.  I would agree with that. 

Personally, I feel that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can help with performance nerves.  I also think that not rushing the pieces makes a huge difference.  Tonight, I forced myself to perform the fourth impromptu by Schubert from the first set (opus 90), taking the middle section slowly and paying careful attention to the dynamics.  Not exactly a technically demanding work, but for some reason I dislike playing the impromptu in public, although I have done countless times.   Perhaps it has something to do with the piece’s structure – ternary form – and the sense of feeling trapped in a work that consists largely of repetition.

Read Full Post »

A Long Wait

I’m still waiting for the editing report on my first novel, a psychological thriller set in the English countryside.   That’s one of the things in trying to get a book published  – you end up spending ages waiting each step of the way.  For me, the waiting is the worst bit.  It feels long and drawn out, and I tend to get impatient and worry about what might happen next.  

In the meantime, without having a definite time frame to work in, I don’t think I can continue with the most recent novel (another psychological thriller set near the Dorset coast), so I’ve made extensive backup copies of the first fourteen chapters and hope to return to the story sometime next year.  I’m working on something entirely different while I wait for the editor’s report - my student days at Dartington College of Arts in Totnes, Devon, where I studied music and classical piano.  

I’m also spending a lot of time at the piano, playing works by Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg and Liszt.

Read Full Post »