We always underestimate the importance of a good routine in our life. In fact a good routine can have a positive impact on the most unexpected things: like piano playing. Yes I know a routine doesn’t sound like the most exciting thing in the world, and I used to think that routine is for boring people. Until I realized that I was feeling much happier and was more successful in my undertakings with it. That’s when I became one of them, the routine believers. Read more …

Nothing remains the same, everything is dynamic. Everything has to change if it wants a future (except the Coca-Cola recipe maybe!). This simple rule might have been forgotten along the way in our art. Of course you can refuse to change, to adapt, to evolve. You can live a life disconnected from reality, from people, perpetuating obsolete traditions as if the world has stopped long ago. Read more …

I was born and raised in France where the educational system is maybe one of the most elitist in the world and where failure is a shame. I went to a private school where the bar was set so high that going to university was a failure and where teachers were the bullies with their sarcastic and humiliating comments. More generally speaking, I was raised in a society having as primary objective the avoidance of failure. Read more …

As a musician, you always try to improve your practice routines and become more efficient. In fact, we are actually lazy to a point that we constantly try to find ways to practice less and do more. When I was teaching I used to say to my students they have to picture pianists as the laziest people in the world: we try to spend as less time as possible practicing and one of our basic goal is to reduce our energy consumption while playing and do as less gestures as possible. I have to say that I’ve been very creative in this laziness for many years! Read more …

Lately I saw a lot of people who seem to forget they can help musicians without putting money on the table. Of course we need money to realize our projects but if you don’t have cash it does’t mean you can’t help us tremendously. Never assume we get plenty of help: most of the time we get none and end up doing everything by ourselves, running in every direction and forced to drop lots of stunning projects because of a cruel lack of time. But, with a little help from you, we could easily gain a lot of time. Here are 10 ideas how to help a musician, even if you’re completely broke. Read more …

You probably know that I am writing a lot these days. The cool thing with long writings is that you have to tidy up your thoughts and make them (at least look) coherent. It involves digging into my past and understanding whatever positions I could have taken in the last 15 years to properly connect the dots between my ideas. And this is the point where I am supposed to give you the lecture about me changing over the years and being a better person and artist. Guess what? I’m not going to give you this lecture at all. Read more …

When I released Introducing Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont for free in July last year, I already knew a free strategy wouldn’t last forever, even if I secretly hoped people would be generous enough to allow me to make the second album free too. Although everyone praised the release, my secret dream didn’t happen, so back to the plan A. The free strategy had a primary goal: gaining traction in a complicated market. But recording an album, as romantic as it seems, always ends up in the same way: paying the bills. Read more …