Seven short piano compositions.
Level: Beginners.
🎧 Audio and full details below.
 
About this Composition:
The piano is a strange beast.
On a guitar, your fingers touch the strings directly - you feel the sound being made. On a piano, you press a key, it triggers a hammer, a mechanism fires, something scurries up the clockwork… you know where this is going. Because the sound is so removed from the body, pianists need to develop a wide range of touch to create different tone colours and musical expression.
 
Piano Stools approaches this problem from a different angle - by not taking itself too seriously.
 
This seven-piece beginner collection is written for students (and teachers) who want to learn through play, curiosity, and humour rather than pressure and perfection. Often, the deepest learning happens when we’re relaxed enough to laugh. Expectations and boundaries remain - the student is still expected to learn well - but the environment becomes safer, lighter, and more forgiving. Fear of mistakes melts away, and skills are acquired almost by accident.
 
Each piece is one page long, with repeats, and introduces gradually increasing technical challenges. Every piece is named after one of the seven stool types on the Bristol Stool Form Scale (BSFS) - a very real and very serious medical diagnostic tool developed at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in 1997. If it’s good enough for clinicians, it’s good enough for piano pedagogy.
 
Why stools?
After more than twenty years of teaching piano, I’ve watched students (and parents) become completely constipated by the pressure to improve. So why not get things flowing - not too watery, mind you - but freely enough to enjoy the process again.
 
This is not about toilet humour for its own sake. It’s about using an awkward, usually unspoken subject as an ice-breaker - a way to lower the bar just enough so beginners can step over it without fear. Children laugh. Teachers laugh. Learning happens.
 
Piano Stools is for:
 
Beginners who want to have fun
Teachers who value imagination over intimidation
Parents who’d rather hear laughter than tears
Anyone who understands that sometimes you have to play like shit to get good
 
Please note:
The Bristol Stool Chart is referenced with respect and used purely as creative inspiration. All images are credited under Creative Commons courtesy of the Rome Foundation via Wikimedia Commons. Wash your hands before playing.
 
Most of all, I hope these pieces bring joy - to students, teachers, and families alike - and remind us that music learning doesn’t have to be stiff, sterile, or serious to be meaningful.