Piano Shoes for pedaling

A while back, I was practicing the piano a lot without shoes on and gradually developed a foot injury. It felt like the pedal was pressing up on my foot and over time that area started to hurt, especially around the ball of my foot. After this injury, I started thinking about what type of pedaling shoes would be best. Many people recommend leather shoes for pedalling, so you can have some sensation of the pedal through the shoe while still protecting the foot from injury or nerve damage. That seems like a good idea to me, it is always helpful to be able to feel the pedal movement through your foot. However, I have now adjusted that thinking to want both a leather sole and some sort of solid heel while practicing with the pedal.

I know that having my heel off the floor a bit feels better, but I'm not sure exactly why it this is true. I know that when I use the accelerator pedal in a car, it has a slanted foot board so that your foot is in a more relaxed position when resting and then the foot presses down from the rest position. So, I assume it is because I like having my foot in a better rest position from which I can exert downward force (plantar flexion). The mazda.com website explains the foot position this way:

"... the basic need to keep one’s heel on the floor in order to maintain leg position comfortably over a long period. In operating the accelerator, the ankle becomes a fulcrum around which the foot pivots downwards."

In the wonderful book, "What Every Pianist Needs To Know About The Body" by Thomas Mark, he explains that the ankle moves a lot like a "lopsided upside down letter T" because the movement of the foot does not occur at the back of the heel, but at the ankle joint which is in front of the heel bone. So, I guess I like having my foot at less of an upward angle when at rest because pianists keep their heels on the floor for balance. With a bit of a heel, my foot is more parallel to the floor (especially if the piano has wheels under the legs) and it feels better to me.
I have also chosen a rather solid heel for my pedalling shoes. I don't want to have too narrow a heel where I am wobbling on the heel and lack good balance. I have read on the pianoworld forum that some people are recommend a book or block under the heel, but it seems to me that finding the right shoe is a better long term solution to this problem.

Classical Music Streaming Services

Music streaming services have been inevitably creeping up on me. In the past, I used Itunes for many many years and it served me very well. I like the idea of owning music that no one can take away from me. I chose my music carefully, because I was choosing each piece for a price. Consequently, I have a lot of music that I have collected over many years in my Itunes library including many classical music performances that are my favorites. A small number of years ago, I started listening to Pandora with ads during workouts, while working in the kitchen making dinner, or driving in the car. I didn't mind the ads too much, it reminded me of old-time radio when you listened to free music with lots of ads. Pandora didn't have as many ads as old-time radio, so it seemed better to me. Obviously, I like free, so that's how I initially used music streaming services. I enjoyed choosing a music genre to listen to the new stuff. I thought of it as free music genre radio.

My family chose Spotify for me. My daughters used Spotify and my husband hated listening to the ads on Pandora. So, we got a family Spotify plan and now we all listen to Spotify as our music streaming service. My daughters have quite a few playlists on Spotify that they don't want to give up, so its hard for them to change music streaming apps. Spotify seems fine, it is nice to listen to music without ads, but there is a price and even with a family plan discount, it ratchets up our family budget. In the meantime, I still listen to some of my own music through Itunes (glad that still works on my phone, at least for now).

As a piano teacher, I love classical music (as well as many other styles of music), so I was very interested to read about the new classical music streaming services like Primephonic and Idagio in the New York Times. It seems like such a "cool" idea. As a listener, I personally notice a big difference between individual artist and orchestral performances. Some performances just seem better to me.  Also, when I start a new piano piece, I love to search out a number of different artist recordings of the same piece. I often find substantial differences in interpretation that help me understand how I want my version of the piece to sound. It would be very nice to be able to find all those versions in one classical music app and be able to call them up whenever I need them instead of buying ad-hoc versions on Amazon and Itunes or sifting through versions on YouTube.
Unfortunately, I really don't want to pay for yet another streaming service with monthly fees. I love the idea, but its just not quite practicable for me. I wish Idagio or Primephonic would offer a free version with ads, but they don't. So, even though I love the idea of a streaming classical music app, its not for me right now. I'm actually kind of hoping that Spotify will just improve its service so that this type of classical music choice is available within its platform, but that doesn't look imminent. So, I'm just going to go on my merry way for the moment with Spotify and ad-hoc classical music recordings. C'est La Vie.