This duet improvisation pattern is from Create First 1 by Forrest Kinney. I love simplifying these accompaniment patterns for using in buddy lessons. You’ll see I start off with my student here and then leave once she’s secure with the pattern. We also discussed (before this clip) how to land on the home note…
Creativity
Exploring Scales and the Circle of Fifths with Improvisation
Improvisation is one of the best ways to teach students about keys, scales and chord patterns. In fact, I believe in teaching scales through improvisation first – before fingering, before metronomes, before checklists. Let me show you how I do it. It was years into practising scales when I finally understood what they were for….
CKQC039: Simple but effective solo improvisation for beginners
This is another pattern from Forrest Kinney’s fabulous Create First 1. Every pattern in these books has a duet and a corresponding solo version. I like to start with the duet so my student can get a feel for the improvisation and explore a little, and then we work on the solo improvisation. This…
CKQC032: ‘Sunrise’ and ‘Moonrise’ improvisation solos for beginners
These two patterns are the very first ones in Create First Book 1. Both the duet and solo options are simple and beautiful. Although we always do improvisation at my studio from the beginning, I’ve been working to get my students to do more improvisation solos. Several of my students even did solo improv at…
How to Make the Most Out of Piano Student Composing Projects
It’s absolutely fantastic to see so many piano teachers starting to embrace composing and bring it into their lessons. But have you ever wondered how we can make the most out of these composing projects? Composing projects for their own sake are great, but with a few tweaks, we can use them to create even more…
Inspiring Improvisation for Students with Special Needs with Carrie Lennard
I’ve said before that improvisation can be a tool in our lessons. It doesn’t have to be something that takes away time – it can be an element that enhances what we need to get done. And that’s especially true when it comes to teaching students with special needs. Carrie Lennard has created something truly exceptional…
CKQC020: Improvisation “sandwiches” with repeated note embellishments
The mid-year concert at my studio is called the “January Jam”. This recital is all about creative skills and ensemble playing. This year, all my students created some form of this “improvisation sandwich” as one of their performances. To create a sandwich, they play a piece three times: Plain, as written Improvising the right hand,…
CKQC013: Improvising piano duets and exploring the keys
Beginning improvisation usually works best with an accompanist. This helps the music to sound fuller, and allows students to explore the melodies more freely. In my piano students’ buddy time, I’ve been trying out some modified versions of the improvisation patterns from Create First by Forrest Kinney. In last week’s quick clip, you saw how…
CKQC012: Simple and effective piano improvisation for beginners
As an experiment during our overlapping piano buddy time, I’ve been simplifying some of the improvisation accompaniments from Create First by Forrest Kinney. This has worked out really, really well and it’s quite easy to adapt for any student level. In this video, you’ll see the bare bones arrangement of ‘For the Joy’ that I’ve…
Plan the Ultimate First Piano Lesson for a Transfer Student
Transfer students are tougher than students that you teach from the very beginning, and I see a lot of questions from piano teachers about students that come to them from another teacher. There are many reasons for this, but they all boil down to one thing: you don’t know what they have and haven’t been…