Composing is a fabulous way to engage piano students, and get them to think about music in a different way. For the past few weeks, almost all of my students have been working on the Spring Themes Composing Project. I designed this project as a very loose template so I could use it with all levels…
Creativity
Happy Birthday Variation Project
I hope everyone is recovering from recital season, and getting ready for some much needed time off. I’m planning on getting the New Year off to a great start with some creativity! January can be a tough month, as students have finished the Christmas recital, and the Spring concert feels a long way off. This…
Why teach composing? Isn’t it enough to teach students to read music?
Why should we include composing in our piano lessons? I’d like to answer that questions with another question, why do English teachers teach creative writing? Is it so that their students can become writers if they so wish? Partially, yes. But it’s so, so, so much more than that. When a student learns how to write…
The “House of Piano”- 4 Things I was not TAUGHT that I TEACH
Some “traditional” piano lessons, like the ones I had for my first 4 years as a piano student, take a very narrow approach. There are many things I feel were left out of my own piano lessons. A normal lesson goes something like this: Student comes in, teacher request scales and/or technique that the student…
DIY Piano Scale Spinners – Full Assembly Instructions
A while back I posted my grade 3 scale spinner, and as I got started on one for a grade 6 student I thought I might give more detailed instructions on how to put a spinner together, as well as include a blank template so that you can fill in whichever scales (or anything else you…
C and G Piano Pentascale Worksheets
The ‘My First Piano Adventure’ series introduces the C pentascale in book A and the G pentascale in book B. Pentascales (or five finger scales) are not only an excellent first introduction to the idea of scales for young beginners, but are also a great opportunity for improvisation and composition! No complicated instructions needed, once…
Musical Alphabet Dice for Piano Teaching Games
Dice make everything more fun right? It’s much easier to ‘sell’ something as a game if you have a die for the student to use! There are so many possibilities for using dice like this, but here’s a few to get you started: Play all the “blank”s is great for beginning students. Try setting a…
Pentatonic Scale Improvisation
The pentatonic scale is a great place to start improvising on the piano. My students first introduction to improvisation is the pentatonic scale in F# major, which consists of only black keys. So you can play any black key at all, in any way you wish! I think improvisation is very liberating and also can…
Four Very Simple Chords…(that will sound very familiar!)
This simple C major chord progression is a great way to get adult and teen students making music right away and sounding great from the get-go. Practise playing these one after the other with your right hand. Once your hand is in position on the C major triad, pick it up (without moving your fingers)…
Using Lead Sheets with Your Piano Students
Traditional sheet music is great, but lead sheets (which are mostly for jazz and pop songs) are a great resource that is often overlooked in traditional piano lessons. I’ve been introducing lead sheets to lessons recently as a great break from normal studies and they always go down a treat. It’s such a fun departure for…