Are you scared to start using improvisation in your piano teaching? I’ve totally been there. 7 or 8 years ago I had basically never sat down at the piano without a piece of paper in front of my face. It would not have even occurred to me. But then I discovered improvisation. I found out…
improvising
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….
The Big Secret of Teaching Improvisation in Your Piano Lessons
You’ll hear a lot of chatter online about teaching improvisation to your piano students. Questions about how to fit it in, what to do, the best resources and the value of improv come up often. But there’s one big secret that I don’t hear mentioned. Ready for the secret? Teaching improvisation can be one of…
Piano Warmups that Spark Student Curiosity and Wonder
What’s the first thing you do when your student walks in the door? How do you get each lesson started? It’s a good idea to do some sort of piano warmups at the start of each lesson, it’s an even better idea for those warmups to knock your students’ socks off. I want my students…
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…