It was one of my students who first gave me the idea of designing keyboard scale fingering diagrams and many of my students have used them since. A special book for each of them with a complete set of major, natural minor, and harmonic minor musical scales and keys on the staff with keyboard fingering diagrams below seemed like a perfect next step!

[Special thanks to Am Y for the use of her beautiful piano photo for the cover!]

As a way of wishing everyone a Happy New Year, I am giving away 3 copies of The Pianists’ Book of Musical Scales and Keys! Just leave a comment below for your chance to win a copy. The winner will be chosen using a random number generator on Thursday, January 12, at noon (CST). Enjoy!

Staff Note Stickers

One of my older beginners has been using Scales, Patterns and Improvs Book 1 by Barbara Kreader this year and commented several weeks ago that she could see that it had really helped her in a number of different areas. It’s not her favorite thing in the world, but seeing the benefits for herself has motivated her to keep working through it. I used the book with a piano camp group one summer, but this was my first time to use it for an individual lesson. Here are some of the specific areas she mentioned:

• Listening – since she tends naturally to be more visual than aural, playing along with the CD helped her hear the different parts and how they fit together.
• Theory – each unit focuses on one key and has an improv exercise, a scale, chord progression, arpeggio, and a short piece in that key. She said this helped her understand the different keys much better.



• Rhythm – this is an area that has been more challenging since Day One, so using this book helped her come a long way in being able to keep the beat going and in working toward accurate rhythms.

This was so helpful for me to know! I can use her input when I start using this book with other students – which of course I’m going to now! And perhaps this will be one way that I can start addressing my technique troubles that I mentioned yesterday. We’ll see!

This is a really simple game! First, have the student line up the key signatures in order from the least number of sharps or flats to the greatest. Then, they place a scale block in front of each key signature to identify the name of the key. You can see in the above picture that I had this older student identify both the Major and minor key. I try to emphasize the Circle of 5ths over and over so that my students use that to figure out their keys.

As an aside, I never use mnemonic devices or the other little tricks for figuring out key names. (Although sometimes they learn them at school and them come and proudly announce to me that they found out another way to identify their keys…at which point they often proceed to confuse themselves trying to remember which trick went with which keys, etc. )

But I digress…back to the game! After they’ve lined them up correctly, we proceed to phase two of the game. I mix up the key signatures and then place them on the music rack in a random order and the student proceeds to line up the scale blocks again, matching the key names to the corresponding key signatures. If it’s a student who loves competition, I often time them to see how fast they can place them all correctly, then let them try one more time to see if they can beat their previous time. Lots of fun and easily adapted to a range of levels by doing only Major or minor keys or just using a few key signatures at a time.

Also…just so you know, I scheduled my spring break for next week and I’ve decided to take the week off of blogging as well. Originally, I had hoped to attend the MTNA Conference in Atlanta, but that fell through. It’s probably a good thing, too, because I have so many things on my to-do list! I’m hoping to get a lot accomplished. We’ll see!

In keeping with our Key Signature theme for the month, we started out with a game. One at a time, I had each student volunteer to be timed as they lined up the key signature flashcards in order from 0 sharps to 7 sharps, then arrange the corresponding key names below each card. I timed each student as they took their turn and kept track on a white board. The observing students watched with rapt attention as they awaited their turn. They all wanted to beat the fastest time! This was an easy concept even for the youngest students who don’t fully understand key signatures, because they just had to go by the number of sharps and then count the key names by fifths to know the correct order.

After the opening game, we began the performances. Each student shared a bit of information about the country upon which their piece was based. Here, Addi is dressed the part as well!

In addition to sharing about their country, each student also placed a magnet on our map of the world in their country so that we could get a picture of where we were “traveling” for the performance.

After the performances, we concluded the evening with a loud, fun key signature game. I divided the students into two teams, using their scores from earlier as a guide to determine who to place on each team. Then, on the team, I had them line up from the slowest time to the fastest time. You can’t see it in this picture, but there is a piano bench between the two teams. On the bench, I placed a little service bell. One member of each team would stand at the bench and face-off. I held up a key signature flashcard and whoever dinged the bell first got a chance to name the key. If correct, they earned one point. If incorrect, the other team was given a chance to confer and then submit an answer. The team that reached twenty points first won!

Everyone really got into the key signature games, and I’m confident that they know their key signatures much better now than they did one week ago. Still room for lots of reinforcement, though. (We didn’t even get to the flat key signatures!) Hope this gives you some fun ideas that you can use with your students!

I have the student spread out two sets of flashcards on the fallboard – one containing each of the key signatures on the staff, the other listing the name of each Major/minor key (I made a set for the sharp keys and a set for the flat keys, and we just use one set at a time). The student gets the whacker and I call out, “Simon Says…” and then either give the name of a key or say a specific number of sharps/flats. If I say, “Simon Says…key of D Major,” the student has to whack the corresponding key signature on the staff. If I say, “Simon Says…2 sharps,” the student has to whack the card that says D Major/b minor.

So far this is working really well and is helping the students think through the process of figuring out which key is which and how many sharps/flats it has. Plus, I also let them refer to the other cards in front of them if they want to. And of course, almost any game that involves the whacker is a winner!

If you have a Fresh and Fun! idea you’d like to contribute for focusing on Key Signatures, just leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail.