I’d like to know how you teach students about hymn improvisation! Do you have any teaching ideas? Thanks a lot! This is one of those things that I heard other pianists do growing up and always wanted to learn, but never could figure out how to do it. Gradually, through the years as I asked […]
Improvising
The Any Song Assignment
Do you have students who love to doodle around on the piano (or, as one student once declared to me, he liked to “type around on the keys sometimes” :-)) and do all sorts of things at the keyboard besides practice their assignments? Or perhaps you’ve encountered the student who can play up and down […]
The Best Thing We’ve Done This Spring…
Even though I didn’t really feel like I knew what I was doing yet, I decided to launch into something new as soon as I returned from the MTNA conference. We’ve been doing it for several weeks now and it has been close to revolutionary in my studio! I’ve picked up a variety of improvising […]
Black Key Improvisation
I guess I’m on an improvisation kick this week! As much as I am not a naturally gifted improviser, I have always admired those who were, and I see the value in helping students develop an openness to improvisation. Ever since I started doing student interviews years ago, one of the areas that I include […]
Quick and Easy Improvisation with Students!
If I have a student who struggles with note reading, but loves “doodling around” on the piano and/or if I have extra time at the end of a lesson, I often opt for my quick and easy improvisation activity. I sit at one piano and the student sits at the other (if you only have […]
