Add your own creative twists to an Easter piece

Alison Mathews’ “Easter Bunny” is a perfect activity to ease an elementary student into piano creativity. They’ll learn a fun pre-written piece and are then given plenty of opportunities to add their own creative twists, including choosing the register, adding ornamentation, writing their own lyrics, and extending the composition. The twists are so playful and varied that it’s sure to captivate young students and the bunny hops are a fun way to practise position changes. There’s also the option to practise ensemble playing with a charming duet.

Get 'Easter Bunny'

Choose the pitch to fit the lyrics

1. “See the bunny” from Susan Paradis’ Seasonal Composing Activities bundle — there’s also a notation version

2. Spring Composition Activity from Susan Lotkowictz — this is a free download!

These two worksheets are a good activity for a student who has been learning for a few months, who is growing in confidence with musical experimentation, but who still needs plenty of helpful guidelines to get started. They’re given an elementary rhythm coupled with seasonal lyrics and are asked to choose a pitch for each note.

It’s effective because it’s so simple: just restrict the students to a small range of notes (e.g. the C major five-finger scale) and identify the tonic note (C if you’re using the C major five-finger scale) where they should end.

I used Susan Paradis’ “See The Bunny” last year with a 7-year old girl, and her giant smile at the end of the activity told me that she was clearly very proud of her work!

Tips:

• Susan Paradis’s instruction sheet is good quality — be sure to read it!

• when explaining this to younger students you might prefer to explain the tonic as the “home note”

• if they come up with a good melody, encourage them to repeat it but change one or two notes

• encourage them to experiment by playing the notes themselves. Reassure nervous students that when they’re the composer, there’s no such thing as a wrong note!

• play them what they’ve written so that they can hear it played with the correct rhythm

• if you’re confident at harmonisation, you could add an accompaniment to their finished piece

Susan Paradis’ Pre-Reading and Reading Composing bundles are here, and Victoria Lotkowictz’s worksheet is here.

I hope you find these useful! Do you have any Easter themed composition activities? Please let me know by replying to this email!

Created by Samantha Coates — who I first got to know as the author of the amusing theory workbook series How To Blitz! Theory — Rote Repertoire is a fantastic downloadable resource that develops musical memory, aural skills, notation-comprehension and creativity.

It’s built around a clever four-level structure that makes rote learning a springboard to musical independence.

Unsure about getting creative in piano lessons?

The Four-Level Approach

The basic concept is really powerful, and I think it’s unique! Certainly I’ve never come across anything comparable. Here it is: students work through the same piece in four different difficulty levels.

Level 1 begins with rote teaching: by ear, via the demo videos, or your own demonstration, allowing pre-readers to absorb patterns and phrasing without the immediate pressure of notation.

Levels 2 and 3 introduce notation with variations—changes in rhythm, harmony, or articulation—that connect aural sense to the score. Reading becomes a sensible next step, not a chore. It mirrors language learning: we mimic sounds first, then link them to symbols. Indeed, I find that my students are noticably more engaged when reading Blitz! Rote Repertoire compared to any standard method book.

Level 4 aligns perfectly with the Piano Creativity philosophy: students compose their own version. Having seen the piece evolve, this feels logical and normal—making creation at the piano feel accessible.

Who is it for?

I’ve used these with children in their first couple of years, transfer students, and intermediates as quick studies or ‘dessert’ pieces. They serve reliably as core repertoire (over several weeks) for beginners or fun one-lesson challenges for advanced pupils. Both my students and I have enjoyed them thoroughly.

Practical Considerations

The scores are clearly laid out with useful teacher guides for implementation and progression. High quality videos give clear demonstrations for teachers and I sometimes share these videos with students as a reliable home practice reference.

This is a downloadable resource, so you’ll probably need a printer or tablet to use it. The scores are only available on a studio license. I find the pricing for individual pieces a little high — although to be fair, with all the video demonstations you do get a lot of content for your money — but the bundles are about 1/3rd cheaper, and I would recommend starting there.

Final thoughts

This is really smart pedagogy uniting aural skills, notation, and creativity — while being genuinely fun. I highly recommend checking it out: free sample pieces here, superb quick-start guide here.

Bravo to Samantha Coates for creating such a wonderful resource!

Find out more

Recently Samantha did a webinar where she showcased her Rote Repertoire series from scratch. It contains some wonderful teaching demonstrations and really gives you a clear idea of how it can work for your students.

20% off for Piano Creativity teachers

The discount code given in the webinar has now expired, so Samantha has generously created another special code just for Piano Creativity fans. Go to roterepertoire.com and enter the coupon code PC20 at checkout. This will work during February only!

What do you think?

What do you think of Rote Repertoire’s four-level approach? Have you tried it in your studio, or do you have a favourite rote resource for sparking creativity? Share your experiences (or questions) in the comments below.

If you’ve ever wanted to include more improvisation or composition in your teaching but weren’t sure where to start, I can help.

I offer mentoring sessions for piano teachers.

Book your mentoring session

In these sessions, we can explore anything from simple improvisation ideas for beginners to guiding advanced students in arranging their favourite songs. I’ll also share some of my go-to teaching resources and show you how to adapt them for your own studio.

Here’s what your colleagues have to say

Ruth Alberici took Creativity Mentoring with me and wrote:

👉 Sign up for your session here: garreth.mymusicstaff.com/mentoring

Another piano teacher, Janet, wrote:

Book your mentoring session

Piano teacher Alison wrote:

Piano teacher Siân wrote:

If you’re ready to bring more creativity into your teaching, I’d love to work with you. Find out more and book your mentoring session today:

👉 garreth.mymusicstaff.com/mentoring

Book your mentoring session

These handpicked tools—spanning online courses, books, and sheet music—empower piano teachers with practical methods for improvisation, composition, and creative repertoire.

Looking to add a new creative dimension to your teaching? You’ll likely find exactly what you need in the list below.

Contents

1. Books about teaching creatively

2. Online Courses

3. Books for everyday creativity in lessons

4. Resources for playing by ear

5. Creative sight-reading

6. Lead sheets and chords

7. Creative repertoire

8. Creativity prompts and games

9. Seasonal resources

Need help with putting these resources to use?

Essential books about teaching creatively

A deeply human and inspiring book that invites teachers and pianists to embrace improvisation, creativity, and joyful music-making beyond traditional pedagogy.

A practical and imaginative guide that helps teachers introduce elementary students to composition and improvisation through clear, structured activities.

The definitive reference on music engraving, offering crystal-clear standards that help teachers and composers produce professional-quality scores.

Best online courses

An award-winning online course that transforms harmony study into playful, creative pattern exploration for both teachers and students.

Best books for everyday creativity

Scales and Chords Book 1 from the Piano Adventures series isn’t just a scales book — it excels at normalising creativity in elementary lessons and features simple accompaniments across major and minor keys in a variety of styles.

Best resources for playing by ear

A structured method book that guides pianists from playing familiar tunes by ear on black keys through harmonising with tonic/dominant chords, exploring minor keys and modes, to improvising with secondary chords and advanced patterns.

Best creative sight-reading books

A colourful four‑level piano series that fuses notation reading skills with creative challenges, encouraging students to vary dynamics, textures, and mood.

Best resources for lead sheets and chords

A creative strategy that uses multiple arrangements of popular tunes to teach students how to build their own playable versions.

A 214-page ebook that builds profound keyboard harmony fluency through progressive exercises covering root position chords, circle of fifths progressions, primary chord inversions, cadences, 12-bar blues, and Pachelbel’s Canon in all 24 major and minor keys.

A comprehensive workbook featuring visual keyboard diagrams, key-specific chord tables, Roman numeral analysis worksheets, voice-leading guides, and plain-English theory appendices to build practical chord fluency for composition and classical study.

Best creative repertoire books

A collection of 12 mermaid-themed intermediate piano pieces featuring creative prompts for choosing registers, dynamics, improvising codas, tempo variations, titles, chord endings, and model-based composition without thumbs.

A contemporary collection of original pieces and improvisation prompts designed to help students express emotional resilience through music — and a fundraiser for children in war-torn Palestine.

Best creativity prompts and games

A set of downloadable flashcards featuring engaging stories, illustrations, and musical prompts that spark endless elementary-level composition and improvisation ideas in young piano students.

A beautifully illustrated workbook from the wonderful Paul Harris that invites users to compose short, imaginative pieces through picture‑based prompts and creative challenges.

A comprehensive online platform by Nicola Cantan brimming with printable games, teaching tools, and videos that promote creativity in everyday lessons.

A brilliant fold‑out improvisation tool full of endless musical combinations that instantly spark ideas for duets and group lessons.

Best seasonal resources

A short, flexible pack of festive projects helping beginners explore phrase structure while composing cheerful springtime pieces.

A trio of spooky piano activities including Barbara Arens’ The Vampire Challenge with creative arrangement tasks, Alison Mathews’ pre-reader improvisation duets, and Andrea Dow’s motif-composition printable for elementary students.

A progressive method book featuring 20 Christmas carols as lead sheets with step-by-step instructions, example arrangements, and space for students to notate their own creative accompaniments.

Something missing?

Leave a comment!

Susan Staples Bell’s 20 Favourite Christmas Songs is a really fantastic resource for this season. It’s so easy to use that you can incorporate it into lessons without too much preparation. The helpful instructions make it perfect for any student who is unfamiliar with leadsheets, or feels nervous about figuring them out for themselves.

Even better, it’s great value — and currently on sale!

Here’s my original review…

The full title of this particular book is — deep breath! — 20 Favourite Christmas Songs How to Play Lead Sheets: A Method Book with Instructions At Every Step and Example Arrangements

It’s self-published by Susan Staples Bell, an enormously prolific composer and a piano teacher with 30 years experience.

It’s quite rare to come across a book with such a lengthy title and subtitle, almost like a Victorian novel! I find it really rather charming; much like Susan herself, who is an enthusiastic advocate for creativity.

The title describes exactly what the book delivers: this is actually a progressive method book, which differentiates it significantly from the other books I’ve reviewed.

This works much better than I expected

I confess, I was initially a little dubious about the premise. A method book is usually something a student would work through over the course of six months to a year. As much as I enjoy a good carol, I do not want to be teaching Christmas music year round!!

But as I played through it, I realised that it actually works really well.

Firstly, because the lead sheets are ordered progressively, it’s easy to pick a suitable carol for a student. (That being said, if a student particularly wants to learn a carol that Staples Bell has assigned to a too challenging section, they will likely find themselves frustrated. In this case one of the other books I’ve reviewed would be a better fit).

Secondly, as Susan suggests in the video below, it’s a good book to give to students to explore independently. The instructions for each piece are sufficient that many students will be able to figure out a lot on their own, and you can then extend their learning during the lesson.

Thirdly, you could actually use the book as a proper method book for students who has never played from lead sheets before, provided the student is sufficiently advanced. There are many intermediate teenage and adult students out there who would love to learn to play from lead sheets, and this book would be a good guide. They would quickly work through the elementary exercises over a couple of lessons but would then find plenty to dig into in the intermediate section.

Finally — and for the purposes of this website perhaps most importantly? — the book would also be an excellent introduction for teachers who have never taught from lead sheets before. Indeed, in the forward Staples Bell writes that the book is explicitly designed to help piano teachers who are new to lead sheets.

What’s included

The book divides the carols according to the following schema:

• Elementary:

  • Jingle Bells

  • O Christmas Tree

  • Good King Wenceslas

  • Up on the Housetop

• Late Elementary

  • Silent Night

  • Jolly Ol’ St Nicholas

  • The First Nöel

  • Joy to the World

  • We Three Kings

  • Coventry Carol

• Early Intermediate

  • God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

  • Away in a Manger

  • Deck the Halls

• Intermediate and Beyond

  • Angels We Have Heard on high

  • Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

  • We Wish You A Merry Christmas

  • What Child is This?

  • O Come, All Ye Faithful

  • Ding Dong! Merrily on High

  • In the Bleak Midwinter

I estimate the difficulty level as ranging from UK Grades 1-3.

Sharps are introduced in the elementary section, flats and minor keys first appear in the late-elementary. Fingerings and lyrics are included throughout. Occasionally there is the odd chord that doesn’t sound quite right to my ear, but generally it’s a useful guide.

Suggested accompaniments are included for each carol and become progressively more difficult, though never excessively so: the progression is very well thought through. Theory concepts are explained along the way. By the end of the book the student will be able to write arrangements in all elementary keys with many of the most commonly used accompaniment patterns.

One of the things I particularly like is that the sheet music leaves space for students to notate their own left hand. Strictly speaking, that means this isn’t a lead sheet! But that’s actually great, because it allows students the option of handwriting their own arrangement.

Appendices

There’s a lengthy set of appendices, including:

• A guide to how to learn lead sheets

• A “chord builder” worksheet

• Chord formulas, with for example the diminished triad expressed as 1-♭3-♭5

• A chart of common chords, given as letter names

• A guide to reading notes on the staff

• Various pages of major scales

• Various pages of major triads and their inversions

• A diagram of the circle of fifths

Price and availability

The price is extremely competitive. At $40 for a studio license, I don’t know of a more affordable alternative (except for asking your students to buy their own music!)

It’s available direct from Susan Staples Bell’s website and, unlike the other books I’ll be reviewing, this is not available as a physical book.

Conclusion

This book will appeal to you if:

• you’ve never taught carols from leadsheets before, and/or

• you have intermediate-advanced students who’ve never learnt music from leadsheets before, and/or

• you like studio licenses

If that’s you, check it out!

Visit Susan Staples Bell's website

Alison Mathews has done it again!

Her excellent Doodles collections, published by Editions Ferrum, were full of creative ideas to make sight-reading more interesting.

With her new collection, Seeds of Hope, Alison wanted to do something to combat the sense of hopelessness she felt about the devastating war in Gaza.

To do so, she has brought together many popular piano pedagogy composers and many Palestinian composers. As usual, she’s filled the book with lots of opportunity to get creative.

The book raises funds for two charities that help Palestinians make music:

• PalMusicUK (which fundraises for the Edward Said Conservatory of Music)

• Musicians Without Borders (which works to bring music to war-torn areas around the world.

What’s inside?

There’s a wide variety of pieces, many of which are inspired by rural life, ranging from elementary to intermediate level.

Many of the pieces feature Palestinian folk melodies, so there are some wonderful opportunities to explore a sound world that may be unfamiliar to some students.

Especially appealing for Piano Creativity readers is the range of creative activities (to which I contributed some ideas):

• many pieces feature a prompt to make a creative change

• there are several lead sheets with suggestions for how they could be played

• there are several pages of prompts to get students started with their own composition

• several pieces have duet or even trio parts

Julian Lambert has featured several of the pieces on his excellent YouTube channel.

(Notice how Julian adds chicken pecks in the repeat — in doing so he’s realising the creative prompt in the book.)

The harmony of “My Chicken” contrast strongly with that of the next piece, “Before The Flowers Bloom”…

…and again with the harmony of “Ah Ya Zein”, giving you a clear sense of the range of styles here!

My own piece “Chickens!” is in there. It’s a series of elementary musical fragments designed to be played in any order, so your student can use them to tell a story. The music depicts chickens running around, pecking at the ground, getting a shock, clucking contentedly and crowing. It features lovely illustrations by Tiril Valeur, who also did the charming cover artwork.

Available now!

Seeds of Hope is available as a single or studio licensed PDF download from Editions Musica Ferrum, as a single license PDF from Sheet Music Now and in print directly from Alison Mathews.

On the one hand you’re excited about their enthusiasm.

On the other hand, you’ve got to figure out how to fit it into their curriculum in a way that makes sense.

I’ve encountered this so many times — countless! — and I’ve developed a method for dealing with it that I want to share with you. I find it really useful, and my students love the fact that they can make requests.

I call it the Magpie Method, and I’m going to show you how to use it with the wonderful piece ‘Korobeiniki’, better known as the Theme from Tetris.

That brings back intense memories from my youth!!

Why do I call it the ‘Magpie Method’?

Magpies famously love to collect lots of shiny objects in their nests. They pick and choose the brightest, most interesting pieces to make something unique and special.

In the same way, the Magpie Method encourages your students—and you—to collect favourite musical ideas from different arrangements, combining them to create something new and personal. It’s a creative, flexible approach that engages their enthusiasm, while still supporting your students’ musical growth, because you can help them write an arrangement that they can actually play.

That’s the problem with using a pre-existing arrangement: it’s usually either too hard (so they get discouraged) or it’s too easy (so they get bored). The Magpie Method helps you find the happy middle ground.

How does it work?

You’ll need to find a lead sheet, plus a couple of pre-written arrangements of the piece.

You begin the Magpie Method by teaching the piece just the same as you would any other lead sheet: play the chords as block chords, add the melody.

Here’s the lead sheet for the piece from the newly published Video Game Music: Super Easy Songbook, published by Hal Leonard. This score includes diagrams of the block chords, which make it a great resource for a student who has never played a lead sheet before.

But it really starts to get interesting when you start looking at the other arrangements. Here are a couple of samples from more advanced books also from Hal Leonard:

In this first example, from Popular Video Game Themes: Easy Piano, there’s a thin texture, with the left hand sometimes harmonising the melody (e.g. in bar 1) or playing a simple bass line made up of notes 1 and 5 of the chord. From bar 5 onwards the right hand has occasional harmony notes.

In this second example from Popular Video Game Themes: Piano Solo, the right hand harmonises itself with either thirds or sixths, while the left hand often plays a simple octave pattern on the root of the chord.

Imagine the second example is too difficult for your student, the first too easy. By helping your student pick their favourite elements from both arrangements to find something somewhere of a manageable difficulty, you’ll be able to make a nice compromise.

So, using Koribeiniki as an example, you might try combining the right hand from the Easy Piano Solo version with the left hand from the Piano Solo edition.

Or you might take the idea of the harmonised melody thirds from the Piano Solo edition, and combine it with an easier bassline, maybe just playing the root of the chord as crotchets/quarter notes.

I could go on — there are so many potential combinations!

And I’m just scraping the surface, because there are so many fun versions of Koribeiniki on YouTube, so you can also send them off with homework to discover their own favourite!

Why teach arrangement using the Magpie Method?

First, this approach encourages exploration and curiosity. Instead of simply learning a single version of a piece, students get the chance to explore several arrangements. This exposes them to different musical choices and styles, broadening their horizons and helping them develop a more critical ear.

Second, the Magpie Method builds critical listening skills. Students must identify what they like about each arrangement—whether it’s the melody, harmony, rhythm, or texture. This process helps them articulate their musical preferences and understand why certain choices work better for them.

Third, it promotes ownership and confidence. When students collect their favorite ideas and combine them into a new arrangement, they become co-creators rather than just performers. This sense of ownership is incredibly motivating and helps them take pride in their music.

Finally, this method makes learning fun and interactive. The process feels like a treasure hunt, with students excited to discover and share the “shiny” musical ideas they find. It turns a simple request to learn a song into a creative adventure, keeping lessons fresh and inspiring.

In short, teaching arrangement this way isn’t just about learning a piece—it’s about developing creativity, critical thinking, and a lifelong love for music.

Tips for using the Magpie Method effectively

When guiding your students through the Magpie Method, remember: your role is to be a supportive guide, not a director. Encourage your students to take the lead in choosing and combining their favorite musical ideas.

At the same time, foster their curiosity by asking open-ended questions—like “What do you like most about this arrangement?” or “Why does that part stand out to you?” These simple strategies help empower your students and make the creative process even more rewarding.

A note on the books

If you have intermediate students who enjoy video game music, Popular Video Game Themes: Piano Solo and Popular Video Game Themes: Easy Piano work brilliantly for this approach because the song list for both books is the same, and it’s really comprehensive. See below for the full list of songs:

Thoughtful Structure and Engaging Features

The structure of Counting Rhythm is particularly effective. It’s organised into progressive groups, each featuring twelve short rhythm exercises that can be clapped, tapped, or played. The groups are divided as follows:

• Group 1 introduces semibreve (whole note) and rest, minim (half note) and rest, crotchet (quarter note) and rest, all within simple quadruple metre.

• Group 2 adds quaver (eighth note) values, both in pairs and groups of four, as well as single quaver notes and rests.

• Group 3 expands to simple duple and triple metres and introduces semiquaver (sixteenth note) values, both in groups of four and beamed with quavers.

• Group 4 brings in dotted crotchet and dotted minim note values and rests, beamed dotted quaver-semiquaver patterns, tied notes, syncopation, and compound metres.

• Group 5 features triplet quaver and crotchet groupings, as well as the single semiquaver rest, rounding out a comprehensive progression of rhythmic concepts

The familiar stick-figure illustrations add a sense of fun and continuity, while the included demonstration audio allows students to practice at their own pace, adjusting the speed as needed and always keeping time with a steady metronome pulse. This flexibility makes it easy to tailor rhythm practice to each student’s needs, whether they’re beginners or preparing for exams.

Minor gripes

I do have a couple of minor gripes with the structure, but I can see why the authors have chosen it, as it’s very conventional and most teachers will find that it works well in their studio. Personally I’ve slightly altered my approach to teaching rhythm after taking a bit of training in Music Learning Theory, which I find really helps students to internalise rhythm in a more effective way. With that in mind I’d prefer if Simple Duple and Triple metres were introduced earlier, and Quadruple metre was introduced later. I would also prefer to use Professor Gordon’s rhythmic Solfege syllabus “Du-De” (simple) and “Du-Da-Di” (compound) over the “1 & 2 & 3 &” used here, as I find it is easier for students to internalise. But that’s easily fixed, and with the addition of supplementary MLT rhythm resources, I’ve found that the book still works well in my studio and students appreciate being able to continue the series.

Inspiring Creativity Through Rhythm

One of my favourite ways to use rhythm resources like this is to inspire creativity in my students. I typically begin by having students focus solely on rhythm, clapping through exercises until they find a pattern they enjoy. From there, we improvise adding pitches—often limiting the selection to a particular scale or pentascale that fits their current lesson material. This process not only reinforces rhythmic accuracy but also gives students a sense of ownership and excitement as they see how rhythms can be transformed into original melodies.

From Improvisation to Composition

Once students have chosen their rhythms and pitches, I might encourage them to write out their compositions. Some students love to expand on their ideas, adding left-hand accompaniments or even crafting lyrics to go along with their new melodies. The possibilities are endless, and this approach turns rhythm practice into a springboard for composition, improvisation, and deeper musical understanding. It’s always rewarding to see students light up as they realise they’re not just practicing—they’re creating.

A Versatile Resource for Rhythm Skills and Creativity

Overall, A Dozen A Day: Counting Rhythm is a joyful, practical resource that I’ll be reaching for again and again. It covers everything from basic note values and rests to more advanced concepts like dotted notes, ties, syncopation, and triplets. Whether used for lesson warm-ups or as a creative launching pad, this book has a lot to offer teachers and students looking to build strong rhythmic foundations and spark musical creativity in every lesson.

Have you tried A Dozen A Day: Counting Rhythm in your studio, or do you have other favourite ways to teach rhythm? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below—I’d love to hear how you inspire rhythmic creativity with your students!

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This kind of mashup is a wonderful way to get your students inspired. Take a pattern from one of their pieces and combine it with another. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but sometimes it works really well, and you can really see their eyes light up!

Have you ever done a mashup? Let me know in the comments!

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Mentoring sessions

A few weeks ago I started offering Creativity Mentoring Sessions to readers. I’ve had such a lovely time doing them: thanks to Janet, Grace, Sian, Rose, Katherine and Alison! We’ve talked about improvisation activities and how to use variations to teach theory and inspire creativity.

There are just two sessions left. Book now if you want one!

More info here:

Creativity Digest

It’s high time I sent out a digest of the best articles I’ve read — the last one was in mid April!

There are two articles about creativity, four about finding inspiration/motivation, and two challenging reads.

Creativity Reads

Psychology researcher Nick Kabrél’s article is outstanding — I totally identify with all the steps in his list of “10 steps for achieving a creative breakthrough”. It’s published on the Psyche mailing list, which is always an interesting read.

Composer Danny Mulhern’s MicroMuse Substack offers up regular creativity prompts. I really enjoy it. Besides being a popular composer for TV and film, Danny is a real deep thinker, and he wrote some very astute liner notes for the vinyl edition of my 2019 album Healing.

Inspiring Reads

Teacher Amie Webster’s excellent new mailing list Thrive In Three appears about once a month, and has concise and profound ideas. I’m a big fan of Amie, who is a creativity-focused piano teacher based in BC, Canada. I particularly liked this one from a couple of months ago:

David Barton’s post “Those Who Shaped My Creative Soul” on his Substack A Life More Creative is a beautiful tribute to the kind, patient, generous teachers who helped him become the kind, patient, generous teacher he is today. If you’re feeling a bit jaded or run down, this might be just the encouragement you need.

Rediscover · Reconnect · Re-Emerge

Inspirations & Connections | XIV. Those Who Shaped My Creative Soul

Welcome to Rediscover · Reconnect · Re-Emerge. If you find the fleeting changes of modern life wearisome, maybe even overwhelming, join me on a journey, a path well-trodden, as I share heartfelt and often nostalgic reflections on living slowly, simply, and in tune with the seasons…

Read more

a year ago · 27 likes · 20 comments · David Barton

Andrew Eales’ excellent post “Contradiction and Connection” makes an important related point:

Learning an instrument with a teacher in the real world, necessarily having to regularly and honestly communicate with somebody who is otherwise a stranger, offers relief from the declining opportunity in today’s world to develop emotional maturity.

Composer Simeon Walker just published a lovely, wryly humorous post about that wonderful feeling when you fully enter into a performance, and you feel the audience go with you.

The Cut Through: Simeon Walker

When Everything Clicks

“How did that happen…

Read more

a year ago · 3 likes · Simeon Walker

Challenging Reads

Rhonda Rizzo’s excellent post “Pianists and the self improvement trap” reminds us that what’s important is not always what we think it is.

The Curious Piano Teachers recently ran a symposium about the thorny issue of how much to charge for lessons. I was part of the panel, alongside Dr Sally Cathcart, Sharon Mark-Teggert and Angie Tse.

The symposium proved so popular with CPT members that we ended up doing a second, which you can find here.

That’s it!

If you made it this far, congratulations — you’ve earned yourself a reward sticker! Have a wonderful weekend.

Yours,
Garreth

They sight-read more fluently, move between chord positions more swiftly, and develop a deeper understanding of how music affects us so profoundly.

Understanding chords is such a transformative insight, but many of the commonly used theory books are full of technical jargon that often hinders understanding. My colleague Ruth Alberici and I wanted to change this, so we wrote our Piano Chords in All Major and Minor Keys workbook, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Art of Piano Education Awards.

Over 214 pages we show students all the chord positions for all 24 keys in easy-to-understand keyboard diagrams, and give useful guides to voice-leading, chord construction, and harmonic functions.

But even that massive book doesn‘t cover all aspects of practical keyboard harmony. That’s why I was delighted to find that Lona Kozik has published a wonderful book called The Ultimate Chord Workout Book for Piano Players.

A brief aside: creativity mentoring

There are just a couple of creativity mentoring slots available before the end of the term. Book yours here:

It’s brilliant!

I’ve been testing it out in my studio this week and it’s brilliant. I’m excited to tell you all about it!

Whereas Ruth and my book focuses on helping students to quickly visualise and play chords, Lona’s helps students to experience diatonic harmony by playing it at the piano.

The exercises begin simply, just like in our Piano Chords in All Major and Minor Keys workbook: the student plays all the root position chords of the key.

Then the exercises take a completely different direction

First, the student plays an exercise that cycles through each of those chords, moving through the diatonic circle of fifths (e.g. C, F, Bdim, Em, Am, Dm, G, C in the key of C major).

Next the student plays through each of the Primary Chords of the key in all three inversions, which is familiar territory from our Piano Chords in All Major and Minor Keys workbook.

Then the student plays the primary chords in a I-IV-I-V7-I sequence with perfect voice leading.

Next the student plays the primary chords in the 12-bar blues sequence.

Finally the student plays the chord sequence from Pachelbel’s Canon.

Over the course of 214 pages, the student can work through all 24 major and minor keys, experiencing the same diatonic harmony in all keys.

Compliments and complements

Sincere compliments to Lona Kozik for writing such a useful resource.

Once a student has played through these exercises, they have experienced diatonic harmony at the keyboard in a profound way: they’ve felt it in their hands, heard it with their ears, and—with your assistance—they will also understand how it works on an intellectual level.

When used in combination with Ruth and my Piano Chords in All Major and Minor Keys, the student will be able to visualise and quickly play these exercises in any key, regardless of their sight-reading ability, and the various appendices of our book help them understand the theory of diatonic harmony by explaining it in plain English. As such the two books complement each other really well.

How to use it

Whenever you‘re introducing a student to a new key, give them the relevant section from both Ruth and my Piano Chords in All Major and Minor Keys and Lona’s Ultimate Chord Workout Book.

1. First, show them the root position chord diagrams page from Piano Chords in All Major and Minor Keys and get them to play each of the chords.

2. Next, get them to play through Lona’s Circle of Fifths exercise.

3. Now play through Lona’s Primary Chord Inversions exercise.

4. Then explore the inversions diagrams in Piano Chords in All Major and Minor Keys.

5. Next, play through Lona’s Primary Chord Progressions exercise (the one that does I-IV-I-V7-I)

6. If you now want to start exploring 7th chords, use the 7th chord diagrams page from Piano Chords in All Major and Minor Keys.

7. Depending on the genre of the piece you’re teaching, play through either Lona’s 12 Bar Blues exercise or Pachelbel’s Canon exercise.

Once your student has completed all this, they’ll have a profound understanding of how chords look, feel and sound in the key they’re working in.

Get your hands on it!

The Ultimate Chord Workout Book for Piano Players is self-published on Lona’s Pink Piano Press, where you can also find her compositions (she’s a very accomplished composer) and other theory resources.

It is a 214 page ebook, perfect for digital studios, and it prints beautifully.

Buy The Ultimate Chord Workout

More about Lona Kozik

Lona is a teacher and composer originally from the US but based in Totnes in southern England. After establishing herself in the UK academic scene by teaching at various universities, she founded both the Totnes School of Piano (2012) and School of Music Theory (2019).

I interviewed for this site earlier this year. She’s fascinating and very likeable, and her answers are really insightful.

Whether you’re getting students ready for Grade 2, or just want to give them an accessible blues piece, Nikki Iles ‘Cheshire Cat’ is great fun.

It’s part of her wonderful Piano Tales for Alice collection, published by Elena Cobb’s EVC Music.

It’s also featured in the current LCM, ABRSM and RSL Classical Grade 2 syllabuses.

Introducing the piece

The first page of activities are designed to help you introduce the piece to your students.

Download the activities

By playing the duet with them, you:

• connect the scale to the piece

• get them familiar with the 4/4 swing feel

• develop their ensemble playing

The tick boxes encourage them to experiment, which is the beginning of getting creative.

Download the activities

Varying the piece

The second page is designed to be used once your student is already confident at playing the piece.

It helps them to think about what could be changed, which is the beginning of getting creative.

Download the activities

Enjoy getting creative!

If you’ve never done something like this in your studio before, come have a chat with me about it.

Why Mozart?

There’s a wonderful quote from Nannerl Mozart about her four-year-old brother Wolfgang Amadeus:

This is such an instructive model for pedagogues.

When students improvise variations on pieces they can already play, they:

• have fun

• deepen their understanding of music theory

• deepen their love for the original piece

• learn about creativity

In the Mozart Method, the teacher presents the student with creative options, but does not tell them what creative changes they should make. Why is this crucial?

Artists / Artisans

Eric Bluestine’s wonderful book The Ways Children Learn Music quotes a lecture from pedagogue Bennet Reimer, who said:

As it is now, in most performance situations in the schools, most, if not all, the artistic decisions are made by the teacher. So the teacher gets to be an artist, while the students only get to be artisans, that is, workers who carry out an artist’s instructions—like the brick layers who build the walls of a beautiful building, or the welders who put together a steel sculpture. These people make no artistic decisions, which is why they are not artists. Too many of our kids in performing groups are not given the experience of being musical artists, which is one important reasons that many of them drop performance when they graduate from high school.

Reimer was writing about teaching music in school, but many piano teachers will recognise what he’s talking about.

There are times when we do need to act as the artist and have the student act as artisan. Modelling high quality music making is an essential part of our work.

Nevertheless, we also need to actively create opportunities for our students to take over artistic control.

Doing so gives them ownership. It increases their self-worth. It deepens their knowledge. It makes them more fully realise themselves as human.

The Mozart Method gives us that opportunity.

Historical justification

The Mozart Method is a form of Variation.

Variation is a compositional approach that has a very fine pedigree!

That’s part of what I find so appealing about the Mozart Method: it gives us permission to get creative with classical music.

When teaching pop or jazz piano, some form of creativity is hard to avoid, whether it’s realising a lead sheet or improvising a solo.

Teachers with a classical focus, however, often don’t have a framework for teaching creativity.

This is an oversight. Creativity was part of so much of the classical tradition. Besides Mozart’s example, we know that many of our classical heroes were fantastic improvisers (Bach and Chopin are two obvious examples).

We also know that improvisation was a routine part of music making throughout the Baroque and Classical and early Romantic period, whether you were famous or not. There are many documented examples of improvisation competitions—indeed, Beethoven famously participated in one!

How it works

The Mozart Method is a simple process:

1. learn the piece

2. identify something that can be varied

3. play the piece with the variation

These variations can become very complex if you want them to be, but in most teaching situations, it’s most effective to keep them fairly simple.

In my Mozart Method workshop I outline some of the many ways we can create simple variations. Here’s a slide:

And here’s a video of the slides where I show you how I apply the rhythm ideas to Giga by Samuel Arnold, a piece on the current MTB Grade 1 syllabus.

I demonstrate how to apply pitch, harmonic and metre changes to pieces, then I get participants to create their own simple variations.

We then explore how you could use this in lessons, before discussing how you might incorporate it into a longer-term teaching plan.

It’s an approach

In that last sentence I’ve deliberately used the conditional tense: could, might.

That’s because the Mozart Method is an approach. It’s not prescriptive. You can do it how you like.

You can apply it to any pieces you might be teaching. You can spend as much or as little lesson time doing it as you want.

The point of the Mozart Method is to help you and your students to spot creative opportunities.

It doesn’t tell you exactly what to do.

It just opens up possibility.

It’s fun!

It has a serious pedagogical purpose.

The missing piece

Many classical teachers don’t know where to get started with teaching creativity. The Mozart Method is a wonderful introduction. I love teaching it!

If you are a teacher who’d like to learn it, please send me an email. I would be happy to help.

If you’re an educational provider who would like to include the Mozart Method in your course offering, get in touch to explore options.

If you ever want to submit a question, you can do so here:

Ask me a question

This time I’m answering questions on:

• Helping students to find confidence

• Helping students to find inspiration

• Finding time for creativity in lessons

• Developing a creativity practise routine

Finding confidence

"This is my first time teaching how to improvise. The student is in Adult Book 1 Unit 7, and she is 24. She is gifted. I am using Create First, because Scale & Chords Book 1 by Faber is not inspiring her. My student doesn't feel confident in improvising. Tomorrow I'll give her 3 notes to play, and fifths for left hand accompaniment. I'm grateful for your feedback."

Most adult students don't feel confident improvising, especially in the early stages of learning it. This is reasonable; over many years they've been taught to stay in control and improvisation feels dangerously close to losing control. I help my students relax by improvising myself and, when I play something that sounds bad, I say something like "whoops!" and laugh it off.

When using Create First, I highly recommend doing spending several weeks playing the duet version of the pieces before you start teaching her to play the solo version. This gives your student time to internalise the sound and feel of the music before they have to worry about co-ordinating both hands. Another advantage: playing the duets is a lot less stressful and a lot more fun!

Finding inspiration

When I try to get my students to improvise, sometimes they just look at me blankly and then just play random notes. What can I do to help them get inspired?

We’ve all been there! When you’re working with these students on an activity like those in Create First, I find it is best to give them very tight guardrails. This helps them to focus and develops their confidence.

The guardrails might be: giving them a rhythm to repeat and restrict them to just a few notes (e.g. C-D-E in C major). Do that for a couple of minutes, then swap to a different rhythm and a new set of notes (e.g. A-B-C in C major).

More generally, I find it’s best to figure out what pieces your students already love, and change them! Students find this really engaging. I will demonstrate how to do this in my Mozart Method workshop, detailed above.

Making time for creativity in lessons

I get many questions about how to make time for creativity in piano lessons. I’m not surprised — it can be tough!

I’ve written a series of articles on this very topic. Here they are:

Building a practise routine

This next question was really open and indeed was more of a comment, but they clearly wanted help as they left their email address. When I first replied I focused on building a routine (see below). In this post I’ve developed the theme a bit more to explore developing a creativity practise routine.

Here’s the question:

"I am starting over at the beginning and trying to build an effective practice routine."

Here’s how I answered at first:

The first thing to say is that it's never a bad idea to "start over". Actually you're probably not completely starting over, but rather revising old techniques and concepts that aren't yet fully internalised. That's great. I wish more people did it!

In general I think the best practice routine involves a mix of:

• warmups

• playing for pleasure

• studying the music you want to learn away from the piano

• focused practise time at the piano

Short regular practise sessions are generally better than long, irregular practice sessions. When I'm at my most effective, I'm practising for 10-20 minutes several times a day, including first thing in the morning and right before I go to bed.

Developing a creativity practise routine:

Perhaps the questioner wanted more help with developing a creative practise routine. This is a fascinating topic and I’m going to give a shout out to Hermes over on the Sound & Creativity Substack who writes excellently on this topic:

Sound + Creativity Newsletter

Unleash your creativity. Crush creative blocks. Finish more authentic music without relying on inspiration + motivation.

Here are my brief thoughts:

• commit to doing it regularly, ideally daily

• try to find a time of the day when your mind is fertile (mine is in the morning, but I know other composers who work best at night)

• as part of your routine, explore music by other composers that you love — what makes it work?

These strategies have worked for me.

Any questions?

Send them over! I love answering them.

Ask me a question about teaching creatively

If you’d like some help integrating creativity into your piano lessons, sign up for a free mentoring session with me!

Here are a few links featuring Juan’s work:

Piano Patterns in Harmony course

Transcript

Garreth

 Juan, why do you think creativity is important in piano lessons? So I think that's a big question.

Juan

Very difficult question. Creativity is everything to me. If you learn something, creating with the elements, you are going to learn these things in a much deeper way and understand in a more holistic way, too. If you can create with something, you are going to learn it better. As I mentioned before, I wasn't a creative pianist and teacher. I changed this 12 years ago or so. So now, creativity activities are on all my activities during the lessons. And I, I think, this must seem a little counter intuitive.

If you teach creativity, the students also are going to learn their piano pieces in their repertoire faster, because if the students has experience with the patterns in the piece and has created with these patterns, and has created their own music using this language in this particular piece they are going to understand the elements they are going to find in the score and they are going to memorize better. They're going to read later and perform better because they understood the music in the score and they are going to play The music much better.

And so creativity is very important. It develops divergent thinking. There are the convergent thinking and the divergent thinking and piano lesson must be, much more creativity because it's an art, but in piano there are not as much creativity during the lessons.

The difference between convergent and divergent maybe with a musical example. If you are playing a Beethoven sonata, the convergent thinking, may be " what do you think is the best way to play this four notes?" "With what kind of movement of your arms?" Or "what kind of expression do you think Beethoven want to express with this phrase?" Or whatever. This is convergent thinking.

And it's very necessary. I am not saying this isn't crucial. But also you can explore other. " do you think we can play this if Beethoven was, angry or sad or happy or hungry or tired?" Okay, "how can you change this phrase of Beethoven and play it in your own way?"

Can you add, some embellishing tones? Can you change this, instead of 3 4, play it in 4 4? Or can you change in a mixolydian, key? Or can you change this rhythm pattern? These two ways of thinking are going to help our students a lot not only in music, but in their lives, because they have to work on these two kinds of thinking. Most of the piano lessons sadly are focused on convergent thinking that it's okay, but we have to incorporate more of this creative thinking.

To improve this in our students is going to help them as musicians as with their lives. Because if you are a creative person, you are going to be able to live your life in a better way. I want you to have more open mind and you can, lift your way to a full life.

Garreth

I think one of the joys of teaching piano is that when you do it well, you are teaching students about how to live their lives and how to approach things, how to solve complicated problems. I actually think piano lessons have a moral component in them, although I never talk about morals with my students, but I am showing them how to approach difficult, complex things and handle it with grace and intelligence. And I think that's a wonderful thing to do for, a child particularly, but for anyone. Just coming back to the convergent and divergent thinking, as you said, it's counterintuitive that because convergent thinking, our question is, how do we get closer to what Beethoven wanted?

When we do divergent thinking, you would think that it leads you away from Beethoven. But my experience is that when I've done divergent thinking on, whatever passage it is of Beethoven's Sonata, and I've thought about how he could have done it differently, I then have a much greater appreciation for why he's done it in the way he has done it.

And then I feel closer to him. And then I want to honor it more. But I also want to do it in a way that feels alive, and I'm not just recreating. I've had a dialogue with him, and he's the strongest voice in that dialogue, but I can also contribute something. It is counterintuitive, but it's extremely powerful.

It's hard for some people to get their heads around, I think, isn't it? Particularly when you've grown up being trained to think convergently, "how do I recreate what Bach wanted?"

Piano Patterns in Harmony course

I’ve been a paying member of Vibrant Music Teaching (VMT) for nearly 18 months and I think it’s great.

There’s a vast amount of material in there and it’s growing all the time. If I ever need a resource for teaching a particular theory concept, I always check the VMT catalogue and I almost always find something useful.

The resources are colourful, well-thought through, and fun to use. They appeal particularly to children and tweens, but I’ve used them successfully with teenagers and adults too.

I can’t go into detail on everything that’s included (because there’s loads!) but I do want to draw your attention to the creativity resources.

Creative cornucopia

There are so many creative resources in Vibrant Music Teaching! Here’s a screengrab of the results page for “composition”:

And here’s just some of the results for “improvisation”:

Rather than exploring everything, I’m just going to highlight a few of my favourite resources. I’ll cover:

• Lesson plans

• Composition workbooks

• Scales creativity resources

Creativity lesson plans

First lessons

It’s really useful to have a written plan for a first lesson, and especially good when they’re really well thought through. Nicola has prepared two template lesson plans for beginners aged respectively 5 and 12 years old and both plans are fantastic. There are loads of creative activities and the plans ensure that musicianship is established right from the beginning.

(Note: all images are linked to the Vibrant Music Teaching site, but these links are only accessible to VMT subscribers. If you subscribe, come back to this article and you’ll be able to click through to easily find the resource in question).

10 week long “Composer Cultivation” lesson plan

This excellent resource shows us how to incorporate improvisation and composition work into a term of lessons for early intermediate students. The plans are 20 minutes long, which means in a 45 minute lesson there’s plenty of time left for “traditional” piano lesson work like etudes, reading and repertoire.

The plan is really well structured. It begins by introducing simple creative activities to get your students thinking about melody, rhythm and chords. In later weeks the students attempt quick composition projects with a particular focus: melody, harmony, lyrics (songs), stories, articulation, structure, and accompaniment patterns. These are quick, fun, and easy to do, but they also cover really crucial creative concepts.

Composition workbooks

There’s a lovely set of composition workbooks with a variety of topics:

• Fantastic Fiction

• Animal Menagerie

• Circus Collective

• Poppy Poppish

These are primarily designed for group classes but also work well individually. Students are guided through the process of finding inspiration and creating a 16-bar piece. This works particularly well when used in combination with the 10-week Composer Cultivation lesson plan mentioned above — the workbooks are suggested for use from week 7 onwards.

Scales creativity resources

There are several good resources for getting students to use scales creatively but the flip books are my absolute favourite — and they’re a big hit in my studio!

They’re really fun. You and your student(s) combine the flippable pages to make a nice accompaniment pattern and get a good melodic idea.

The illustrations are really fun. My students really enjoy making funny combinations, which then leads to interesting musical results.

I love the fact there’s a Phrygian version (an awesome mode that doesn’t get enough love). It has some really juicy chord combinations that I really enjoy.

I find these work really well for students of all levels.

• With elementary students I usually get them to play the melody, while I play the accompaniment they’ve chosen.

• With late-elementary and early-intermediate students, they play through each of the 3 voices, while I play the other two (e.g. they might play the bassline while I play the chords and melody, or they play the melody while I play the chords and bassline)

• With late-intermediate and advanced students, I get them to do 2 or more parts at once, while I do the other one.

It’s extremely quick, taking no more than 5 minutes, and the music can be taught by reading or by rote.

Conclusion

Even though creativity isn’t the main focus of Vibrant Music Teaching, the site has a lot of high quality creative resources on offer.

Besides the creative resources, the VMT subscription includes a wealth of material: technique, theory, repertoire, practise guides… the list goes on! Outside of the subscription, she also runs an excellent YouTube channel and the Vibrant Music Teaching Podcast, both of which are free of charge.

I’ve used many of the resources and regularly listen to the podcast and Nicola’s teaching experience and knowledge is evident throughout.

Her advice is practise-centred, humane, and very kind. I don’t know her personally but she strikes me as a very impressive individual.

If you’ve never checked out Vibrant Music Teaching, I encourage you to do so!

Are you a VMT member? What resources did you enjoy? Let me know in the comments below.

Leave a comment

Interested?

Nicola introduces Vibrant Music Teaching below:

I hope you enjoy the interview! Have you taken ABRSM’s Grade 6 Theory Course? Leave a comment below!

Leave a comment

Links

Lona prepares students of all ages to take ABRSM theory exams via her portal schoolofmusictheory.com. I recommend checking it out!

Lona's School of Music Theory

Lona’s Grade 6 course can be found here: ‘Mastering Grade 6 Music Theory: Composition, Harmony, and Analysis’.

Lona's Grade 6 Theory Course

Lona also offers a fascinating course on realising Figured Bass, perfect for harmony and improvisation enthusiasts!

Lona's Figured Bass Fundamentals

Lona Kozik: A Short Biography

Lona has had a fascinating career as a composer as a pianist and composer. Having studied at multiple institutions including West Chester University, University of Pennsylvania, and Mills College before settling in Devon, UK in 2003. After establishing herself in the UK academic scene teaching at various universities, she founded both the Totnes School of Piano (2012) and School of Music Theory (2019). Her creative work spans acoustic and electronic music, with notable releases including her piano etudes "Fast Jump" (2009) and the improvisational album "Spelaeology" (2015), and her compositions have been performed across Europe, North America, and the UK.

Transcript

Garreth

Hello and welcome to Piano Creativity. I'm delighted to be interviewing Lona Kozik, who runs the School of Music Theory, which is available at schoolofmusictheory.com. Lona's a fascinating teacher who's been working as a pianist and teacher for a long time. I came across her through the Curious Piano Teachers, and some of my colleagues had taken courses with her and raved about how clearly and enthusiastically she explains things.

I was checking out her website, and several things drew my eye. One of them was a sentence she wrote in her "About Me", which says, "I believe that music theory is the key that unlocks all musical treasures. It can be engaging in its own right, but music theory is a means towards greater musical expression and creativity."

And I really wholeheartedly agree with that. There was another post about grade six theory, which we're going to talk about in a bit as well.

Lona

Thanks for asking me to come along. I love to talk shop.

Garreth

I was fascinated to read about how much you like the ABRSM grade six theory exam. Can you explain?

Yes, I can explain, and it surprises me as well, because I'm not someone who usually is into the grades, either for piano, which I also teach, or for theory. If a student wants to do it, great, if they're ready, we'll do it, but I'm not one to chase it. When I very first started teaching theory online, I did my very first course and then people said to me, please, will you do a grade six course?

I thought, oh, how interesting. I got it from more than one person. So I thought, okay, this must be some kind of thing. So I get a grade six pass paper and I open it and I was like, Oh, that's why. Because having been a piano teacher for a while in the UK, I was used to getting students ready for grade five and understood, all of that, but hadn't really delved much past.

I think one person had come to me for a bit of grade six when I very first got here. Exams weren't really on my radar at that point. But when I opened the book, I saw why people were asking this because the jump from grade five to grade six is enormous. So I started teaching people grade six and yes, you've seen that blog post, why I really love the grade six exam.

In a nutshell, I really value students learning by doing. With music theory, there's a trap that everyone falls into, which is it can feel very aside from music making You can even get such wonderful textbooks.

As a piano student, I was required to take theory. I did not have an interest in theory theory only became engaging when we were linking it to music making, either we were listening and analyzing a score or doing a composition exercise.

I might have learned about Neapolitan chords, and so the assignment for End of Term is write a sort of 16 bar piece that includes a Neapolitan, and you have to resolve it correctly I personally found that with those pieces, They weren't really my pieces.

I was not a composer at that point, but they started to grow. They started to get bigger and bigger. I love the way the first three questions are composition based. And they're asking you to demonstrate your deep understanding of the language through using it.

The first question is harmonizing a melody, and you have to choose chords. That seems pretty simple, pretty straightforward. But you also have to choose inversions.

That's essentially writing a bass line. And it has to be a good one.

It can't just be random. Depending on the style of the melody. Certain inversions you want to stay away from unless they're being used specifically for something. It's wonderful that we're actually making a bit of music, but we're diving very deep into the language.

And that's all music theory ever is. It's observing a musical language and codifying it, so that if you want to write in that style, or if you're playing that music, You can unpack all the details of that music music comes to us through the air and it's kind of magical.

It's intuitive. We can't hold it down. We can't point to it in a gallery we can't open the book and read it. It comes to us through the air. It's already quite an intuitive practice by nature and theory gives you those really specific tools where you can actually be very specific and point to this is the feature of the style that exam asks you to demonstrate it's a weird exam because that first question you could get any sort of melody more folk based or a children's melody yes, you want to use diatonic harmony, but it doesn't have to be, the style of a classical composer.

Then you go on to the second question, which is four part writing. and soul of classical music, classical with a lowercase c, of course, because this is what all composers of the style trained with, and still do in certain places.

You're given a baseline with some figures under it. Now you're not choosing the harmonies. They're chosen for you. The baseline is written and you have to realize the soprano. You have to write a good soprano line. Fill in the inner parts alto and tenor, and use good voice leading.

So you're diving, you're digging down. Even deeper, which is so much fun. And the way that I teach it, I tend to avoid handing over a list of avoid this, do that. We get there in the end. I give enough that we can get started. And then every week we look at what people have written and we talk about it.

People will remember things that way and they'll remember the reasons why something is Not what you want to do. Maybe more like this kind of thing I think of it as like painters. I don't know anything about painting but I know like I sometimes watch and when they make mistakes on a canvas they'll just paint over it.

Yeah, well and it's it's like these layers And that makes the painting. Without those layers, you don't get that painting. It's almost like building up this picture of what is the heart of classical music. How does this harmony really move? How does it make drama?

How does it make us feel anything? And we go on to the third question, which I think is the hardest, and people call that the composition question. You're given an opening melody and you have to finish it. You have to do, between 8 and 12 bars for a particular instrument, so you've got to know that instrument, you've got to know a little bit about orchestration.

And then the last two questions are score analysis, which are really straightforward. That's more of the textbook style theory, but I just think taking people through that progression really allows for a deep engagement that Other types of examination kind of don't, you can really get into the nitty gritty of things and you can really understand what music theory is about in a meaningful way.

Garreth

And then when they encounter a piece that's written in the style, or even influenced by it, then they have such clear understanding of the creative decisions the composer's made, and why they feel the way they do. Even an appoggiatura that's a feeling, isn't it?

Lona

Yes. That tension and resolution many student pianists see that and don't understand why it makes them feel the way they do or why it has to be played in the way it does.

This can affect your playing. You can make good decisions. You can understand the architecture of the piece you're playing, your role as a musician, these are old pieces, if you're doing Bach, Mozart, whatever you're doing, two, three hundred years old, that needs some interpreting, if you know the style well enough, you can, put things over almost like an actor, you can make decisions and of course it's important to have good intuition.

And of course, a lot of this comes naturally to a musician, but, being able to articulate those things in specific ways. sharpens the tool, that's why I think it's the kind of study that will get you past a good intermediate into more advanced playing.

I also had a student, he's now doing the beta round of Trinity diploma. he went through grade six, seven, eight with me. at the end of grade eight. He told me, this is such a great comment. He said, “I go to a concert now I really love Baroque music and I can hear everything now.”

And I thought, imagine you love that music anyway, which I did as a teenager, I was trying to find pieces with Continuo 'cause I thought it sounded cool, on the radio. not knowing what it was. so you're drawn to it anyway, but then all of a sudden you get HD.

It's like listening HD. You can really hear everything and it just makes everything sharper and clear. So even just listening is enhanced.

Garreth

I've experienced that several times with my wife, who's, an artist. She has a really intense connection to music and she loves it. Sometimes we're listening things together and I'm like, oh the bass line there's really cool and I realized that she can't pick out the bass line or hear those little details. That's a great illustration of how understanding really enriches our enjoyment of something. It should be about loving music. Ultimately, that's the point, isn't it? it enables us to love it more.

Lona

Absolutely. And I think if theory is taught well, it's generating all those discussions and the questions come up then you can dig in really deep to that thing that you love already. It just makes you love it more,

Garreth

from my understanding of the exam, it's very focused on, writing in good grammar, Is that a fair comment?

Lona

you have to understand, the contrapuntal principles, of music, but that carries on into the classical and romantic styles for sure. And you have to understand, diatonic harmony and the way that it's weighted, the gravity and how it works.

Within a scale, why do we feel moved this way or that? Why does the modulation make us feel that way, and it's interesting because that's cultural. That's not universal, but it's very embedded in Western culture.

Garreth

I remember doing a lot of that stuff at university and finding it very dry, very dry. The tutor had been teaching for such a long time, he sort of lost interest in engaging with another round of students who didn't really understand it. I found it really uninteresting and uninspiring. I had an analysis teacher who was so enthusiastic about analysis that I fell in love with analysis. the analysis I did at university really helped me to understand how I wanted to work as a composer. Those two examples are illustrative of the two kind of schools of teaching music theory.

There's the very dry one and there's the engagement one that teaches people how to fall in love with music. My question for you is how do we as teachers explain it in an engaging way? How do you do it in the course?

Lona

So you can buy workbooks and our practice stage we've done loads of stuff before that So I'm interested first of all engaging with source so Bach chorales or whatever it is that we're looking at as much as I can but I know that people also want to be told things. They don't want to jump in blind. Not a lot of people want to do that.

I went to the University of Pennsylvania for composition for my PhD, and I had a TA-ship, which meant I assisted a professor with his class.

Garreth

Oh, cool.

Lona

I was lucky enough to assist Christopher Hastie, who's now at Harvard and wrote an amazing book on rhythm and how important rhythm is in music, which I think is something we sometimes ignore because we're looking for harmony.

He had a class that sonata allegro form, so first movement sonata form, and he did not want me to stand up and talk about exposition, development, recapitulation. I was not to talk about any of that.

We were looking at Haydn string quartets. marking off phrases and discussing what was happening. he would have the lectures and then I had the twice a week work sessions. It's a principle of teaching that if you know something and then ask a question and you know the answer at that level, the student knows that "why don't you just tell me?!".

They don't want the Socratic method. But I followed his, I mean, I was working for him, not the other way around. The students knew, they're like, we know that you know. I said, I do know, and I was taught differently to this, and then I said, trust me, this is much better. Because if you stand up and you say, this is how Sonata Allegro form goes, then we're always looking for it.

That's not always how it goes. you might be surprised to know that there are plenty of three and five bar phrases in Haydn. If you can engage directly with the source and dive quite deep and then extract from that all sorts of things, this is useful in terms of really understanding the form, but it's also useful for composers and performers.

This is useful for everyone. So I try to make it contextualized in that way and engaged in that way with actual music.

Garreth

Yeah, so the music of the great composers is the first thing that you look at And then you expand from that into the rules?

Lona

Not always, no, as much as I can, I appreciated Chris's, putting them right in the deep end, it was fun, they were a great group so they went along with it, I usually kick off grade six with a workshop that everyone's invited to, and I teach principle first. I teach an overarching harmonic principle that can apply to everything grade six and beyond. We return to this idea throughout grade six, seven, eight, and even diploma.

I think there are, you can also engage with source material or make it contextualized within music making, whether that's listening or playing, but I think also it's good to just teach concepts I know a lot of people rely on workbooks and I find that the workbooks are exercises and feel cut off from things. They really need to come after you've already had plenty of time working through concepts if you're leading a piano student let's say you want to get them through to grade five they should already have fluency of chords starting with primary chords in different keys and it really is getting to like what can we do to make let's say thinking in a key which is what harmony is a lived experience, something that's in your hands, keyboard harmony, even if you're doing something as simple as teaching structures of scales, you should have already done plenty of scale playing at the piano, I noticed that students can learn, this from teaching people grade 5 separate from piano.

They'll know like a harmonic minor scale, but they don't understand the theory structure of it. If it's already in their fingers, then that's a big help. Yeah. So I think it's just trying to contextualize that teaching in various ways.

Garreth

And because you run, online courses for people who want to take this exam I'm curious about how the practicalities of studying with you on one of those courses works.

How long does it last and how do you teach it, a conversation or is there, exercises, how does it work?

Lona

For the current grade six course, each question is a module, and there are eight week modules, and the first four weeks are, there are lessons, you know, so I might teach concepts, and then there are exercises, then we have four weeks of practice, and the exercises are based on the exam question.

And then we have, I give weekly feedback, so students submit their work, and then I give live feedback. Well, it's either live or, on video, but it's personal and detailed. . In my mind, we're sketching things out. the biggest challenge for me as a teacher is to make everyone feel okay with that because it means doing things that you're just taking a stab and it might be wrong.

Actually, I've said to people, it's kind of cool when it's wrong because then we get to really talk about the concept. If I just delivered, the lesson and then everybody got it right. we wouldn't be able to dive in, so it's getting people on board with that learning process. Harmonizing melodies, four part writing, melody writing, eight weeks. I look at it as four plus four. it's a combination of online self study, lesson videos, worksheets, PDF notes, and the main thing is doing the work, doing the exercise, and then talking about it either in a live Q & A where we meet. So it used to be Fridays, Friday mornings. It still is, Fridays. And then sometimes by video. if someone wants to sign up, separately from an incoming group. They can do that, and then they submit work to me when they're ready, and then I feedback video. and then the score reading, well, it's pretty much the same thing, but with the score reading, we go to the workbook because, they've got all the examples, and it's set up the way the exam's set up. that's how we do it.

Garreth

Is there a minimum or maximum group size? What can people expect from their peers in the class?

Lona

If they're in a live group, I keep it to about four or five, so that we can take an hour to 90 minutes and look at everyone's work for the week. that's very useful because, you can see what other people have done and things come up that you never thought of, it's a very enriching experience in that way. People have also done it by themselves, and that's fine too.

if people can't attend the courses at a specific time, there's a flexible way people can still join in.

So I initially only ever ran it live, but now it's going to have two options, the thing about running it live is I would launch it maybe once, maybe twice a year.

It just depends on the workload of the year, and people were waiting a long time for it to come around again. And I thought that's not the best thing. If someone's motivated, they should really go in. So then I made it available. I thought, No, actually, we could also do this in a slightly different model.

They're still getting feedback. It's really good.

Garreth

and is it mostly piano teachers that are taking it?

Lona

When I first started, advertising, I was in the music theory groups. So it wasn't just, but I was also in the piano group.

I let everyone know this is happening. I ended up with lots of piano teachers, I've had a few. one studio musician, one guitarist. I've had an amateur piano player, but he's very good. He's taking his Trinity diploma this year. he's a pharmacist, another person who's more like a hobbyist and, a lot of piano teachers.

Garreth

One of the things that my colleagues who've taken your course were really complimentary about was how, clearly you explained things and they didn't feel stupid when you were explaining these complicated concepts to them. The other thing that they felt was, some of them were a little bit nervous, like they felt that they're not confident or not good at theory. You've been able to give them a confidence boost and that was another big feature of the feedback Which I thought was really lovely that's a great bit of feedback to give you personally I guess I'm wondering how do you do that?

Lona

I love to get to concepts and I find that interesting. the way I see it is the people who have come along, find it interesting too. It might be something about a philosophy of teaching that you're just further along the timeline, but you've gathered the people who are like you, who want to talk about this, right?

And I think you talked about your teacher at uni poor guy. that can have an effect you can read that in a teacher This is why teachers have to do a lot of self care and time so that the energy is there I love hearing that because I Remember that and I remember getting quite You know, I grew up, I grew up in an Air Force family, so, just pull your bootstraps up and do it anyway.

And I remember feeling that I had to do that at first, because it is scary, one thing I noticed was, I had a couple of really fabulous teachers who made me feel that way. maybe I'm modeling after them,

It was just fun to be there with them. they knew more. But I was invited to give my observations and I learned a lot from doing that. So I think, yeah, That's a high compliment

Garreth

I've had teachers who've done that for me, and their impact is enormous. Really transformative. And I think that's something as teachers. If we've been lucky enough to have that, we really need to pass that on.

Lona

Yes, what you said about transformative is the key, and that's what I would want for anyone.

I do think that's what you can get from studying theory, and whatever else you do next, you're gonna have that there. That's a huge asset. I have also been in classrooms where I've felt like the person at the front maybe they were tired and fed up and you felt stupid I just pulled up my bootstraps and said I'm gonna do this Anyway, get determined any teacher would love to hear that, but I really specifically want to welcome everyone who may not, for whatever reason, feel welcome all the time in those circles.

Thank you for telling me that. That's wonderful.

Garreth

I guess another line of questioning I have is about whether, does every student go on to take the exam if they've taken a course?

Lonna

One lady was just doing it for fun. it was during lockdown that she signed up. She's like, what else am I going to do? I enjoyed having her in the class. She got really, advanced, too. She did wonderfully. She would have done very high pass. she did take six, but didn't take one of them. another lady already had all of her qualifications.

She already had a very high level understanding of theory. I was interested that she had taken the class in the first place. somebody else, very similar, already had a lot under his belt and composed music already, They just took it for enrichment or further development or just wanted to be in on the conversation, I guess.

Garreth

Do you think it's a good course for someone interested in composition to take?

Lona

Yes. I think with composition, it is very good because you just have to choose a discipline to study. It doesn't even matter what it is. you're just learning to deal with the elements of music and to make some kind of structure that will stand up.

When I was at Penn, they were very traditional and it was heavy on style study. and we hated it and complained all the Never saw the benefit until much later. So there you go, there's another lesson for teachers.

but we had to do very specific, like, you know, a sonata in the style of Mozart, a song in the style of Schubert. We want this piece in the style of Rachmaninoff. And so you had to really hone in on that composer. Complained the whole first year. by the second or third year, it was just how we were doing things.

And it makes you quick in all sorts of ways. it makes you quick in decoding language. It makes you quick in being able to wield the language. music is a language, everyone. And when you study theory and when you study style and when you get into the very deep understanding of style and how that's made, you can wield that language in any direction you want to go in,

So, it doesn't even matter. You just got to choose a discipline. if you're more drawn to jazz, Study Jazz Harmony, there's loads to study there. if you like classical music, study classical music. I had a semester, about 15 weeks, looking at Indian classical music, looking at the counterpoint of that, and that was very fruitful study.

I don't go around composing that, because that's not my language, but it really sharpened my language. a composer needs to get stuck in with as much as they're attracted to.

Garreth

And I guess one of the things that I struggled with when I was taking that kind of course was just that it was, like you said, a style study or how to… the rebellious part of me was like, but I don't want to follow the rules and I don't want to be Beethoven or whatever. With a bit more maturity, I can say that it's really valuable to learn these styles. but I also think if you go too far in the style direction can be quite deadly to any sort of sense of spontaneity. And so I guess one of my questions is, how do we leave space for students to be themselves while also trying to explain to them why it's important to learn the rules of whatever we're teaching them?

Lona

spontaneity, do you mean...?

Garreth

Or maybe personal… I think every composer has their own personality that sort of becomes uncovered, like a sculpture comes out of a big block of stone. Part of the work that I really enjoy with my Composition or Improvisation students is figuring out who they are what their interests are and how that's been shaped by their background. The student that jumps to mind is a Japanese student of mine who I've been doing loads of Riemenschneider, Bach Chorales with and she loves it.

We’ve been doing that alongside stuff that explores what she's curious about and I've opened up that world of Bach to her, which isn't something she was interested in before, but I'm trying to allow her to be who she is. I know that's not what you're trying to cover in the course, but as a general principle, when we're teaching students to follow rules, how do we show them that they can also break those rules and be themselves?

Lona

I think it's just two separate tracks, two separate things that are, so it's like teaching the composer, but bringing out the composer. it's a little bit like if you want to run at the Olympics, you have to do a certain set of. exercises and strengthening and that sort of thing. the exercises and the strengthening is whatever discipline you're looking at.

So it could be the Bach Chorales or it could be something else. one way that I've done in the past with, students at university is to ask them to map out a constellation of their influences. there is a composer, John Harbison an American composer, and he said that we as composers are all at the top of our, musical family tree and you get to choose who's in your family.

Now, I liked that idea, but I'm not at the top of my tree because Ligeti is in my tree and he's seriously at the top. So maybe it's more like a constellation. their influences, what they're interested in, and it's going to influence their voice, but it's becoming aware of that.

I think all of this is about bringing things into awareness. you don't want to lose touch with the intuitive side of music, but for me, That's always there. I don't think that having a disciplined track where you're really rigorously studying a style is going to endanger.

I don't feel like it endangers the intuitive side. As a teacher, as long as both sides are given equal attention, then it's fine. I have come across people who feel almost superstitious about that. Like working in the theater, I worked with someone who wrote musicals, but he didn't know how to write things down.

they employed me, at 3, 000 for the summer, to write it down. I said to him, you should learn to do this because it's not hard the music director was saying, no, it'll ruin your gift. in my head, I was going, it really won't. I promise.

Garreth

it'll probably enhance your gift.

Lona

I think so, because then you just write it down and nobody has to pay me. I mean, I loved being paid and hanging out with the theatre people, but, you come across that fear that it's going to somehow negatively impact, The creative life. the creative life is something slightly different and it needs its own kind of nurturing, and I really believe that composers need both, because you also need the rigor of being able to wield your tools so that you can articulate your voice.

And even develop it, because I think intuitive musicians, not all, we could bring out examples. There's the Beatles, there's Pavarotti, my belief is that, Most of the time, if you're purely intuitive and you never learn past that, you might be missing out on developing your own voice, being able to write in that style or this style means that you can understand how to Develop your own style it takes time I would look at that as two different tracks and give plenty of I don't know I I'm sure you give sort of not assignments so much but nurturing that creative side and it's it's a totally different thing from the chorales.

So it's nice to hear that you're doing both with the students and that she's enjoyed the chorales.

Garreth

It was really fun because I wanted her to have that understanding and I wasn't sure whether she would enjoy it. She actually requested it. Even if I'm like, no, we need to stop thinking about something else. She's like, can I do another chorale? I'm like, oh, that's great.

Lona

It's really interesting. I did go to California to study improvisation for a few years. that was very different because we weren't trying to improvise in the style of anyone. In fact, it was free improvisation.

we were very much trying to get away from. A lot of things the guiding discipline was learning to listen and learning to be in a moment and learning to let your music be part of that moment. that's different from composition, but there's a relationship to it. if there's any discipline for a composer, it's learning to sit with yourself.

It's learning to be alone. It's learning to listen, to tap into those. Deeper sources, your intuition. You can develop your intuition. There are ways. that's very different from Bach chorales.

Garreth

Yeah, and it's not the focus of your course either is it? But I love getting that broader perspective as well.

Yeah. I think my camera froze for a little bit of that. Hopefully I wasn't pulling too ridiculous a face as it did.

Lona

You never know.

Garreth

This has been really fascinating. I'm sure everyone who's watching will also be really fascinated as well.

thank you for taking the time to talk to us about it. I will put links in the post below to how they can find out more about your work and your interesting biography and, to sign up for the course.

Lona

Thank you.

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I love music theory, but I certainly didn’t learn to love it by slogging my way through ABRSM’s Music In Theory In Practise books. Indeed, like so many of us, I only did it because it was a requirement to continue through ABRSM’s grades.

ABRSMs Grade 6 Theory exam is substantially different to Grades 1-5. And having talked it through with Lona, I kinda wanna study it myself!

I’ll post the full interview soon. In this preview she explores the strengths of the exam syllabus and makes a real case for learning its material.

Find out more about Lona’s course ‘Mastering Grade 6 Music Theory: Composition, Harmony, and Analysis’.

Lona's Grade 6 Theory Course

Transcript

 Garreth

I was fascinated to read about how much you like the ABRSM grade six theory exam. I'm really curious what you like about it. Can you explain?

Lona

 Yes, I can explain, and it surprises me as well, because I'm not someone who usually is into the grades, either for piano, which I also teach, or for theory. If a student wants to do it, great, if they're ready, we'll do it, but I'm not one to chase it. When I very first started teaching theory online, I did my very first course and then people said to me, please, will you do a grade six course?

I thought, oh, how interesting. And I thought, why? I got it from more than one person. So I thought, okay, this must be some kind of thing. So I get a grade six pass paper and I open it and I was like, Oh, that's why.

In a nutshell, I think I really value students learning by doing. I love the way the first three questions are composition based. And they're asking you to demonstrate your deep understanding of the language through using it.

The first question is harmonizing a melody, and you have to choose chords. That seems pretty simple, pretty straightforward. But you also have to choose inversions.

That's essentially writing a bass line. And it has to be a good one.

It can't just be random. Depending on the style of the melody. Certain inversions you want to stay away from unless they're being used specifically for something. It's wonderful that we're actually making a bit of music, but we're diving very deep into the language.

And that's all music theory ever is. It's observing a musical language and codifying it, so that if you want to write in that style, or if you're playing that music, you can unpack all the details of that music.

Then you go on to the second question, which is four part writing. and soul of classical music, classical with a lowercase c, of course, because this is what all composers of the style trained with, and still do in certain places.

You're given a baseline with. Some figures under it. Now you're not choosing the harmonies. They're chosen for you. The baseline is written and you have to realize the soprano. You have to write a good soprano line. Fill in the inner parts alto and tenor, and use good voice leading.

So you're diving, you're digging down. Even deeper, which is so much fun. And the way that I teach it, I tend to avoid handing over a list of avoid this, do that. We get there in the end. I give enough that we can get started. And then every week we look at what people have written and we talk about it.

People will remember things that way and they'll remember the reasons why something is Not what you want to do. Maybe more like this kind of thing I think of it as like painters. I don't know anything about painting but I know like I sometimes watch and don't even make mistakes on a canvas. They'll just paint over it.

Yeah, well and it's like these layers And that makes the painting. Without those layers, you don't get that painting. It's almost like building up this picture of what is the heart of classical music. How does this harmony really move? How does it make drama?

How does it make us feel anything? And we go on to the third question, which I think is the hardest, and people do call that the composition question. You're given an opening melody and you have to finish it. You have to do, between 8 and 12 bars for a particular instrument, so you've got to know that instrument, you've got to know a little bit about orchestration.

I just think taking people through that progression really allows for a deep engagement that other types of examination kind of don't, that's why I love it because you can really get into the nitty gritty of things and you can really understand what music theory is about in a meaningful way.

I love music theory, but I certainly didn’t learn to love it by slogging my way through ABRSM’s Music In Theory In Practise books. Indeed, like so many of us, I only did it because it was a requirement to continue through ABRSM’s grades.

ABRSMs Grade 6 Theory exam is substantially different to Grades 1-5. And having talked it through with Lona, I kinda wanna study it myself!

I interviewed Lona in January and over the course of our brief chat she enthusiastically made the case for learning theory. As she puts it, once you understand music theory, “it’s like listening in HD”.

I’ll be sharing the full video soon but here’s a little clip to whet your appetite. (Transcript below!)

Find out more about Lona’s course ‘Mastering Grade 6 Music Theory: Composition, Harmony, and Analysis’.

Lona's Grade 6 Theory Course

Transcript

Lona

That's why I love it because you can really get into the nitty gritty of things and you can really understand what music theory is about in a meaningful way.

Garreth

And then when they encounter a piece that's written in the style, or even influenced by it, then they have a clear understanding of the creative decisions the composer's made, and why they feel the way they do. Even an appoggiatura that's a feeling, isn't it?

Lona

Yes.

Garreth

…that tension and resolution many student pianists see that and don't understand why it makes them feel the way they do or why it has to be played in the way it does.

Lona

That's right. This can affect your playing. You can make good decisions. You can understand the architecture of the piece you're playing.

In a way, your role as a musician, these are old pieces, if you're doing Bach, Mozart, whatever you're doing, two, three hundred years old, that needs some interpreting, doesn't it? If you know the style well enough, you can, put things over almost like an actor, you can make decisions and of course it's important to have good intuition.

And of course, a lot of this comes naturally to a musician, but, being able to articulate those things in specific ways. Sharpens the tool, that's why I think it's the kind of study that will get you past a good intermediate into more advanced playing.

I also had a student, he's now doing the beta round of Trinity diploma. He went through grade six, seven, eight with me. At the end of grade eight, he told me, this is such a great comment, I couldn't believe he said it. He said, “I go to a concert now I really love Baroque music and I can hear everything now.” It's like listening HD. You can really hear everything and it just makes everything sharper and clear. So even just listening is enhanced.

Piano Patterns in Harmony course

Transcript

Garreth

What advice would you give to teachers who are nervous about incorporating creativity into their teaching?

Juan

Yes, this is a very good question because most of the teachers, are scared about incorporating creativity.

I think most of them are scared because they don't know how to improvise. They don't know how to do it. They are afraid to do this kind of work with their students. But everybody can improvise and you don't need to be an expert to teach how to improvise to a student.

I started teaching improvisation when I discovered Forrest Kinney's work. And I didn't know much about improvisation. I improve, at the same time as my students. You don't need to be an expert if you, know how to improvise just black keys, but start using this your students. You can learn, with your students, as I have mentioned.

Another advice I want to say to teachers that it's not difficult to improvise. I used to thought that there were people that that could improvise. There are, there are people as me that couldn't improvise, but I was wrong. Everybody can improvise from the very beginning. I encourage people to do this with their students.

They are going to learn, in a more fun way that you are going to enjoy with your students more. You are going to have more tools for your piano lessons, maybe. And I also encourage if there are something there that wants to incorporate improvisation activities and they're scared, maybe start using with students that are not making a big progress, maybe a student that is at the same level week after week, let's start with those students. Try different ideas with this kind of students. And if you see that it's working with these students, maybe it is going to work with more, students that are making faster progress.

Garreth

That's very wise. Yeah, that's really good advice. Because that's the thing, when we're just getting started, we don't need to be improvising like a great jazz pianist. We can just do little changes, and we don't have to immediately start teaching everybody to improvise, do we?

We can just do it with a few people. I always think starting small is really great advice. In all endeavours, actually. Just dip your toe in, and then try it out.

‘Pluto’ is a good-natured jazzy piece that reminds me of the Disney character of the same name. It’s part of her popular Up-Grade! series and a popular selection in the LCM’s Grade 1 syllabus.

How to teach a “Creative Introduction”

First, download the PDF and print off a copy for you and your student. (Feel free to print as many as you like!)

This new series of Creative Introductions are in two parts.

The first part is a duet designed for when you start teaching the piece. It helps your student understand the tonality and metre of the piece. They’ll play the scale (or scales!) in time with an accompaniment based on the original piece. There are a bunch of challenges to complete, including improvising, and I’ve included some suggestions to get them started with improvising.

The second part is designed to be used after your student has learnt the piece. It prompts them to think about how they could change it. This is a great opportunity to get them improvising and to review theory topics. Enthusiastic students might go so far as to write their own variation of the piece, which gives you an opportunity to improve their notation skills.

Requests are welcome!

I love writing these, especially when I know they get used. If you’d like me to write one for a piece you enjoy, let me know in the comments.

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