The Creative Piano Teacher's Essential Resource Library
The Best Teaching Tools for Improvisation, Composition, Repertoire, and More
New on Piano Creativity for 2026 is the Creative Piano Teacher’s Essential Resource Library, your one-stop library of the best resources for getting creative in piano lessons.
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
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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.
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Such a great list of resources! I'd love to add my Composer Kits to the list of "Creativity prompts and games." This flexible teaching tool encourages beginner and intermediate piano students to explore music history and apply theory as they write, play, and create in the style of the masters. Find it at https://coribelle.com/composer-kits