Keyboard Skills: Improvise, Harmonize, Compose, Transpose

Dr. Martha Baker-Jordan in Practical Piano Pedagogy calls this the “Black Hole” of piano teaching. These are functional keyboard skills that ideally every student should learn, but that many teachers either don’t know how to teach, or choose not to for whatever reason. For some, the focus is simply on teaching technique and repertoire at a very high level. One teacher can not possibly be everything to every student.

Conservatory Canada exams have a keyboard skills requirement starting in grade 5. At this level, students must be able to play a l-V-l progression in all inversions in C, F and G; harmonize a simple melody with l and V, and transpose a melody up or down a tone – in the simple keys.  Because this is required, I started teaching these skills. There is a dedicated book published for all grades of the Conservatory Canada exams by Steven Fielder called Keyboard Harmony and Transposition (published by Mayfair Music). It has a good explanation at the beginning of each chapter (corresponding with the grade – this one book covers all grades), showing the chord progression and encouraging the student with ways to best manage the harmonization. There are many exercises in both harmonization and transposition, although the teacher should be aware that there are a number of typographical errors in notation that can really confuse the student who is working from this book at home. I find this book is best used as a “test” book by the teachers at the lesson.

A more user-friendly option for the student is the series of books called Keyboard Harmony by Debra Wanless and Caroline Bering, available at the Introductory, Intermediate and Advancing Levels (published by Mayfair Music). An introduction of the chords in each key is followed by many short pieces for the student to work through – always with the reminder to clap, mark the accents, and label the chords with their functional symbols (l or V) as well as their names according to root and quality (C major, etc.)  This paves the way for reading chord charts in the future.

The music is perhaps less interesting than Fielder’s book, but this is a difficult concept for the students to learn, and I find Fielder’s book to be more intimidating for most students. Unfortunately, for purposes of the exams, this book does not include transposition exercises, but that is a small concern as really any piece could potentially be transposed at any time. The pages are clean and visually uncluttered. The book is good for any student, not just the ones doing the Conservatory Canada curriculum.

So that’s what I do with half of the Black Hole skills. Improvising in my studio is limited to Pattern Play, mostly in Performance Classes.  Composing doesn’t happen, except as part of the harmony lessons for the advanced theory exam. Even then, I don’t think we can call it real composing. My hope is that I teach music well enough and deep enough that students can at some point venture into composition if they feel the urge to express themselves this way. Personally, I’ve never had a single musical thought that someone else hadn’t already composed and published! Absolutely no ideas of my own are begging to be put to paper. It was the same in English class in school – I loved reading and analyzing but dreaded the creative writing assignments.

Let me know if you have come across any other books that you love for teaching harmonization and/or transposition. I’m always eager to have a handful of resources available for any given aspect of teaching.