Piano Accompaniment & Other Skills

By popular demand, the next 8-week PIANO COURSE is focussed on accompaniment. As with previous offerings, we will continue to build the important skills of sight reading, harmonization (formation and inversion of block and broken chords), and technique. This course in Zoom starts on 14th May 2024 at 4 PM EDT (9 PM BST, 10 PM CEST, 10 AM HST) and runs for 7 consecutive Tuesdays, a study break, and ends on the 8th Tuesday 9th July 2024. Tuition $260 includes all instructional materials, indexed video recordings of each class, and a weekly practice session on Fridays in Zoom.

Register via this Google Form. This rate also includes entry to two seasons of 3 Chord Thursday (Spring and Summer 2024).

Focus of the Course

Accompaniment refers to the musical part which provides the rhythmic and/or harmonic support for the melody or main themes of a song or instrumental piece. You can accompany yourself and/or others on the ukulele, guitar, piano, or other polyphonic instrument. The melody or other main themes can be sung solo, duo, or in a group or performed on another instrument.

Accompanying yourself singing on the piano is very different from playing the song without singing. You can omit the melody and focus just on the harmony and rhythm if you or anyone else is singing.

Some of the skills required to be able to accompany are the ability to follow the melody, set the tempo, keep the tempo steady, play from lead sheets, change chords at the right time, give an introduction, support and lead. Being able to support the melody is different from leading the singer, choir, or congregation.

Learning Objectives

• Sightreading skills
• Play from lead sheets (melody, chord names, lyrics)
• Block and broken chords
• Accompaniment patterns
• Improvisation
• Fingering
• Analyze music using correct music theoretical terms
• Repertoire (different genres, tempi, keys)

Testimonials

Previous piano courses focussed on Sightreading (PIANO WINTER 2024) and Harmonization. The following are testimonials from the Sightreading course.

Explore classical pieces till you develop a passion for them!

I can now sightread! Although I’m a musician, when I started the course, I could not sight read at all and I found it difficult to read standard music notation. By the end of it I was comfortable playing from sheet music that I had not seen before (depending on the difficulty of the piece of music, of course). I also improved my note-reading, my piano technique, and I learned some great exercises to develop my ability to play the piano, which significantly improved by the end of the course.

One of the things I like about this class is that Anne demonstrates what we have questions about and makes piano fun to learn. I would highly recommend this class for anyone who is interested in piano.

This was a course for review, relearn and move forward in the base of prior courses.

A lot of practice in knowing better the keys to produce the sound the piece of music demand, learn to individualize the job of every finger in the most effective way, many tips in starting your practice with different scales, individual or both hands together.

At the same time learning new pieces from the classic to the popular and the Happy Birthday in different rhythm and keys signature.

Also was teaching about performance and ways to overcome anxiety.

As usual Anne organized the material in a way that you will feel your progress and encourage you to explore for yourself in your learning.

Excellent course to take in your journey to be a better piano player supplemented by your every day practice.