PianoCreativity.com: A Short Introduction

Hello dear reader,

I’ve been running this site for just a few months and it has been a great pleasure watching my subscriber count rising, especially in the past couple of weeks where it has really shot up. It shows me what I’ve long suspected: many people are interested in including more improvisation and composition in their piano lessons.

The rapid growth in the last couple of weeks is thanks in particular to two pillars of the piano pedagogy community, Melanie Spanswick and Andrew Eales of PianoDao.com, who are both excited about the project. Thank you, Melanie; thank you, Andrew. I really value your support.

If you’re a new subscriber, please take a couple of minutes to fill in the new subscriber survey. There are just three short questions about what you’d like to see on the website.

Why include creativity in piano lessons?

I explore this in-depth in my guest post for Melanie Spanswick’s blog. In that article I focused particularly on classical music, but in practise I find creativity is effective when working in all genres.

Where do I get started?

There are a lot of composition and improvisation resources out there, but they’re not terribly well publicised. This website hopes to change that. Take a look at the Resources section to find the resources I’ve already reviewed, or browse the Bibliography below for a bigger picture.

Bibliography

How do I fit improvisation and composition into my lessons?

A reader has requested a longer post exploring this topic and I’m working on it. Watch this space!

For now I would say the most important thing is to start small. Many students feel a little nervous about creativity. I talked about this with Prof. Karen Schlimp. She explains it very well:

Get in touch

I really enjoy talking to fellow piano teachers. If you’re curious about anything or would like to request something specific on the site, please don’t hesitate to write to me at hello@pianocreativity.com.

Creativity Digest

Occasionally I’ll send you a Creativity Digest, a summary of the interesting things I’ve come across recently and an update on what I’ve been working on. Here are my latest discoveries:

What I’ve enjoyed recently:

• This interesting article from musical performance psychologist Noa Kageyama is a good illustration of the power of creative practise to build resilience in performance.

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What I’ve written recently:

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What’s in my drafts folder:

• A review of the excellent book Piano By Ear by Lucinda Mackworth-Young

• A post about how (and why) to find time for creativity in piano lessons

• A guest post about an exciting composition project that you can do in your studio

• A review of one of the many composition and improvisation resources in the Vibrant Music Teaching members community

That’s it, you reached the bottom!

Thanks for reading and have a great Sunday.

Garreth