Teaching Video: Students improvising backing tracks for scales

by in Creativity on 14 Comments

teaching-video_-students-improvising-backing-tracks-for-scales

Most students find scale practice pretty dull. So do I. in fact, I find teaching scales pretty dull too!

What’s more, starting lessons with the same old, “Well, let’s hear how your scales have gone this week”, is not likely to inspire students if it’s the same greeting every single lesson.

With this in mind, I thought about how I could break up scale reviews in lessons by doing something different. I sometimes play a simple tonic-dominant patter on another piano while students play scales, especially if they are having trouble with rhythm or if I want to push them to play faster (or just surprise them for a lesson!).

I thought, Why not teach them how to do this themselves so that they can accompany me if I play a scale?

piano teaching tim topham

The result is shown in the video below: It’s a short segment of one of my lessons where I work with a student on creating a simple accompaniment pattern for a scale, first in 4/4 and then in 3/4. Please be aware this concept was just an idea at the time of the video and is very much a work in progress.

This activity builds on a student’s knowledge of chords and simple chord progressions (using the Circle of 5ths) and is a great activity as it gets a student thinking, listening and putting theory into practice. And it’s fun! Students can also record the backing pattern on an iPhone or iPad and play-along to themselves when practising scales.

Before embarking on this idea, I would encourage you to have given your students some experience of composing basic chord progressions using the strategies shown in these previous posts:

  • Chord progressions for beginners – teaching video
  • Strategies for teaching improvisation to beginners

Here’s the lesson:

I believe the skill of improvising simple accompaniment patterns like this is vital for pianists as it’s the sort of thing that’s often required when accompanying other people and playing in groups.

For other blog posts related to improvising and teaching boys piano, check out the notes from my APPC presentation: “Fast and Furious: Strategies and repertoire for teaching boys”.