For the last six months, Trevor and I have been working on an exciting piano project and we have the Teach Piano Today readers to thank for the inspiration!
In a blog post back in September, we shared a pop piano solo for teens that was intended as an enjoyable way to reinforce the G Major scale.
With just one post the Teach Piano Today community lost their minds. Teachers were thrilled to finally have a pop-infused piano piece that reinforced technical work and didn’t bore their students with the same… old… scale studies. The results in studios everywhere were immediate; students were over the moon to work on their scales!
Can you imagine? Excitement… over scales!
The response was enough of an incentive to hit the piano… hard! We immediately got to work to create a pop-infused lesson companion for intermediate piano players that would not only make scales exciting… but chords, triads and left-hand patterns too.
The result is our soon-to-be-released:
WunderKeys Intermediate Pop Studies For Piano 1 – A Pop-Infused Lesson Companion To Reinforce Scales, Chords, Triads, and Left-Hand Patterns.
We know you have questions… we have answers! Below we’ll discuss 5 things you probably want to know about this book.
As piano students get older, traditional method books become less and less appealing. Teenagers are eager to skip the skill-building exercises and get to the music. After all, technical exercises rarely appeal to the musical tastes of teens. But skipping over scale practice, rhythm work, improvisation, and sight reading hampers their musical development, slows their progress and, ultimately, leaves them frustrated.
This inevitably leads to a lose-lose situation for piano teachers where allowing teens to skip technical exercises delays their progress while forcing teens to play technical exercises creates frustration.
So, we decided to turn this struggle into a win-win! With WunderKeys Intermediate Pop Studies For Piano 1, we’ve created a resource that transforms exercise-based repertoire into motivating pop piano studies.
Your teen students will become skillful players because they WANT to practice exercise-based repertoire not because they HAVE to practice exercise-based repertoire. The technical work portion of your lessons will be transformed from “sit and drill” to “make awesome music!” as your teens gain comfort in a variety of key signatures and internalize the fingering patterns they need to know in order to be fluent intermediate pianists.
5 Things You Probably Want To Know About Our New Book…
Here’s the info we know you’re looking for! If we haven’t answered one of your questions, feel free to leave a comment below this post and we’ll do our best to answer it!
1. What’s inside WunderKeys Intermediate Pop Studies For Piano 1?
This book contains 63 jam-packed pages of pop-infused piano studies. Covering the keys of C Major, A Minor, G Major, E Minor, F Major, and D Minor, the units in this book contain scale practice piano solos, lead sheet triad training, chord-focused sight reading, lap tap clap rhythm training, and left-hand pattern improv practice. Within every unit, your piano students will get comfortable playing in the aforementioned key signatures through focused, popified studies that are designed to help them internalize the fingering patterns and hand shapes they need to know… all the while playing cool music that sounds nothing like technical work!
The included step-by-step instructions make teaching from this book a cinch. Even if you are not familiar with all of the teaching strategies (such as using lead sheets for triad training) you and your students are certain to find success.
Note: This is NOT a lead sheet book. Lead sheets are just one aspect of the book used along with the triad training activities.
2. How Does This Book Fit Into A Piano Lesson?
WunderKeys Intermediate Pop Studies For Piano 1 is a lesson companion that will change the way you teach piano to intermediate tween, teen and adult piano players. Gone are the days when you and your intermediate students suffer through scale practice, drag yourselves through triad training, and cringe at chord study. Gone are the days when your students’ skills suffer because technical work gets skipped over in favor of repertoire practice.
With this book, your teens will fall in love with the first 10 to 15 minutes of every piano lesson. They will fall in love with technical work that sounds exactly like powerful pop music and nothing like traditional technical work.
3. Who Should I Use This Book With?
There are two types of students that should use this book. The first is any student who has completed a book of level 2 repertoire and has started into a book of level 3 repertoire.
The second, and largest group, is any student who is working in, or is beyond, a level 3 repertoire book and needs a fun and exciting way to brush up on, refresh, or reinforce their skills when playing in the keys of C Major, A Minor, G Major, E Minor, F Major and D Minor.
4. Will There Be More Books In The Series?
Absolutely! There will be four more books coming in the series as we work our way around the circle of fifths. Each book will contain pop piano studies that reinforce 6 keys: 3 major keys and their relative minor keys. The next book will be available at the end of August.
But the excitement doesn’t stop there! We will also be releasing WunderKeys Intermediate Pop Repertoire For Piano books that will correspond exactly with each of the pop studies books.
5. When Can I Get WunderKeys Intermediate Pop Studies For Piano 1?
WunderKeys Intermediate Pop Studies For Piano 1 is now available on Amazon!
Want To See And Hear A Preview?
On Thursday we will be sharing a special blog post where you will be able to see inside WunderKeys Intermediate Pop Studies For Piano 1. We’ll also be sharing sound samples of several of the pop studies. We can’t wait for you to see and hear what we’ve been up to!
