Three New Tutorials

Subscribers to Pop Piano Accompaniment will be pleased to know that I just uploaded three new lessons to the course — you can preview them here.

I’m particularly thrilled to be offering the one called “Voice Leading: How to Connect Chords Beautifully While Bringing Variety to Your Playing.” As I say in the video:

I always love teaching this lesson because it’s a way for students to go beyond copying, and move very gently into creating. With the tools I offer here, you’ll no longer be dependent on me or anyone else to tell you what notes to play. From now on, you are your own arranger.”

But there’s another reason I’m feeling so good about these new tutorials. You see, I began creating my DoctorKeys courses about 8 years ago. And up to now, the lessons have focused on skills that are best described as basic. As a teacher, I’ve always found the early stages of piano study to be genuinely exciting, so making these videos has been a pleasure.

But as I watched the new video on voice-leading one last time before uploading it, it suddenly occurred to me: we’re not in Kansas anymore! In this lesson, I talk to my online students quite differently than I have up to now, presenting ideas and skills I myself didn’t master until I was in college, at a music conservatory.

And I have to say, it feels great to have arrived at this point. (Though I will never want to forsake the thrill of helping beginning piano students take their very first baby steps.)

Of course, what makes this new stage possible are the Play & Sing tutorials that lay the foundation. Judging from these testimonials, and well over a million YouTube views, it seems clear that those earlier lessons are doing exactly what they’re designed to do: getting folks off to a great start at the piano. Or, in the case of you more advanced players, helping you learn new “tricks” and discover entirely new ways of being at the instrument.

Anyway — I couldn’t resist crowing a bit today. Enjoy the new lessons!

Best,
Bruce