variation
Halloween Jackson Blues
I just remembered a Jackson Blues variation I like to teach around Halloween that makes it sound a little creepy: RH – for each chord, move finger 3 down a 1/2 step (makes them minor chords – they don’t need to know that if they…
Faster Student in Shared Lesson
Sometimes in a shared lesson, one student is ready to move on from a project before others are quite ready. Let’s share some ideas for an extra “filler” project for that student. I’ll start: Utilize one of the Supplemental Programs – assign one project from…
Light Blue FABE Variation Rhythm
I’m still having difficulty with the variation of Light Blue. Watching Neil over and over with the rhythm in the hands hasn’t helped me. Either it needs to be slowed down or written out for me so that I can SEE it. Could someone maybe…
Chinese Dreams
Hi all, Had a very bright little 7 year-old boy start lessons this summer. After learning Dreams and Dreams 2 he came back the next week with “Chinese Dreams.” He played the entire song on black keys—10 fingers over 10 notes, but all black keys, ranging…
“Blues Surprise” Playlist
I recently put together this Spotify playlist of songs that many people may be surprised to find out use the 12-bar blues structure (or fairly minor variations of it). I left out lots of the early rock era (1950s-1960s) songs that use 12-bar structure, since…
MAC Soundtracks
I would love to start a conversation about how we might use the MAC soundtracks with our students. Some of the tracks might need some more background or learning to understand their use, but I think others could be used by most of our students…
Accompaniment Variation Duplicates
Question about Acc Var (Accompaniment Variations). Is Var #6 intentionally duplicated to #18? Is this just because we’re working within different song? It’s not intentional but not necessarily an error; Neil just didn’t realize it was a duplicate. Would the same be true for 16…
Dog Variation
I came up with a lovely soulful variation or arrangement, perhaps, on ‘Dog’ by using a zigzag LH. I’ll try to describe it. With sentence one of dog, the LH would play C (one octave below middle C) with the first note of the sentence,…