Contemporary Piano and Improvisation:

I use many different approaches to the art of improvisation and find it particularly useful for the older beginner, as I then link the sound with enhanced reading ability. My approach is to teach common chord progressions with a variety of left-hand patterns based around these progressions. Students are then able to play using only the words with the chord symbols written above and can easily download resources from ultimateguitar.com.

From this a student might progress to the reading of lead sheets, to improvising their own melodic ideas over a given chord progression, or even making up their own chord progressions.

Any of these approaches is a useful introduction to the study of music composition, which I also teach. They also make reading traditional music notation easier as I link the reading to the chords in a more holistic approach. This is also in keeping with current educational thinking, which puts sound before symbol.