Creativity… improvisation is one of the things that traditional piano lessons so often miss out on.
Don’t just play notes on a page. Play the song in your heart.
Play a Story is a unique program that uses storytelling and video to inspire you to improvise and play your own music spontaneously.
No matter your age or experience level, not only will you be playing your own music freely and with feeling and across the entire keyboard, it’ll be fun and immediately achievable.
Traveling through a storybook world, students will learn to listen, feel and literally ‘play the story’ across the whole piano, while it is being read (older students 'play the story' with video).
What would the music sound like if it was the wind in the forest, or a shell tossed around the ocean? In the world of Play a Story, every imaginative thought, every emotion is an opportunity for your child to express themselves with the language of music – a language that is deeply profound.
The vocabulary of your musical language comes in the form of simple piano motifs - short musical phrases or ideas. In the same way that words become sentences and conversations, motifs become melodies, harmonies and rhythms... songs that tell your unique story.
While you're enjoying your musical story telling, you'll also be learning through playing important theoretical concepts that lay the foundation of your ever-expanding musicianship, such as:
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major/minor chords with a few basic chord extensions
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chromatic, whole-tone and pentatonic scale
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12 bar blues, blues scale and blues riffs
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melodic, rhythmic and accompaniment styles
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sustain pedal familiarity
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essential dynamic terms.
It’s true self-expression - the ability to effectively and spontaneously turn your ideas into music.
No matter your age or experience level, you'll be playing freely across the entire keyboard from the moment you begin and developing a solid playing foundation for your journey forward.
This is the part that amazes me - it is so easily accessible… to every age or proficiency. The simpler motifs make it easy for beginning students to jump right in, and yet they still provide a creative challenge for more advanced players. I'm seeing a huge increase in expressive playing. This has enabled students to explore creative expression - mood, atmosphere, variations in tempo, dynamic etc. It's a very freeing experience!
Julia B.
This program is universally appealing. Play a Story has been a definite aid in helping adults to relax about their playing. All of my students have blossomed in both composition and improvisation. The program really solidifies the idea for students that music is not on a sheet of paper, but rather inside each one of us.
Sandy L