Piano Improvisation For Church Pianists
As a church pianist one thing that will help you to keep your calm and be at ease at the piano (because let’s face it playing before an audience each Sunday can cause a few jitters) is being well versed in your improvisational skills.
This means that instead of relying solely on the music in front of your face you have beneath your skilled fingers and in your head fill in notes, other chords, and different chord progressions to bring about the sound that will portray the message of the song you are playing.
To do this you need to be most aware of certain parts of music theory and how it all fits together in the music you play. Yes there are some that play skillfully by ear without knowing how to read a note of music but there are many more of us who need to read our notes, understand what we are doing with them and have a few lessons under our belt to be better pianists.
If you don’t know most hymnals are created for singers not pianists. The notes guide the different singers as to how high or low their voice is to be. This comes across as very dull and mundane when translated on the piano.
Enter Greg Howlett’s Inspirational Improvisation: A Nine Step Approach to Becoming a Versatile Church Pianist DVD Course.
A detailed straightforward nine lesson DVD program designed most particularly to help church pianists improvise hymns and Praise and Worship songs at the piano.
The lesson program includes
* 5 DVDs each containing one to two piano improvisation lessons.
* 1 Lesson Study Guide to follow along and takes notes of what is happening on your DVD player.
The best part of these piano lessons is that instead of just showing you how he improvises one song Greg uses nine detailed piano lessons to help you become more proficient at improvising your own songs.
In my years of attempting to improve my own piano playing for church (because we are always learning) this is an omission that I found increasingly frustrating and something that l was always looking for. The concrete steps and theory rules that guided me to work with those hymnal songs and change them from that of of the mundane to having more feeling and giving across the message of the song.
These piano lessons are not for beginners. Inspirational Improvisation is listed for intermediate to advanced pianists. You should have a grasp of basic music theory, know all your 12 major scales and be able to read and play both clefs (treble and bass, or F and G) of the grand staff.
Be prepared to spend some working time at the piano. At least 20 to 30 minutes a night. Each lesson should take you about a month to have a mastery of (I’m on week two and three and this is about right).
The improvisation skills you will learn with this DVD program are not limited to one particular style. The knowledge you will learn will allow you to add beautiful meaning and feeling to any song you play.
I’ve been enjoying my lessons for a little less than a month now and I have seen nice improvement in not only my playing but my ability to improvise the music I am playing. Not that I look for this because truly I attempt to blend into the background when playing at church but I have had some very positive comments too.
In my own experience the organized format of each lesson is almost as important and as helpful as the information itself.
In the study guide you get an overview of what you will learn in each lesson, any charts that are needed and your homework assignment.
The introduction of the study guide also repeats the information you will receive on the introduction of the DVD as to how to use this course, how long it will take you, what you will learn and how you will learn.
As a piano playing adult having these very organized and detailed piano lessons is a great bonus.
I have been willing to pay plenty of money for one day church music workshops with less than half of this information.
You can purchase Inspirational Improvisation: A Nine Step Approach to Becoming a Versatile Church Pianist directly from Greg Howlett’s website here
K Quinn has been a church pianist for 15+ years. Continually calling herself a struggling church musician you can visit her website at The Struggling Church Musician for more church musician tools and tips.
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