Level: All levels

Applicable Instruments: All wind and string instruments

Descriptions: During private sessions, it makes a huge difference, if you accompany students on the keyboard. You may not be an accomplished pianist, but you can always try playing simple chords for long tones or slow scale exercises. As long as the keyboard is in tune, it improves students’ intonation significantly. Most students, after a while, learn to adjust their pitch on their own, and they work much harder to produce well controlled crescendo and diminuendo during the long tones. If you come up with more interesting chord progressions, students pay more attention to pitch, tone quality and phrasing. If you already play the guitar, it should work just as well. Even better, if you are versed in music software (such as Garage Band), you can generate your own accompaniment audio files. I’d be happy to send you some of the exercises (printed music and sound files) I made for my oboe students. Please let me know.