A great skill to have...being able to accompany others or oneself. This student has a gorgeous voice and has taken piano lessons with me for years. It seems her voice is now stronger than her piano skills, and though we are still working on her piano playing, we are also working on reading chord charts and improvising simple accompaniments for her to play while she sings. I have found that the easiest way to teach this is to download chord and lyric charts from the internet, then to listen to the music with the student. We try to imitate the accompaniment that we hear. I like doing this rather than using arrangements written for piano when I have a good singer. This way, a singer will learn to accompany herself without playing any melody. Here are a few video clips of us working on the piece called "Beautiful" from the new t.v. series, "Smash" at a lesson. Download IMG_1008 Download IMG_1019Download IMG_1021 Download IMG_1022Download IMG_1009
