Classroom Keyboard

This book is concise, practical, and has modular content that can be taught in several flexible formats. The introduction of one hundred musical elements is supported by three hundred activities.Ten core melodies and seventeen other authentic pieces are carefully sequenced in mostly fixed hand positions. The intervallic reading of melodic notation is emphasized. Melodic repetition and gradually more demanding accompaniments help students with divergent abilities to play successfully. Students with prior musical experience will find that this course introduces them to aspects of musicianship that will enhance their future efforts.This book will facilitate meeting the Core Music Standards for grades 5 through 8, and the novice/intermediate Harmonizing Instruments Strand. It will help prepare students for the novice/intermediate Ensemble Strand, the proficient Composition/Theory Strand and the proficient Technology Strand. It will also facilitate introductory college instruction.

The Keyboard/Guitar strand of the National Core Music Standards calls for students to become not only performers, but also creators of music. Pat Bissell's book presents strategies and sequences — developed over years of dedicated work with urban and suburban children — designed to help students achieve the standards. I applaud in particular her use of authentic musical examples and emphasis on improvisation through aural understanding. Teachers who incorporate this book into their keyboard classes — not to mention their private lessons — will give their students the gifts of joy and creativity., This innovative approach to learning the keyboard provides an unique, sequential approach that utilizes iconic notation to teach harmonic structure, intervals, and melodic structures.  By starting with finger numbers, students are able to achieve instant success without the anxiety that can sometimes accompany trying to learn traditional music staff notation as a beginner.  This approach to keyboard instruction provides a logical sequence that will take the student from finger numbers to reading traditional music staff notation, all the while incorporating improvisation and building an understanding of intervals and chord progressions. The inclusion and explanation of how chord progressions work in music, often absent in more traditional piano instructional methods, is especially useful for teachers who desire to include composition, improvisation, and aural musicianship into their pedagogy.    , Classroom Keyboard offers students much more than the standard series of keyboard melodies and technical exercises. The authors provide students with the tools for understanding chords, patterns, and scales while they are developing their performance skills. A special feature of the book is the inclusion of composition activities enabling students to make the music their own. The book laudably takes a comprehensive approach to teaching musicianship as a combination of technique, creativity, and musical understanding.

Patricia Melcher Bissell received BM and MM degrees in piano and composition from Peabody Conservatory and Yale University, and she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. Bissell has been a keyboard class teacher at Gateway Community College in New Haven, CT since 2004, taught K-12 music in suburban and inner city schools, operated piano studios, and she was the floor exercise arranger/pianist for two U.S. Women's Olympic Gymnastic Teams.