As a piano teacher, finding the right tools to supplement your lessons can be challenging. While traditional methods of teaching music theory and piano practice are invaluable, using technology can enhance the learning experience for your students. One such tool that I’ve found incredibly effective is Piano Companion, a flexible and powerful music theory app that helps piano teachers improve student success.
With Piano Companion, teaching chords, scales, and music theory becomes not only easier but also more engaging. As piano teachers, we’re always looking for new ways to keep our students motivated, and incorporating technology in the form of piano teaching tools is a game-changer. In this post, I’ll walk you through how you can leverage this app to enhance your piano lessons and ensure that your students are getting the most out of their practice time.
Why Piano Teachers Should Embrace Technology
Let’s face it: the way students learn is evolving. While many traditional methods of teaching remain essential, students today are more tech-savvy than ever. They’re used to interacting with apps and technology in nearly every aspect of their lives. So why not bring that familiarity into your piano lessons? Incorporating technology into your lessons doesn’t mean you’re abandoning proven teaching methods—it simply means you’re providing students with additional tools to enhance their learning experience.
Enter Piano Companion, a comprehensive music theory app for teachers that covers everything from piano chords and scales to chord progressions and the circle of fifths. It allows students to explore and understand music theory in an interactive way, all while supplementing what they learn in class. This app isn’t just for students, either. It’s also a valuable resource for teachers, providing you with the tools to create more engaging and effective lessons.
What Is Piano Companion?
Before diving into how you can use it in your lessons, let’s take a quick look at what Piano Companion actually is. The app is essentially a piano chord and scale dictionary, but it’s so much more than that. It’s designed to be a versatile tool for songwriters, producers, teachers, and students. The app allows users to search for chords, scales, and chord progressions using a variety of methods, including external MIDI keyboards, key identification, and custom scale creation.
What makes this app stand out for piano teachers is its ability to display chord and scale notes on the grand staff, show relative scales, intervals, and even suggest compatible chords and scales for any given note or key. Whether your students are beginners or advanced pianists, Piano Companion offers something for everyone, making it an indispensable part of your piano teaching toolkit.
How Piano Companion Enhances Music Theory Learning
One of the biggest challenges in teaching music theory is making it engaging. The concepts of chords, scales, intervals, and progressions can feel abstract, especially for younger students. Piano Companion for students changes that by transforming these concepts into interactive lessons.
1. Exploring Piano Chords in Depth
When you introduce piano chords to your students, explaining the structure of triads, sevenths, and inversions can be overwhelming. With Piano Companion, your students can explore piano chords by inputting any note they want to learn more about. The app displays the chord on a grand staff, shows the fingering for both hands, and plays the chord in either a loop or arpeggiated form, so students can hear what it should sound like.
This visual and auditory feedback can be incredibly helpful, especially for visual learners. Instead of memorizing chord charts, students can now see the relationship between notes and how different inversions of the same chord can sound completely different.
2. Practicing Scales Across Keys and Clefs
Scales are fundamental to piano practice, but they can often feel monotonous for students. However, practicing scales becomes much more dynamic when using Piano Companion. The app allows students to practice scales in various keys and clefs, helping them understand the relationships between scales and how they’re constructed. Plus, the app shows fingerings and degrees for both hands, making it easier for students to remember correct finger placement.
Additionally, teachers can use the scale practice feature as part of their lessons. You can assign specific scales for students to practice at home, and during your next lesson, you can review their progress using the app’s playback feature.
3. Understanding the Circle of Fifths
Teaching the circle of fifths can be one of the more challenging aspects of music theory. However, it’s also one of the most important, as it’s essential for understanding key signatures, modulations, and chord relationships. Piano Companion makes this easier by providing an interactive circle of fifths tool that visually explains how different keys relate to each other.
This feature allows your students to explore different keys and their relative minors, giving them a better understanding of how key changes work in practice. By experimenting with the circle of fifths, students can gain a deeper grasp of music theory concepts that might otherwise feel abstract or disconnected from their playing.
Leveraging Piano Companion for Lesson Planning
As a teacher, you want to ensure that every lesson is well-structured and provides maximum value for your students. With Piano Companion, you can easily integrate music theory exercises into your lessons without needing to create additional worksheets or assignments. Here’s how you can use the app to streamline your lesson planning:
1. Create Custom Chord and Scale Libraries
One of the most useful features of Piano Companion is its ability to create custom chord and scale libraries. You can personalize these libraries for each of your students, adding the specific chords, scales, and progressions they’re working on. This way, every student has a library tailored to their current skill level, making practice more efficient and relevant.
For example, if one of your students is working on jazz improvisation, you can create a custom library filled with jazz chords and scales that they can reference during practice. Alternatively, for beginners, you can set up a library of major and minor triads, giving them a solid foundation to build on.
2. Assign Chord Progressions for Composition Practice
Encouraging students to experiment with composition is one of the best ways to help them understand music theory on a deeper level. With Piano Companion, you can easily assign specific chord progressions for your students to practice and even create their own compositions. The app’s chord progression builder allows students to experiment with relative chords and common progressions, giving them the creative freedom to explore new sounds and ideas.
This is particularly useful for older or more advanced students who are interested in songwriting. Instead of sticking to basic progressions, they can use the app to experiment with more complex progressions and see how they relate to different keys and scales.
3. Use Reverse Mode to Challenge Students
If you’re looking for a way to challenge your students and reinforce their understanding of chords and scales, the app’s reverse mode is perfect. In reverse mode, students can input specific notes or keys, and the app will show them which chord or scale corresponds to those notes. This can be a fun and interactive way to test their knowledge during lessons.
For instance, you can give your students a specific set of notes and ask them to identify which chords or scales they belong to. They can use the reverse mode to confirm their answers, helping them to learn more effectively through trial and error.
Bringing It All Together
Incorporating Piano Companion into your lessons doesn’t replace your role as a teacher; rather, it enhances it. By using the app’s various features, you can give your students the tools they need to understand music theory in a way that’s interactive and engaging. From learning chords and scales to practicing progressions and exploring the circle of fifths, this music theory app for teachers is a valuable resource that can supplement and reinforce the lessons you already teach.
Ultimately, Piano Companion helps bridge the gap between theory and practice, making it easier for your students to grasp complex musical concepts and apply them to their playing. Whether your students are just starting out or are more advanced, integrating this app into your lessons can help them achieve greater success at the piano.
So, if you haven’t already, I highly recommend giving Piano Companion a try in your next lesson. It might just be the missing piece that helps your students reach new heights in their musical journey!