Hear My Music Level 1
Aural Skills, Improvisation and Composition for Piano Students
Course Summary
Welcome to the Hear My Music Level 1 course!
You are on your way to becoming a functional musician who can dictate rhythm patterns, melodies, and harmonies, and connect that with the ability to improvise and compose your own music!
You can access and use this course anytime, including outside of your lesson time, or more independently from your piano teacher.
There are prerecorded instructional videos, audio files, and a student workbook that you can use to work through this 6 Module course. Each module has 6-10 lessons. Lessons and activities can be repeated as much as necessary to gain fluency.
Practice doing the activities as many times as you need to in order to master them. Applying the aural skills that you practice in this course to improvisation on the keyboard (activities are provided in this course too), or applying them to pieces you are already playing, will help you to remember what you've learnt.
Hear My Music Level 1 is for any beginner pianist (age 6 years or older, including adults) who wishes to be able to play the piano by ear, and have a greater understanding of music. If you don't know how to read music notes, you will still learn how music works, and if you do know how to read notes and understand music theory, this course will broaden your experience and give aural meaning to music notation and theory.
Children age 6-10 years old can be guided by a piano teacher or parent through this course, while teens and adults will be able to learn more independently.
Enjoy the journey!
- Dr. Li-San Guerette
- Listen, move with, echo, and improvise rhythm patterns through chanting in duple or triple meters
- Listen, echo, and improvise melodic and harmonic tonal patterns through singing neutral and solfege syllables
- Translate neutral syllable rhythm patterns into Gordon rhythm syllables
- Translate neutral syllable tonal patterns into “moveable do” solfege
- Learn over 30 short piano pieces that they can create variations of
- Hear and sing the tonic as a drone against melodies in major or minor tonality
- Hear and sing bass lines to melodies in major or minor tonality
- Hear and sing melodies above a bass line in major or minor tonality
- Use familiar rhythm patterns to improvise and compose on the piano
- Use familiar tonal patterns to improvise on the piano against a tonic or dominant harmony
- Get comfortable with playing the piano, even at the beginner level
- Play with efficient and relaxed piano technique
- Play short pieces with a steady beat
- Unleash musical creativity away from the piano and at the piano
- Compose their own piano music, even if they don't know how to read music
- Recognize the difference between duple and triple meter
- Recognize differences between rhythm patterns
- Recognize the difference between major and minor tonality
- Recognize whether two tonal patterns are of the same or different harmonic function
- Feel the sound of each scale degree in a major or minor tonal context
- Recognize changes in harmony between the tonic and dominant in a major or minor tonal context
- Build confidence in singing in tune
- Play chords on the piano in different keys
Piano teachers can use this course with their students during piano lessons or music classes for just $9/month or a one time payment of $297 for lifetime single access. This also allows teachers to print the course workbook for an unlimited number of their students. However, their students will need to buy course access if they would like to use the course outside of their teacher's piano lessons. This option is best for teachers with only a few students, or for teachers who will not need their students to have course access outside of lessons (eg. student does coursework during piano lab time only, using their teacher's single use access).
Piano teachers can also buy instructor access for $397/year for up to 25 students, or $697/year for up to 50 students. This allows their students to each have an account that they can access outside of lessons, plus allows teachers to edit, or add their own content for students, eg. adding bonus course modules with video replays of musicianship classes or audio/video files that teachers would like their students to be able to easily access.
Completion of the Creative Piano Method Program, which includes teacher training, lifetime single user access to Hear My Music, and 6 months of instructor access to Hear My Music, is recommended to make the most of your instructor access.
Li-San Guerette
Over the past 20 years, Dr. Li-San Guerette has taught hundreds of students, including children from the age of 3, teenagers, and adults. She teaches students ranging from the absolute beginner to advanced pianist, and currently has a thriving studio of over 140 students in group lessons as a solo teacher.
Li-San loves music, whether it is classical, jazz, or contemporary, and enjoys teaching any student who is eager to learn. She is a patient, and committed teacher who cares about each student. She recognizes the importance of integrating aural skills with repertoire, so that students understand music, and perform it expressively.
Li-San is an accredited teacher by the Music Teacher's Association of NSW, Australia. Her qualifications from Sydney include Bachelor of Arts in Communications from UTS, the Associate Diploma of Music (Piano) from AMEB and the Graduate Diploma of Music (Classical Performance - Piano) with Distinction, from the Australian Institute of Music. She completed her Ph.D in Music Education at The University of New South Wales (UNSW).