Intro to Musical Improv Accompaniment
No Experience Necessary
Participate Live and/or Review Class Recordings
Teacher: Mark S. Meritt
9 Thursdays – July 2 through August 27, 2020
6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Eastern Time – see the Time Zone Converter
$150.00 US — a fraction of my usual rate for online group piano lessons!
Capacity reached! If you would like to participate using recordings only as described below, contact me for payment instructions.
Develop foundational skills to accompany improvised songs in a variety of moods, genres and song structures — with greater ease and speed than you may believe possible. The only real prerequisites are an earnest desire to learn and a willingness to practice:
- If you’ve begun exploring musical improv accompaniment already, great!
- If you’ve not yet tried musical improv accompaniment, no problem!
- If you have experience playing an instrument, that’s great, but it’s not required. Piano/keyboard is what we’ll be working on, though your past experience can be with guitar/ukulele, drums/percussion, possibly other instruments, even singing/dance. Further, though you should have your own keyboard instrument, it’s actually possible to do this class even if you don’t own an instrument.
- If you have experience improvising on stage, especially doing musical improv, that’s fantastic and perhaps ideal, but it’s also not required.
Mark is the Musical Director of the Mopco Improv Theatre, where he provides music for everything from short-form underscoring to long-form musical theatre. He also develops and teaches classes on musical improv for actors/singers. He has taught online piano lessons for over 11 years. Full bio at
https://songsbyyou.com/about/
Recordings: Ideally, you’d attend all workshops sessions, but all sessions will be recorded and made available to all enrollees. Please make sure you’re caught up on having attended and/or reviewed the recordings for all sessions before attending each live session.
Practice: What we’re really doing here are piano lessons, just a very specialized kind. Like with all music lessons, the real learning occurs at home during regular practice. If you can carve out even 10-15 minutes daily for at least 5 days a week to practice, I promise that your results will be
exponentially increased compared to simply participating during class time.
Preparation: There is some musical preparation to do before the first class. Review these
preparation notes sooner rather than later so you’ll have time to prepare.
Zoom: Before our first workshop session, you’ll receive an email with the Zoom meeting details. In the meantime, visit my
Online Lessons FAQ and refer to the following three questions to get yourself set up in advance for our live online sessions -- feel free to use one of the simpler equipment setups mentioned! The three questions/sections are: What do I need to set myself up for online lessons? How can I best set everything up for videoconference piano lessons? What videoconference service would I use?
Looking forward to seeing you in the workshop!