Episode
086 - Teaching Keyboard Skills to Students of All Ages
- Published
- Aug 20, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 947
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- https://www.ashleydanyew.com/episodes/086
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Summary
Learning to play the piano isn’t just about learning repertoire pieces. It’s about developing a set of keyboard skills that lets you make music anywhere, with anyone, in any style. Technique, performance, and sight-reading are part of it, but so are harmonization, transposition, chord knowledge, and voice-leading. It’s more than the ability to perform what’s on the page; it’s understanding how the music is made. In this episode, I’ll share why keyboard skills matter for students of all ages and a few strategies I’m using in my studio to build them into lessons from the very first year of study. For show notes + a full transcript, click here . Resources Mentioned *Disclosure: some of the links in this episode are affiliate links, which means if you decide to purchase through any of them, I will earn a small commission. This helps support the podcast and allows me to continue creating free content. Thank you for your support! RCM Piano Syllabus Piano Safari Repertoire Book 1 Diversions (Juan Cabeza) Piano Safari Friends Piano Safari Sight-Reading Cards Sight-Reading and Rhythm Every Day (Helen Marlais) Rhythm Keeper, Vol. 1 (Samantha Steitz & Steve Aho) Ep. 085 - Everyone Can Improvise Through the Windowpane (Chee-Hwa Tan) A Child’s Garden of Verses (Chee-Hwa Tan) Free download: 12 Variations on Diversion 12 (Juan Cabeza) Create First! Duet (Forrest Kinney) Free download: 27 Easy Chord Progressions (Tim Topham) If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review in Apple Podcasts >> Find me on Instagram: @ashleydanyew Whenever you’re ready, here are three ways we can work together: 1️⃣ Need fresh teaching ideas? Schedule a quick 25-min. call and we’ll brainstorm on a topic of your choice. Build an idea bank that you can pull from in the months to come. 2️⃣…