What key should I teach?

Whenever I teach sight reading, I always encourage my students to analyze their music before they start to play. But that’s hard for them to do without knowing a little bit about the key they’re working in.

This usually requires us to pull out the music theory books. But teaching music theory out of a book is very frustrating for me as a teacher for two reasons:

1) Books try to teach all the keys at once, and while that’s helpful for abstract skills like memorizing the order of sharps, it’s information overload and doesn’t offer much practical assistance what they’re trying to do, which is to read a song.

2) Books don’t go into enough detail into any one key to actually connect that information with the songs the learner is working on. Learners have to get to advanced theory levels before they get that practical application, and that’s not satisfactory to me.

As a result of my dissatisfaction with what’s currently on the market for teaching piano music theory, I’d like to create my own system.

I would like to create theory worksheets that focus on just one key at a time. My goal is to offer each key as its own mini-workbook that learners can work through at their own pace so that, by the end of it, they will have a really solid understanding of the key of the music that they’re trying to learn. I’d also like to include sample pieces of music in that key for analysis so learners can get practice applying the principles of music theory, like scale degrees and chord progressions, to actual music. In my experience, once learners know this they become more comfortable identifying patterns in music, which helps them read music more easily.

Would you like to support this project?

If you’re currently sight reading music, you could help me just by telling me what key your current music is in. There are 12 major and 12 minor keys on the piano, but it would be a lot for me to make worksheets for them all! I’d rather help people as soon as possible by starting with the keys people need help in the most.

So you could help me by letting me know which keys you’re actually trying to read. Once you learn these music principles for a key or two, it will become immensely easier for you to apply those principles to other keys on your own.

Please let me know which key(s) I should start with by leaving a comment on this video! Or, if you already see these theory pages in my Store and want to request another suggestion, reach out to me on my Contact page! Thanks in advance for your support! I’m excited to make this a reality :)