TTTV001: Student composition tactics with Daniel McFarlane

I'm so excited to be starting the Tim Topham TV Podcast by interviewing my good friend and Australian teacher/composer/presenter, Daniel McFarlane and we'll be chatting all about student composition: how to help students create music at the piano from scratch and how to develop their own ideas further. It doesn't matter if you're completely new to working on composition with your students or whether you are already doing some composing, you're going to get a lot out of this episode. I learnt heaps! Daniel has created a big niche for himself in the international piano publishing industry in the last five years by creating highly-appealing original music in a style that is very much based on groovy rhythms, chords and patterns, so I figured he was going to be the perfect person to help us understand more about student composition.

How to help students compose music

I don't know about you, but I often have students come to lessons with a tiny fragment of an idea that they've made up on the piano. It might be the simplest melody, a few chords or a bass line. Nothing that you'd really call 'music'...yet! What do you do next? Do you help them make a melody? Do you write more chords? What if they don't want to do anything else? How do you build upon what they've already done without taking over? And what if you really want to help your student compose music from scratch, but don't know where to start?

In this episode you'll learn:

How Daniel works with his students on composing new music and what his own inspirations are
How to get the most out of his Supersonics website - including some amazing special offers
Why he offers studio licences that permit you to print as many copies of his music you want...for life
How you can start composing your own music and helping your students do the same
Daniel's 5-point composing "cheat sheet" of ideas that you can use in your lessons right away

Items mentioned in this podcast:

Supersonicspiano.com - Daniel's website
Piano Maestro - one of the best sight-reading/play-along/teaching apps for piano teachers
PianoPronto - the great method from Jennifer Eklund
Frangipani by Ross Edwards - link to buy here
My previous composition posts:
Daniel's Composing Cheat Sheet (see above)

More about Daniel

If you haven't explored Daniel's music yet, then make sure you check out some of the posts below. His music suits students of all ages and is excellent for...

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