The best place to start is with the brand new series published by Frederick Harris Music. It will be available in April, 2010 on their website and in stores.

With these books, piano teachers and students can learn how to create their own music in diverse musical styles—world music, classical, jazz, blues, new age, rock, and others. In each piece, the teacher and student first improvise a duet together, then the student plays solo. In this way, the student can first create melodies freely in a rich musical environment, then learn the accompaniment, and then be prepared to play solo. The authors (both music teachers) have found that nearly anyone can learn to improvise with this duet-to-solo approach.

Seven pieces in each book can also be played by three or four people at once in group classes. In other words, teachers can use the same musical patterns to create solos, duets, trios, or quartets.

For more information about this new series, go to www.frederickharrismusic.com.

This 144-page book explores ways to create melodies (improvise) with the most popular scales in classical, ethnic, jazz, and popular styles. This original Pattern Play book (first published in 2004) can now function as a "teacher's handbook" for the new series published by Frederick Harris Music. It offers a more in-depth exploration of solo playing for many of the pieces in that new series. It comes with a CD and has a Layflat Binding for use at the piano. The CD has 31 solo improvisations on the various pieces and 4 duets. Click on the image for more information.

This 128-page book has 105 distinct pieces composed of hundreds of Patterns in all the major and minor keys. It explores various way to create melodies in diverse musical styles and introduces ways to begin creating your own accompaniment Patterns. This book has a Layflat Binding for use at the piano. Click on the image for more information.

This 128-page book has 96 pieces in which you improvise in various ways and musical styles in all the modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Locrian) in all twelve keys. It comes with a spiral binding. This book is not for sale on this website—it may be sometime later in 2010.

Harmony, Volume 1: This 144-page book is for those who want to understand chords and be creative with them. It explores ways to improvise, compose, and arrange with triads and added color tones (seconds, sixths, and sevenths) in diverse styles and in all the twelve Keys. Click on the image for more information.

Another Harmony book is currently "in the works." Harmony, Volume 2: Color Chords will explore ways to create Patterns and arrangements with the various flavors of 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th chords in all sorts of styles and in all keys.

Eighteen years in the making, this book articulates a new—yet ancient and forgotten—understanding of art and creativity. It explores how to move beyond common understandings of creativity to discover your own genius. This book is for anyone practicing an art or wishing to. It reveals that the nature of art has been buried under a number of misconceptions, and allows the reader to discover the delight of creating something profoundly personal, something unique that is “beyond compare.” Click on the image for more information.

"To fall into habit is to cease to be," said Miquel de Unamuno. This book is for those wishing to bring creativity into every day. It features over 320 practices that help us shake up habitual responses so that they may become creative responses.

The first half of the book is about the nature of the creative response. The four chapters are: Creative Response, Creative Possibilities, Creative Power, and Creative Freedom. The second half of the book explores whether a creative response fits a creator's unique nature. It's chapters are: Uniqueness, Confidence, Beyond Compare, and Truth.

This book will be available on this site sometime in late 2010.

Volume One of World Songs offers fourteen songs to be enjoyed by all singers, particularly those in the early stages of study.

Volume Two of World Songs presents twenty-one songs for the intermediate or advanced singer.

This is a modern fairy tale by Akiko Kinney, told in both words and music, with nineteen original piano compositions composed and performed by the author.