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Hi Doug, in order not to hijack the "What You Have Accomplished" thread, I figured I'd start a new one regarding your experience with the Keyboard Accompaniment Course. A while back, I did a brief profile of it on AB forum. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the Basics book. It sounds like you've made a lot more progress in the course, and I was wondering what you meant by your statement that you weren't too impressed with it.

Could you please elaborate? Also, are you in the basic books, or are you in the advanced books? It looks like going through the whole course could take a long time and a lot of effort, which is just fine, unless I'm not going to get much out of it. With limited practice time, I try to be careful as to how I spend it.

Thanks.

Mark,

I bought the six advanced books. I skipped the basic books based on looking at the tables of contents. Its not that I'm any good at that stuff, but I know the theory and just need to practice. (As my Dad always said about new diet information " I already know more than I'm using now.")

I do not have any criticism of the books I have gone through so far. I think they just do not suit my style. They do a pretty good job of leading you through the usual "play by using chords" stuff, and a number of accompaniment styles. I just find myself getting bored with it.

I have had more succuess with taking the basic concepts from the " How to play piano despite of years of lessons" to fool around with songs that I know and love. The the Keyboard Accompaniment course seems more methodical and step-by-step. It feels more like studying to me, so I don't spend as much time on it.

I am going to go through the rest of the books at least once. I'm just not going to spend too much time in any one day, or use it as the only way to learn to play the stuff I like.

Doug

Thanks, Doug. I bought the four basics books and the first two advanced books. I find the first basics book to be more difficult than I expected. Even though I'm no expert, I've gotten okay at doing common chords, inversions, and progressions from using "...despite years of lessons" and "How to Play...in 10 Easy Lessons", but doing simple alternating bass, broken chords, etc. against simple melody lines, like those in the first basics book, give me more problems than I care to admit.

I've temporarily suspended my work in the KAC in order to try Lead Lines and Chord Changes by Ann Collins. It's one book and covers major and minor triads, sevenths, ninths, 11ths, playing chords across two hands, inversions, etc. It's really what I want to learn, but it's much more independent learning. For example, when discussing inversions, it shows what they are and then says go practice all inversions around the circle of fourths. So, basically, it provides a little instruction and you need to run with it (or, in my case, crawl with it). The book provides a piece or two to practice each of the concepts. I think it's best to get a fake book and use those songs as more extensive practice. After all, you learn the most useful stuff by applying the concepts to real music, as opposed to learning a lot of esoteric chords that probably don't show up much in popular music.

Some people might find the Lead Lines approach to be the best, others would like the KAC step-by-step approach, and others, like me, would prefer a middle ground.

Maybe I'll skip some of the KAC basics books and jump into the advanced books. Maybe that's where I really need to be. It's kind of ironic, but I might actually have more experience in the concepts in the advanced books than I do in the basics books.