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Hi,

I only came back to piano after a 4 year absence. (been playing 10 years before that) Anyways, my teacher has drilled me with key regimen excercises, chord identity, and lots of theory along with repetoir. She says it should help me in the long run and perhaps would be a good idea and just 'mess around' with some notes, and maybe coming up with a melody; backing it up with some chords etc. I'm new at this and don't know of any general rules to follow. For instance:

1. I'll try an easy key like A minor - is there a chord progression other that I IV V (i'm sure there is for minor keys but forgot)

2. I can come up with a good beginning part of a melody but don't know how to resolve it back to one. I read up a little on 'passing tones' and such, but really haven't understood it.

* I just want to give this a shot as she suggested... the theory so far has helped me a lot thus far in learning and understanding pieces a lot easier.

there're several typical or standard chord progression you could just try to memorize. you can find such either from some 'Harmony' theory books or somewhere online. you might try to do a search online by 'harmony progression' or something like that...

composing and improving are related but not quite the same. composing requires much more, although improvising would use some composition techniques as well. there're a lot of rules and theories in composition, and nobody can explain it to you in a few paragraphs. so, you might want to find those online or in some books (very thick books in fact).

but a good exercise could be: choosing a very simple melody or song, then adding left hand accompaniment which would be chords, or broken chords or arpeggios or any figured segments of chords following the chord progression you choose. for one song, you can compose several different left hand parts (each in a different figuration). this might be the 1st step for you to learn composition and improvisation.

btw, if you have had a melody already, then try to repeat the melody several times, and each time you change either note intervals (vertical, parallel move up/down) or replace some part of melody with new material. the final phrase of the song usually has to end to tonic (your key's tonic chord) to sound complete.