The Well-Rounded Keyboard Player
Develop the musicianship skills that connect what you see, hear, understand and play
Do theory, ear training, sight reading or keyboard harmony sometimes feel like separate skills that sit somewhere around the edges of your piano playing?
Perhaps some have received less attention because most of your practice time goes into repertoire and technique. Or perhaps you've studied them before, but never really connected them with the music you learn and practise.
Yet these wider musicianship skills can have a direct impact on how we hear and understand music, learn pieces and progress as pianists.
The Well-Rounded Keyboard Player is an eight-week practical musicianship programme with pianist, composer and teacher Lona Kozik, bringing together four key areas:
- Music Theory
- Ear Training
- Sight Reading
- Keyboard Harmony
Rather than treating these as separate areas of study, the course brings them together through weekly learning and guided practice, helping you develop a more integrated approach to the score, the ear, musical understanding and the keyboard.
Four areas of musicianship, combined
Throughout the course, you'll work across four complementary areas of musical training.
- Music Theory: Understand the patterns, structures and musical ideas you encounter, building practical musical knowledge that can inform and enhance your playing.
- Ear Training: Develop your inner hearing and strengthen the connection between notation and sound through sight singing and other aural activities.
- Sight Reading: Develop the skills that support more fluent sight reading through dedicated reading work, rhythm and keyboard harmony, giving you greater freedom to explore more music.
- Keyboard Harmony: Put keys, scales, chords and harmony to use at the keyboard, linking what you understand with what you hear and play.
Being a well-rounded keyboard player does not mean mastering four independent subjects. It means developing a range of musical skills that reinforce one another in your playing.
What this means for your playing
See more in the score: Move beyond processing music note by note. Greater awareness of patterns and structure can help you process music more efficiently and see how it is put together.
Hear what you see: Develop a stronger connection between notation and inner hearing, so that written music becomes something you can hear internally as well as decode visually.
Understand what you play: Put theory and harmony to musical use, helping you decipher structures and harmonic patterns and making unfamiliar music easier to navigate.
Become a more complete musician: Draw on these skills across your playing to enhance the way you learn, understand and memorise music. Together, they can support your overall progress as a pianist.
Knowledge Applied
This is a hands-on course designed to help you build your musical knowledge and turn it into practical ability.
- Learn: Learn the musical ideas and concepts that underpin the week's work.
- Practise: Work through carefully chosen musical examples and exercises step by step, with guided activities in sight singing, rhythm and keyboard harmony, alongside dedicated sight-reading work.
- Integrate: Return to the same musical ideas through hearing, reading and playing, bringing these different skills together.
Most weeks begin with lesson material, followed by five guided daily practice sessions. This gives you a regular structure without a fixed daily timetable. Dedicated sight-reading work is included twice each week.
Is This Course for You?
The course is designed for pianists who already have some experience at the instrument but feel that gaps in their musical training may be holding them back.
It will be particularly useful if you:
- have spent relatively little time developing musicianship beyond repertoire and technique;
- have studied some of these areas before but are unsure how to apply them in your playing;
- struggle with sight reading or find that learning new music takes longer than you would like;
- want theory and harmony to become something you can use at the keyboard rather than knowledge that sits apart from your playing;
- want a more holistic musical training alongside the pieces you are learning.
The course is not intended for complete beginners. It begins with relatively fundamental material, but this does not necessarily mean the work will feel elementary. Pianists who already play at an intermediate level can still find that their development in reading, hearing, theory or harmony lags behind their playing.
No advanced theory knowledge is required.
The course will also be useful to teachers looking for structured musicianship work they can recommend to students for use between lessons.
Why Lona Created the Course
When Lona went to university, she was completely focused on studying piano. But she soon discovered how much a wider musical training could contribute to her development as a pianist.
For Lona, studying theory and musicianship improved her sight reading and quick-study skills, made memorising music easier and more reliable, deepened her musical expression, gave her greater confidence as a teacher and eventually led to composing music.
That experience lies behind The Well-Rounded Keyboard Player and Lona's belief in developing the musical skills that support what happens at the piano.
Course Information
The Well-Rounded Keyboard Player is an eight-week online programme delivered through video lessons and practice sessions, with downloadable scores, musical examples and supporting materials.
The first lessons will be available in the final week of September, with new material released progressively over the eight weeks.
Weekly emails will help you stay on track, with direct access to the lessons and activities for each stage of the programme.
All material is pre-recorded, so you can work through it at times that suit you. Standalone purchasers have ongoing access with no expiry.
