Mastering a piece and performing it as the composer wrote it is a key part of a pianist’s training, but it is not the only thing we should work on with the students.
As Forrest Kinney said: “Someone with a command of language can freely talk, tell stories, read, and write. In a similar way, a musician can improvise freely (talk with tones), arrange familiar musical themes in a personal way, read and interpret scores, and compose musical essays. These are the Four Arts of Music”.
Working with students to create variations of the pieces they play will allow us to work on all the arts simultaneously in a holistic way.
Why create variations with our students?
Being able to vary the elements of a piece and create music with them is not only extremely beneficial for students but also highly motivating for them.
Exploring the elements of pieces in a creative and varied way will help students better assimilate the concepts we want to teach. By using a piece familiar to them as a base, this activity can be done quite simply. If the student has a good understanding of the elements present in the piece (such as rhythm, meter, key, harmony, and other technical and musical components), they will find it easy to change these elements and explore how the piece sounds with different variations.
For learning, it is essential to compare what something is with what it is not. To understand a 3/4 time signature, for example, the student needs to appreciate how it differs from a 4/4 time signature. To grasp that a piece is in a major mode, they need to know how it differs from a minor mode or a Lydian mode. And there is no better way to learn these contrasts and differences than by making variations on the pieces.
How to create variations of pieces?
We can create variations of pieces in many different ways; any element of the piece can be changed. If students have never done this activity before, they will need our assistance. However, once they have gone through this process several times, they will be able to do it on their own.
Any element we change, no matter how small it is, will be a variation of the original piece. We can alter the key of the piece, change the mode, modify the meter, play the piece in different registers of the piano or with different dynamics, vary the type of accompaniment, use different rhythms, articulations, tempo, harmony, character, or any other parameter.
At first, we can offer ideas to the students, suggest a different beginning, or propose which elements they might vary. Gradually, the student will learn to experiment with the pieces creatively and independently.
Any piece can be used for this activity, but pieces based on patterns or written to be taught by rote are especially suitable. It’s also not necessary to vary the entire piece; variations can be made on just the first 4 or 8 measures of a piece.
In the following video, I demonstrate an example of how to vary the first 4 measures of Bach’s Prelude 1 in C major. In my course Piano Patterns in Harmony, you can find many more examples like this.
12 Variations on Diversion 12
If you’ve never tried this activity with your students, I suggest a piece for creating variations.
The piece I’ve chosen is my Diversion 12. In the PDF, you can see 12 variations I wrote for my classes, which can provide you with ideas for doing this with your students. You can download it for free.
These are the hand positions throughout the piece. As you can see, the thumbs of both hands are always a second apart. There are only three different positions.
I have always used the same chord progression (i – bVII – i – v – i) in all the variations, but it’s not necessary to do so; you can try the main idea of Diversion 12 and apply it to any other progression.
In two of the variations, I maintained the crossing of the left hand over the right hand from the original piece, while in the rest I did not.
I used different time signatures: 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, and 12/8, but you can also use less common time signatures like 5/8 or 7/8. In some, the melody is written for the right hand, and in others, for the left hand. There are variations with contrary motion, and others for working on fifths, broken chords, or chords. There are not many indications in the scores, and you can change the ones that are there to your liking.
Different activities with Diversion 12
One way to work with these variations is to play them as written. Once the students learn Diversion 12 and understand how it works, they will be able to prepare each variation quickly. They can learn them through both by rote or by reading.
However, if you’ve read this far, you may have already realized that the variations I suggest are just an example—they are a starting point, not the final goal. Try to create as many variations as you can think of with your students.
To do this, we can start by proposing a motif and having the student repeat it and continue the piece.
Or we can propose a rhythmic motif and have the student create something with that rhythm and apply it to the progression.
When you see that the students are ready, they can create a pattern and apply it to the entire progression. They can also write down the pattern, which will help them with reading and writing music. Writing an entire piece is a very challenging task for students at this level, but writing just the pattern that shapes the piece won’t take too long. By simply creating a pattern and repeating it from each of the proposed positions, the student can compose their own piece, to which they can also give a name.
This approach can also be used in group classes. For example, you can ask each student to create and write their own pattern and conduct various activities with this idea: one student can play their piece while others write down the pattern (or guess its time signature, mode, articulations, or any element the student has changed). They can also each play a classmate’s pattern, or one student can play one of the patterns while the others try to guess which one it is, among other activities
I encourage you to try creating variations or improvising through the elements of repertoire pieces with your students. If you find this approach useful, you might be interested in the following resources:
- My online course on improvisation, Piano Patterns in Harmony, where I provide, in a sequential manner, countless ideas for creating music based on patterns from different composers.
- Forrest Kinney’s Birthday Variations, where the author proposes 88 different ways to play this famous song in many different styles.
- Forrest Kinney’s Puzzle Play books, while not variations themselves, are about learning to create piano arrangements in various ways and are closely related to creating variations.
- Samantha Coates’ BlitzBooks Rote Repertoire books, where she proposes 4 levels of playing the same piece, each with increasing difficulty, with the final level being where the student creates their own variations
And you, do you create variations of pieces with your students? Do you do it with the pieces you are working on as well? What resources do you use to do so?
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