Thinking Music
Notes on partimenti, musical creativity, improvisation, and learning to think in music.
These essays explore historical traditions of musical training, practical tools for improvisation and composition, and reflections on how musicians learn to create.
Six Classical Moments You Love: Basslines for Your Creativity
What if you could take moments from classical music you love and turn them into material for your own creativity? In Six Classical Moments You Love, I’ve taken six listener-suggested passages and reduced them to basslines you can explore, improvise on, and develop. Inspired by the tradition of partimenti—and by collections like those of Padre Martini—this free resource invites you to engage directly with the harmonic foundations of great music.
Inventing Music at the Keyboard
Inventing Music at the Keyboard is a new resource designed to help beginner pianists move beyond simply playing notes toward understanding how music works from the inside out. Built around scales, intervals, listening, and creative exploration, the series aims to cultivate musical fluency, improvisation, and compositional confidence from the very beginning.
Sound Before Sight
What if musical understanding didn’t begin with notation, but with listening? This post explores how learning through sound, imitation, and musical conversation can build deeper fluency — and why this approach sits at the heart of partimenti practice.
Play Comes First
Play isn’t the opposite of serious musical study — it’s often what makes real learning possible. This post reflects on how musical play, structured by simple rules, can unlock creativity, deepen understanding, and make music-making feel alive again.