Overview of Teacher Accompaniment Tracks How to Use the Teaching Scores and Accompaniment Tracks with My Method

One of the main concepts my favorite teachers hammered home when I was a student and hopefully I’ve continued the tradition; is an emphasis on playing in time, developing a strong time feel and learning how to make musical decisions on the fly. Hence the large library of accompaniment tracks with this method.

Jumping Ants Pro

A lot of time and energy was spent developing these accompaniment tracks so students could become more engaged in the pieces by hearing the “big picture” while learning to play the pieces at various tempos. I tried to record these with the most current recording technology so they would sound realistic to the students. They were professionally mixed and mastered in my studio. There will be MIDI versions in time.

These tracks are all represented visually by an HD score of all the ensemble parts so they can be projected in a classroom or used on a mobile device in lessons.

Each part of the ensemble has it’s own accompaniment track that can easily be called up in the database on the membership site… Simply type in the name of the song you want to play and the corresponding accompaniment tracks come up.

The tracks all have four versions:

  • Slow – 60 bpm
  • Medium – 75 bpm
  • Fast – 90 bpm
  • Pro – 100 bpm with no melody in the track (students are responsible for carrying the melody with no help)

Each track has a 2-measure count-in. For these examples from Book 4, the accompaniment tracks are in C Major (as of now).

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Here is the Slow version of “Jumping Ants”:

Here is the Medium version of “Jumping Ants”:

Here is the Fast version of “Jumping Ants”:

Here is the Pro version of “Jumping Ants”:

Just for reference, here is the Fast version of “Chattering Chickens”:

If you’re teaching groups of kids, you can project the whole score while they read the various parts. There are some teachers who have tested this who have students play one hand from one part and another hand from another part off the teacher score. For example, the bottom part of “Chattering Chickens” and the top part of “Waking Up” instead of how it is written.

If you want to learn about the benefits of the membership website – click here. In the meantime, enjoy playing along with these tracks!

The method is now available through this site. Click here to purchase materials.