Christopher Norton’s Connections for Piano has been very popular since its launch in 2007. It forms a major part of the new Royal Conservatory syllabus in Canada, as well as being a feature of many other syllabuses, festival programmes and competitions around the world.
Here’s a recent quote from a teacher:
Connections: this series is the best and most complete series for ALL levels (up to RCM 10!) and has so many pieces in varying styles. Truly worth it!
Connections features a variety of pop and jazz styles, with backing tracks available online. The series is also available on Superscore (look for superscore-music on the App store)
There are 11 Connections for Piano levels – Preparatory, then 1-10.
All Connections books are available from www.80dayspublishing.com. Look for the piano tab!
‘Trumpet Blues’ from Connections 2 is a very bluesy piece (who knew?) with deliciously jazzy-sounding left hand voicings. One of the best things you can do is listen to the composer performance on YouTube.
This is on Christopher Norton’s YouTube channel.
When you get there, do hit Like and do subscribe!
There are also composer performances available with the wonderful backing track. All backing tracks for Connections are free, using a code at the front of each book. Here’s Trumpet Blues with piano and backing:
Trumpet Blues with piano and backing
And now here’s the sheet music for ‘Trumpet Blues’:
Trumpet Blues has an AA structure, with the first 8 bars of the repeat an octave higher in the right hand. The 2 halves end differently. The very bluesy chords used in Trumpet Blues are:
Here’s the chord progression of Trumpet Blues to play with the track. The track (without piano) is found here:
SIMPLE IMPROVISING
Start by playing the original melody with the track:
Now try your own simple variations of the melody, using the same notes as the melody (F pentatonic minor scale, or an F blues scale) to make your own melodies.
“Answer” the first 4 bars of the tune with your own melody.
Harmonise the melody with only left hand notes – F, Bb and C.
Experiment with more complex chords and textures.
ANOTHER IDEA:
Get someone to play these chords and improvise freely over them, without the track.
Connections 2 is available from 80dayspublishing.com (debrawanless.com in Canada)
Try playing along with Christopher Norton:
A final thought: there are excellent teacher accompaniments available in a book called Connections 2 for Piano Teacher Accompaniments. The written-out teacher part “fits” with the student part as well as with the backing track!
www.christophernortonconnections.com
For more articles in Christopher’s series for this blog, click here.
