FingerTips With a Touch of Theory, Book 5: All levels Piano Book

Purposeful and rewarding. Each page builds on previous concepts while introducing new layers of sophistication. Students experience the satisfaction of understanding harmonic structure while their hands gain real facility; there's clarity in the progression and genuine growth from one page to the next.

Intermediate and late intermediate piano students ready to deepen their harmonic vocabulary and expand their technical facility. This book serves pianists who have moved beyond basic chord progressions and are prepared to understand why certain cadences work and how to voice them cleanly across the keyboard.

• Approach cadence warm-ups as musical phrases, not mechanical repetition. Listen for the harmonic function of the dominant seventh resolving to tonic; this trains the ear while the fingers build muscle memory.
• When working through two-octave arpeggios, establish a consistent fingering pattern and practice it slowly enough that you can feel the hand position shift at each octave boundary. Speed comes only after the motion becomes automatic.
• Use interval inversions as a chance to strengthen hand independence. Play the inverted interval and its root position version side by side, listening for the quality change while maintaining even tempo.
• Apply scale work directly to the keys you're exploring. Play a scale, then move into an arpeggio in that key; this connection helps solidify harmonic geography across the keyboard.

Integrate this book into weekly lesson work rather than as occasional supplementary material. It pairs well with repertoire study, allowing students to apply newly learned cadences and arpeggios to their pieces. The breadth of key coverage makes it an excellent resource during semesters when you're programming across multiple tonalities.

• recognizing and voicing dominant seventh chords and their resolutions
• identifying and playing authentic, plagal, and half cadences
• executing two-octave arpeggios with consistent fingering and hand position shifts
• understanding interval inversions and hearing quality changes
• building scale fluency across major and minor keys
• coordinating arpeggio fingering patterns for efficiency and evenness