Understand more of the music you already play
As the music we learn becomes richer, it can begin to feel as though there is simply more and more information to process. Unexpected notes, unfamiliar shapes and accidentals appear more frequently, and we often find we need to read a passage painfully note by note.
Yet very few of these things are random. They usually belong to recurring musical relationships that help the music move, create expectation and reach a destination. Once we begin to recognise those relationships, several apparently separate details can become part of one intelligible event. Harmony becomes practical because those relationships give us patterns, directions and landmarks: ways to understand why an accidental has appeared, organise what we read and remember more than a chain of individual notes.
Understanding Harmony for Pianists was designed especially for pianists with a classical background who want to understand harmony in the music they play, rather than simply reproduce the notes accurately. My own background is mainly classical, so the course begins from many of the same habits, strengths and questions that classical pianists bring to harmony.
Why harmony can make music easier to navigate
Naming every note or chord does not necessarily explain how a passage is moving. Harmony adds questions of relationship and direction. What does this chord seem to expect? Where is the passage trying to go? Where is this unfamiliar note trying to take us?
Recognising a pattern does not make the score less detailed, but it can make that detail easier to navigate. Relationships, destinations and changes of direction provide landmarks for reading, learning and memory.
I would never try to claim that harmony is some kind of silver bullet. It does not automatically make somebody a fluent sight-reader, a secure memoriser or a confident performer, and it does not remove the physical work a piece requires. Its value is that it adds another route through the music, alongside the other skills and forms of preparation we already use.
How the course builds understanding
Music first at the keyboard
We begin with behaviour that can be played and heard. The keyboard makes scales, intervals and chord shapes visible, so we can notice what feels settled, what creates tension and what suggests a destination. Once the behaviour means something, we add the conventional terminology that helps us describe and recognise it elsewhere.
From chord names to harmonic maps
Knowing that a chord has a particular name does not necessarily tell us why it appears, what might happen next or how the same behaviour could look in another key. The course therefore moves beyond chord identity towards relationships, temporary homes, pathways and destinations. The aim is to develop a practical harmonic framework we can reconstruct, rather than memorise every possible example separately.
From transparent examples to classical repertoire
Classical music rarely presents harmony as a neat row of blocked chords. Notes may be distributed between the hands, inverted, decorated or woven into a melody. That richness is part of the music, but it can hide the relationship we are trying to recognise.
This is why the course uses chord progressions, chord symbols and lead sheets. They expose the harmonic framework so that we can see and hear what it is doing without first deciphering a full texture. Some of that language is more commonly associated with jazz, but the terminology is less important than the behaviour it describes. The same musical relationships occur in classical repertoire.
Lead sheets are therefore a working laboratory, not the final destination. Once a relationship has become familiar in a transparent form, we look for it where it is less obvious:
- Bach’s Prelude in C major reveals a sequence of chords beneath its flowing surface.
- The G sharp in Beethoven’s Für Elise becomes unsurprising when we understand the direction of the minor harmony.
- What may first look like unexplained decoration in Chopin’s Waltz in C sharp minor becomes purposeful chromatic movement.
- The changes in Liszt’s Consolation No. 3 reveal temporary harmonic centres that make sense once we can see the route between them.
These examples are not intended to turn the course into an exhaustive analysis of four pieces. They demonstrate something more useful: relationships learned in an exposed form genuinely survive inside the richer textures classical pianists encounter.
How the framework develops
The course begins with scales, chord families and the ways chords connect, then develops into temporary key centres and less familiar harmonic movement. Later ideas use more advanced terminology, but they grow from relationships introduced earlier, so you are not asked to abandon one way of thinking and start again.
What you can realistically expect
By the end of the course, you should have a more practical way to understand harmony at the piano. Instead of asking only what a chord is, you will be better equipped to ask what it is doing, where it came from, where it may be going and whether you have encountered the relationship before.
That awareness may help you group what you are reading, make sense of accidentals, recognise landmarks while learning, organise a piece more securely in memory and reconstruct familiar relationships in new keys. These are ways in which harmony can support musicianship once we put in some work.
Success does not mean attaching a theoretical label to every note. It means increasingly seeing structure and having another set of questions and landmarks available when the music becomes unfamiliar.
Is this course for you
The course is likely to suit you if you can follow simple notation, understand basic scales and want to investigate how the music is moving, not only identify its notes and chords. You do not need advanced theory, improvisation experience or prior experience of lead sheets, but you will need access to a piano or keyboard and a willingness to test the relationships for yourself.
Course format and resources
The course contains 24 video curriculum items across nine sections. Each lesson has an accompanying workbook that summarises the important ideas and suggests practical explorations at the piano. A downloadable three-song lead-sheet collection provides a clear setting in which to practise the relationships before looking for them in richer textures.
The course is hosted on Udemy, where you can inspect the full curriculum and previews and see the current price and enrolment details.
Why I teach harmony this way
My own background is mainly classical, but more than 30 years ago I used lead sheets extensively while playing background music at formal events. Years later, I realised that this had taught me to recognise recurring harmonic patterns before I knew their technical names. That experience helped inspire a course built around explanations you can test at the piano and begin to use independently in music you already play.
Take a closer look
If this way of thinking about harmony feels relevant to the music you want to understand, the next step is to take a closer look at Understanding Harmony for Pianists on Udemy. There you can review the complete curriculum, watch the available previews, see the current offer and decide whether Understanding Harmony for Pianists is the right course for you.