At this stage, students are ready to read, explore, and refine.
Foundations provides the bridge between story-led learning and independent musicianship — supporting confident reading, strong technique, and expressive playing through an engaging, progressive curriculum.
Foundations builds on early musical experience, helping students develop strong reading, playing, and ensemble skills through imaginative, topic-based learning.
Each unit explores a musical theme that ties together listening, performance, and theory, giving learners a cohesive and creative experience that connects music to their lives.
KeyNotes Foundations lessons are musical, collaborative, and goal-focused.
Students build literacy, technique, and creativity through playing, analysing, and composing within each topic.
Every session blends solo and group work, ensuring that learning is interactive, musical, and grounded in real performance.
UnderstandingÂ
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Reading, writing, and playing more complex rhythm and pitch notation
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Enharmonics, keys, chords and cadences
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Application of dynamics, articulation, and phrasing for intention and expression
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Musical elements and how they represent moods, characters and feelings
Skills
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Ensemble playing
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Improvising, composing, and arranging music
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Building technique, dexterity, and control
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Sight-reading
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Performing with focus and intention
Mindset
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Taking ownership of learning and progress
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Working collaboratively and support peers
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Tackling challenges with independence and resilience
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Thinking critically and make informed musical decisions
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Staying motivated through meaningful goals and choice
Foundations continues the KeyNotes tradition of learning through connection.
Each workbook offers multiple challenge levels, structured theory integration, and opportunities for ensemble and solo performance — all built around a unifying musical theme.
The result is a research-informed, musically rich program that develops literacy, confidence, and creativity while keeping the learning experience dynamic, differentiated, and deeply musical.
Note Reading
How students are introduced to note-reading is key to how well they grasp it. We make sure that students are clear on all the initial fundamentals of the piano, such as where the notes are, hand position, and finger numbers, before approaching reading with them. We teach both directional reading and mnemonics, as we find that the mix of the two main approaches gives our students every chance of securing the foundations of reading. We also separate the treble and bass clef, plus of course we play lots of games!
Composition as a learning tool
Our pieces build finger strength, 5-finger positions and a bubble hand posture. We have games and exercises that develop knowledge of the different sounds that can be achieved through the way that we play the piano, and these relate to the stories we are telling.
Supporting parents to support their child
We are so passionate about the importance of parents' role in their child's piano-learning journey; it is key to the child's confidence, self-efficacy, and perseverance. As such, we provide an area of our site where parents can watch practice videos for each lesson. This is in addition to the parent practice sheets that teachers are able to hand out each week.
Backing Tracks
Backing tracks help to bring the programmatic elements of the pieces to life, as well as making sure that everyone stays in time!Â
Our Foundations backing tracks feature ensembles appropriate to the style and genre of the theme.
Here is an example from our Space book: Alien Battle March
Our Workbooks
Foundations has six workbooks, each lasting approximately 16 weeks. Each workbook is based on a theme, and all learning, playing and gaming are based around it.Â
What age group is Foundations designed for?
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KeyNotes Has All the Tools You Need To Build A Successful Group Piano Program
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