Hello Everyone!
Vida:
It was great to see you at Lawrence Park today! Now that you are confident with both the right and left hands of “Under the Sea” work towards playing the whole song hands together. Play slowly to allow your hands the time to line up in the music. Pay close attention to the macro beat of the song. Write this in like we did with the first bar if the visual helps you to see which hand moves first. Remember that the left hand is twice as slow as it is mostly half notes – your right hand will move faster than your left. Once you can confidently play the whole song with both hands, we can learn Ed Sheeran’s “Under the Tree” or another song from your list. Focus on playing the first phrase hands together, reviewing the song hands separate in between if necessary. Once you feel confident playing the first phrase hands together, you can work on the second phrase hands together. Repeat this process for the whole song. For Mr. McGill’s Boop Sha Bop, focus on the highlighted bars (sticky notes). Isolate these bars, follow the instructions on the sticky note (faster eighth notes, slower quarter notes, play through the bar to the next bar), then go back and play the song again with these corrections in mind. Practicing with the metronome will help highlight some of these challenges. Aim for a tempo of 100BPM. Finally, sight read Loch Ness! We will review this together in class next week.
Berke:
Sorry we missed you this week! For practice this week, review Clair de Lune. Focus specifically on the fingering in the first 4 bars. Practice these eighth note figures slowly and focus on using the proper fingers. This will ensure your fingers don’t get tangled on their way down the keyboard and that we can reach the lower keys. Using the proper fingering will also help you play the phrase smoothly when we play at a faster tempo. When you feel confident and comfortable in the fingering of the first phrase, you can slowly increase the tempo. Challenge yourself this week to sight read 4 more bars of the song. The suggested fingering is written above each note. Give this a try when practicing and we can review this next week in class. When practicing Moonlight Sonata, try playing the first 6 bars hands together. Focus on reading bars 7-9 hands separately. You will have to play the upper notes of the right hands with your 5th finger! The upper note is played on each macro beat (the first beat of each chord). Pay close attention to when the notes in the chords change as they all look similar by change slightly every two beats. Finally your left hand for bars 7-9 is still playing in octaves so remember to use your 5th and 1st finger to play these notes. We will review both songs next week.