Hello Everyone!
Wow some awesome progress this week!!
Noreet:
Today we reviewed the D Major and A Major scales hands together. Noreet can continue to warm up with these, however please pay extra close attention to the descent of these two scales and review the fingerings slowly to ensure Noreet’s fingers don’t get tangled. Practice the descending pattern, hands separately, 3 times each, increasing the speed of the tempo each time. Then play the scales descending hands together. Noreet can also practice E Major hands separately slowly. Noreet would like to continue to review “More Ice Cream” this week. Please help her and remind her that this song starts on a D. Noreet can also slowly start to practice Mr. Hayden’s Theme. She will have to sight read this herself. Should she get stuck, or not recognize a note, help her find the answer by asking if the next note is higher or lower than the one she just played and by how many steps.
Vida:
We are working on Green Frog Hop! Remember that this piece has both an F sharp and an F natural in it and sometimes alternates between these two in the same bar. Please remind Vida the difference between the two and help her to identify both on the page and keyboard. Also, a correction from the lesson…The small triangle symbol in the piece is NOT a marcato as I called it in the lesson, it is an accent. But they mean very similar things – make sure Vida emphasizes the accented notes and phrases by pressing the keys firmly. Finally, please help Vida to sight read the second page of Green Frog Hop as we did not get to that in the lesson. When practicing this piece, please dedicate more tome to reading and practicing the left hand to help Vida become more familiar with the notes in the bass clef. Start with the left hand, then read the right hand, play both together when Vida is confident. Feel free to record Vida playing this one when she is “performance ready”, it sounds like this was helpful last week.
Eva:
Great first virtual lesson today! We started to read through “Piano Adventures Level One” today! You can find this book available on amazon here. Today we looked at page 4 in the book “Get Ready for Take Off”. A copy of this has been uploaded to the google drive. We reviewed our note values with flashcards, talked about time signatures, reviewed our dynamic levels, and played through some rhythm patterns! For this week, I have uploaded both the note values flashcards and 9 different rhythm patterns for Eva to review. With the rhythm patterns, Eva can feel free to clap these rhythms or play them on the piano. When playing these rhythms, please ask Eva to count out loud to ensure she is holding each note for the correct amount of time. Should Eva get stuck, or is unsure of how a rhythm pattern is supposed to sound like, use the Note Values Flashcards to help remind her how many beats each note gets. You can find the flashcards here.
Awesome work this week! I’m so excited to see how much we all accomplish in March!
Happy Practicing!