Dear parents and students,
It would seem that summer is almost upon us! Very grateful for that!
Madison
GET AWAY!: Madison, I noticed your staccato has greatly improved! Bravo! There is wiggle room for improvement so keep up your 2-5min a day of detached vs. staccato scales, making sure you really exaggerate the differences! Bar 4 LH staccato still needs a lot of work! Practice that bar as your 2-5 minutes of staccato practice. :)
Small details done well and precisely in a piece is what really makes the difference for a polished, accomplished and ready to perform piece. To this end, be very confident and loud in the loud (Forte F) section of Get Away! **including the first two E’s that make the pickup to bar 9 and 13!
ALOUETTE: Pay attention to the Loud (F) and Soft (p) sections of this piece! Exaggerate the Loud sections so the listener can really hear a difference. :)
Practice bars 2 and 10 for 5 minutes a day, focusing on playing smoothly from the C in the RH to the G in the LH. Remember, the way we practiced this in the lesson was to “stagger” your hands, meaning we lifted from the LH chord while the RH still held on and only let go when the LH was ready to come down again on the G. You were already starting to get this in the lesson, good job!
Melody
Lets keep building on your knowledge of note names! Learning to read the notes right from the page is super important! You have an amazing memory, which is a beautiful strength! Balance your good memory with checking now and then with the notes on the page to make sure they match up (while practicing at home)!
Please do the little exercise I hand wrote onto your homework paper, let’s do little exercises like that every week from now on to help you learn your note names. With your fantastic memory we’ll get it in no time!
JULY THE FOURTH: count out loud (1 2 3, 1 2 3) to help you get through bars 4, 5, and 6, you’ll be able to catch yourself a lot better if you count loud, out loud ^_^ Make sure you are playing F’s instead of E’s at home! (Learning what F looks like on the keyboard and on the page) :)
OLD UNCLE BILL: Another chance to practice your F’s!
Wonderful work Melody! :)
Juliette
Thanks to you and your parents for getting the Hanon book! Practice exercise 1 both ascending and descending this week, most days :) The last iteration descending starts on G and finishes on E before ending on C.
LAVENDER’S BLUE: Great work, this is beginning to sound polished, just a three more things to continue thinking about: Be careful to detach the first two notes of bar 3, when practicing at home practice bar 7 on its own a few times and then bars 6-8, make sure you are holding the RH for the whole length of bar 4 and getting right off the LH in bar 9! :) You can do it ;)
WHEN YOU GROW UP: You’ve gotten so good and detaching, bravo! You’re so good at detaching that your last four bars that are supposed to be all legato (smooth) needs a little attention, especially with not lifting between bars. :) As for polishing the detached sections, just make sure your RH is still playing detached between bars for bars 5 and 6 and also in bar 8 :)
KUMBAYAH: Count out loud to help you with those dotted quarter note bars :) Feel free to practice them in isolation for a couple minutes a day before running through the piece.
Excellent work over all! You have such beautiful long fingers, it’s too easy to flatten them on the keys and play with very little strength, for sure there will be a time for flatter fingers on some keys, but for the next while lets focus on strengthening your fingers by playing as strongly as you comfortably can on the tips of your fingers! If it helps, mark the tips with marker or pen before beginning practice to help remind you. :)