Oscar — Work on your pentascales, legato and staccato, in the keys of C, G, D, A, and E. Use both hands. Focus on keeping your hands relaxed, sinking into the keys (like your arms are very heavy) for legato, and leaping off (like a little frog) for staccato. In addition, pick another pop song (any pop song) and arrange the chords as we discussed last week. Voices move as little as possible, move in contrary motion against the bass if possible.
Julie — Complete the circle of fifths we started in lesson this week by adding the key signatures for the remaining keys (all 6 of them) and the relative minors for all the remaining keys. Go to YouTube and listen to some people playing Mozart’s sonata in C major, K545. Use the slow down function in YouTube (under settings) and observe the different ways different pianists approach the trills and decorations. Write down your observations and show me next week. Also, of course, continue working on exercises from the Brown Scale Book in the keys of C, G, D, A, and E.
Kristin — In addition to all the stuff we’ve already been working on (including starred exercises from your scale book in the keys of C, G, D, A, and E), two assignments: 1) Start writing your D major composition down. You can either do so by hand, or use a free notation software — MuseScore is good for this. Consider whether you want it to be for solo piano or other instrumentation. 2) Pick a few songs and identify spots where rhythm is divided up additively as we practiced today. When I say additive, I mean divided into smaller groups of 2s and 3s. An example we looked at today was “Unsquare Dance” which was made up of 7 units, grouped 2+2+3. Another example might be The Shape of You by Ed Sheeran, which is made up of 8 units, grouped 3+3+2. What other examples can you find out in the wild?