Anastasiya
Excellent work with the flash cards – you are getting so much faster at your note reading. We will keep working with this every week. Also, great job with “Kites in the Sky”! You played it so well today – just remember that kites like to float gently in the air, so make sure you don’t speed up when you play this piece. Your new piece this week is “A Mixed-Up Song”. I forgot to this in the lesson, but I want you to circle all of the fourths that you see in the music. Remember that when you’re learning a new piece, it’s super important that you are looking at the music (instead of guessing the notes or using your ear) – if you don’t do this, you won’t know what notes to play! Great job this week.
Madison
Today, we worked on “Sonatina”. Keep practicing to put the hands together for next week – a little bit of practicing each day is all it takes. It already improved in today’s lesson, so I know you can do this at home by yourself too! It is still a good idea to practice hands separately sometimes just to make sure you really know each hand’s part super well. Also, practice using the “stop after each measure” method. The name is self-explanatory – just play one measure, hands together, and stop after each measure, think about what is going to happen in the next measure, then play. After this gets comfortable, try playing the piece normally.
Juliette
Very good work this week. “Music Box Rock” sounded great. Your assignments for this week are “A Cowboy Song”, “Greatest Show on Earth” and “The Whirlwind”.
“Cowboy Song” – practice both the normal way, and the other way I showed you (long-short long-short). This is what we call a swing rhythm. This makes the piece sound really different, and also it makes playing the normal way much easier after you master both ways!
“Greatest Show on Earth” – You were very quick today to put both hands together! Make sure your Left hand is louder than your right hand. When you practice hands separately, keep your fingers in your left hand very firm and activated. This will help you to get a louder sound very easily. This goes without saying, but it’s important to practice both hands separate and hands together. Also, make sure to keep your right hand quiet in this piece.
“The Whirlwind” – today we learned the difference between half steps and whole steps (half steps are smaller, and whole steps skip one note). “The Whirlwind” uses only half steps in the piece. Make sure to do the half step exercise on the previous page, and keep your hands very small. I can’t wait to hear it next week!