Anastasiya

“Half-Time Song” sounds much better now! Keep practicing it so it’s even more polished and better next week. Remember that your hands don’t have to change positions for this song. For your next piece (sorry – I forgot the name! I think it was “Lost Pines”?) I think you can learn that for next week. Just two things to always think about – remember which notes get one beat (quarter notes) and which notes get two beats (half notes). The other thing to remember is in the second line, your right hand has to shift, which means changing positions. You will just move your thumb down to the F – practice making that shift as smooth as you can and then it will be easy for you to do more shifts in your next pieces.

Madison

Your first goal should be to practice every day this week!! We practiced “Greatest Show on Earth” for about 15 minutes today and it was so much better after that! Find all the tricky parts in the piece and practice them hands separately until you are super comfortable. After that, you can put the hands together – but I know you already know all the notes! It’s just about practicing now. For next week, also learn “The Whirlwind”. The practice on page 36 will help your hand get used to the half-steps.

Melody

Great job this week! I know I’m throwing a lot of information at you and you’re doing a good job of learning all of it really quickly! Now that you know where all the Ds are, next week I’m going to check that you can find all the Cs (one lower than D) and Es (one higher than D). Keep working on “Merrily We Roll Along”, “O’er the Deep Blue Sea” and “Handbells”. Practice by saying the finger names as you play them – it really helped when we did that today. Remember in handbells, there are dynamics – p=piano which means quiet, and f=forte which means loud. The last two things I want you to think about are keeping your arm relaxed and your hand position good so I can see the “mountain tops”. You’re very quick to learn all of this information – be sure to call Barnaby this week so he can help you with a piano rental!