Abigail de Niverville

ATTENTION: There will be a substitute teacher, Cynthia, for next week. She will have all necessary information to conduct lessons in the same way as me!

Anna

Warm-Up: Anna can begin her practicing by playing the Db major scale. The main goal this week is to keep the scale the same speed throughout. I suggest she work with a metronome and experiment with the different speeds until she finds one she is comfortable with. A good online metronome is available here.

Db major etude: Anna should continue to work on this with a metronome, trying to keep the same speed throughout.

Entry of the Gladiators: The goal is to finish this song this week! Anna just needs to work on the last line thoroughly. She can play hands separately and then hands together as many times as needed (I’d suggest 5 times in both formats). She can then try to play the whole piece from beginning to end. She may need to slow down the beginning a bit so that she can play a consistent speed.

This lesson we also did a little work on chord progressions, which are common in both classical and popular musics!

Anna should practice for 15 minutes every day.

Megane

When Megane is practicing, I suggest she go as slowly as possible, assessing each bar. These are the questions she should ask herself:

• what staff is the bar in? bottom? or top? or both?
• are there any ties joining two bars together>
• are there any repeated ideas?

She should review Little River and Evening this week, making sure to play with the correct hands and fingering.

Megane should practice for 5 minutes every day.

Nelly

This week Nelly showed me a song she’d written down by listening to it. She wrote down the note names, but not their place on the staff. Her challenge this week is to write the notes down onto the staff! She can think about if the rhythm needed is quarter notes or eighth notes (which are faster than quarter notes).

Birthday Cake (from purple book): Nelly should first practice the song as written, but afterwards she can add in her own harmonies to make things more interesting for her. I just want her to review the notes and get them down.

If Nelly gets bored, I gave her sheet music for Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. She can start to work on the right hand part this week.

Nelly should play for 5-10 minutes every day!

Zoe

Zoe did a really great job playing Little Lost Kitty by herself in the lesson! This week, I want Zoe to work on Monsieur Mouse. We did some review of the song in the lesson and she was starting to get a good feel for it.

Mom, you can help by reading out the notes as she plays them. I’d like Zoe to pay attention to her hand and try and use the fingering on the page. But the main goal is comfort playing the melody of the song!

Zoe should play for 5 minutes every day!