ARCT • Teachers’ Diploma (RCM) in-progress
Trained Music Together Teacher
Erin Plank (they/he) is a passionate young piano teacher. For their professional development, Erin received the highest exam scores in all of Canada last year for “Teaching Elementary Piano” with the RCM.
Erin’s main goal is to turn students into lifelong music lovers, not just pianists. I seek to provide them with the tools to practice efficiently at home, sight read a song at their friend’s piano, learn the melody to a song off the radio by ear, and nurture a technical foundation that lasts a lifetime so it’s “just like riding a bike” to play the piano. And even better, they’ll want to.
Get to know Erin…Beyond the Bio!
Hobbies: Piano, weightlifting, playing with my cat, and hanging out with friends
Musical influences: Ben Folds, Brad Mehldau, Edvard Grieg
Favourite food: Fried chicken sandwich
Least favourite food: snap peas, because I ate too many as a kid one time and threw up and now I dislike the smell
Favourite music: Romantic era piano music, Beach Boys and similar era music, math rock
Favourite song: “How Dare You Want More” by Bleachers
Favourite movie: Sing Street
Favouirite movie music: main theme for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” or anything Star Wars
Favourite musical theatre/opera: Wozzeck
Best quote from your teacher: “Don’t show the audience you messed up, they won’t know! Keep going!”
Favourite quote: “That’s what life is, Happy Sad”
Favourite book: Recursion by Blake Crouch
Best thing about teaching at ABC: Getting to reach and connect with so many lovely people!
Latest Homework from Erin
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Thursday January 11 Lessons – Erin P
Have a great week and stay warm everyone <3
Liam
Russian Medley – piece 2 HT. Spend 70% time on piece 2, and 30% on keeping piece 1 in your hand. Great work.
Harlequinade – HS. Learn LH. Great work with RH just watch lift in m4.
Harmonic and melodic scales – Bm, Dm, Gm. Remember LH B starts with finger 4.
P.S So sorry I forgot to give you your Bingo prize today. I’ll give it to you next week.
Jadon
Struttin‘ – Great reading today. A nice laidback tempo is perfect for the mood of this piece.
Canon x Beautiful in White – practice Canon chord progression in C, D and E to prep for this.
Katarina
Thanks for getting another Wunderkeys book!
This week we are going to play Wish for Fish and the other 2 pieces on the page to its right. They all are in the same position, C, but the last one is in 3/4 rather then 4/4. The little numbers they write above or below the staff are finger numbers and we played a finger number review game today and you did great! Use those clues to your advantage!
*Resist the urge to move your fingers from the key they start on (unless the book tells you too, which it doesn’t currently). We want every finger to get its workout, and have a job to do).
Work towards complete evenness in your C major scales. Count.
Sara
Maple Leaf Rag – Extra work on trio. Sounding amazing. See how you like accenting the and of 4 or any time the LH has to move by half step.
Lullaby of Birdland – count carefully and listen to recordings
Start thinking about what pieces you might like to do for exam or if there’s any more you specifically want to explore.
Marco
On Your Mark – HS, learn LH too, whole piece. Make sure you are counting rests. Learn the LH hands seperate too. For RH 8th note passages it is almost entirely stepwise movement, so I drew a line like a graph showing the melodic direction.
Indiana Jones – HT great work. Add on bridge RH. Finger numbers are written in.
A minor natural and harmonic(raised 7th) scale. Standard fingering. HS.
*New* Morning Fanfare – learn HS with correct rhythm and notations since the notes are easy, C pentascale.
Daniel
Home Run – great work! Start a bit quieter, and then on further repetition you can reach the fun boisterous volume. Fix circled dotted rhythm in B section.
Etude in F Major – HS until confident in fingering and chord changes. I want to hear a chunk of this HT and confident next week.
C and G major formula – see below
Marita
Theme and Variations by Krebs – theme HT and confident. Focus all of your piano brain this week into smart practicing techniques so you can make amazing progress on the first of 3 chunks of this piece. Begin HS. Use small chunks and be accurate with details, repeat many times. Then play one hand and tap the other hand..
Greta
*New* Jump Pop Hop – uses parallel motion, and contrary motion of triads. Be sure to be picky about dynamics and articulations.
Into the Waves – nice work! Add in dynamics and go for fluency and painting a beautiful picture.
C and G solid triads – root position and inversions.
Saturday December 9 Lessons – Erin P
Great work everyone!! Enjoy the rest of the weekend and following week :)
Hakim
Haunted Mouse – dynamics are important to this piece, it begins “piano” which means quiet (like a mouse) and by the end it is loud! When playing the solid 3rds, they should feel light and bouncey like your hand is a woodpeckers beak. A loose wrist is important, your arm or hand should not feel tense. Listen here.
C major scale – hands together. You’re doing this exactly right. Choose a slow enough tempo that you can perform it perfectly in time without hesitation.
C major triads – hands separate, broken and solid. You can watch here, where he plays them solid. Playing them broken means to play them one at a time in the direction you are going. The notes will be CEG, EGC, GCE, and then CEG again. The “outside” notes will always be played by your thumb and pinky, while finger 3 or 2 can be used for the middle note, whichever is most ergonomic for the hand/inversion. Go slow and think of your hand as a crab laterally and smoothly walking up the keys.
Maria – have a great Holiday!!!
Tattoo – First page – I’m so proud of your accomplishments on this piece!! For the 2nd “section” of the piece, the melody over the 1st, 3rd and 4th chords is an offbeat start. The melody fragment over the second chord begins right on Best 3.
All I Want for Christmas Is You – intro. This piece is in G major (F#s). The main chords used are G, E minor, C and D. A C minor is also added in to create that jazzy sound.
Shakira
Jingle Bells – HT. Practice hands separate first, perhaps looking at a chart that labels which key is which on the keyboard would help you find the Cs Fs and Gs with your LH… Play the RH, and when confident, put them together.
C Major scale – both hands. RH fingering is 123 12345. LH is 54321 321 (starting from the bottom).
Noreet
Jingle Bells – Play each line on the first page twice each practice session. In the last line on the first page, after the 5 staccato Gs with your RH pinky, bounce just up one white key to play the A with your pinky and then move back to the normal position. Feel free to keep going and add the classic Jingle Bells part on too.
Half Time Show – this piece only has F A and C, but the catch is, we just learnt what treble C looks like in the staff. Both hands are in F position. Middle C is still middle C, the next C UP the keyboard is treble C (it is an octave higher). You can play along here (20 and 21).
C major scale – RH. It is awesome that you want to play beyond the one octave HOWEVER we have to be careful we don’t confuse our brain with the wrong fingering…. If you do keep going past the octave, keep the same fingering going to your thumb should only ever play C or F. 123 12345 is the fingering.
Preferred Books for Erin Students
Click to buy them here, and they’ll come right to your house! What could be easier?
BOOK TITLE
COMING SOON
Faber Piano Adventures
The 2nd Edition Level 1 Lesson Book introduces all the notes of the grand staff, elementary chord playing, and the concept of tonic and dominant notes. Students play in varied positions, reinforcing reading skills and recognizing intervals through the 5th. Musicianship is built with the introduction of legato and staccato touches. This level continues the interval orientation to reading across the full range of the Grand Staff. The 5-finger approach is presented here in a fresh, musically appealing way.
Piano Safari
