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 April 18 Lessons – Erin P
Sounds like you all had a great, productive time with Emmett! Here are *his* notes for the week:
Liam
technical requirements are slowing down! Talked about relative minor, C major, Am hands together 2 octaves, G maj 2 octaves. Started to slow down for the end of scales, keeping consistent and EVEN on the way down. Focus on evenness. Dmin natural Mel and harm. Hands separate and then together. Working in visualizing scales before we play them to avoid playing wrong notes the first time.
Witches and wizards – memorized, take it slow, emphasis on control! Talked about pedal control and when to pedal! Slow practise emphizes the mistakes and you can highlight them. Work on time slowly. Memorize dynamics and keep the Piece interesting, lightweight dynamic more!
Walk the talk, good sense of time! Trying not to slow!
Marita
C. Major both hands, 2 octaves! Key signature? G major, breaking hands apart and then putting back together for fingering! Remembering left hand fingering coming down.
Learned the chords and melody with rhythm to Havana (Camila Cabelo)
Katarina
Learned chord terminology!! Went over chord pattern of C-Am-F-G. Did Perpetual motioning C and G! Watching left hand fingering! Focusing on fingering!
Learned the chords for Over the Rainbow.
Sara
G major, hands together, evenness and tempo! E min, harm, B maj, G min, nat, mel, harm,
Arp, C major, Eb major, right hand,
Chromatic scale!
Ballade – Good dynamics! Take fermatas longer, transitions smoother! Overall lovely phrasing and dynamics! Metronome,
Cloud dance – pedalling! Note pedal. Swells and slurs not want to hear the pedal.
Air in B flat – Nice tempo, a little ghost notes at times. Soaring through notes! No speeding up.
Sonatina in C major – bring out the melody, no speeding up, slow practise on hard sections!
Nightime in the city – Nice swing feel, slow it down for accuracy.
Take the A train – Had a lovely chat about jazz
Marco
Morning fanfare – good use of dynamics! Staccatos and slurs! Focus on accuracy and slowing don to catch all the articulations. Fermata, practised motion for left hand staccatos while the right is not! Don’t rush the 16th notes.
Minuet in C – 3/4 waltz feel, work on your tempo while playing slowly to not speed up. Watch your ties! Dont play the note twice! Keep your eyes up to not lose your place!
Song of the dark woods – dynamics, slower to remain in control! Watch you ties again, don’t just trust your ear. Look up at the music as you go. Dont try and muscle through at a fast tempo.
Daniel
Formula patterns, C major, left hand fingering. G major, A minor, slow because its new, same pattern as C.
The wind – Pedalling, watch the time switches, take it at a reasonable tempo. Good sense of pianissimo. Working on pedalling. Practise good fingering for parts that need to have a smooth connected feeling.
Entree in A minor – take it slow and connected to understand it fully, watch the octave you play the right hand in, dynamics. Wrist position higher to let the fingers move less, it’s less punchy by a long shot.
Periwinkle twinkle – Watch for rests in the right hand, slow down and get accurate. Staccato last note! Dynamics!
Breezy – watch the eighth note lines. Find the hard parts and then play the whole thing that tempo! Consistency!
Saturday April 13 Lessons – Erin P
Everyone’s sounding great!! I love getting to hear about all your week’s, brings a big smile to face working with all of you <3
Hakim
*New* Lost Woods – get used to playing the melody with just the RH, I wrote in the fingering I like to use, but you had some pretty smart fingering choices that involved crossing over or under that I liked – once you finalize which fingering you want to use, write it in.
Then get used to playing the LH by itself. The first half is F and a C major inversion. The second half is D minor-G7-C-A minor in a different rhythm. Go as slow as you need to to change positions without a big coffee break.
Keep your C major triads, C and G major scale, and A and E minor scales fluent.
Maria
Viva la Vida – use a click track or metronome at 70 and feel two clicks per measure. Your tendency is to rush at the chorus. Remember to vary the dynamics so it doesn’t sound monotone.
*New* Somersault King – this piece uses various articulations and triplets to create a happy go lucky mood. The trickiest measure is the one that alternates between triplets and plain 8th notes – as long as you keep a steady pulse in the LH, you will have no trouble alternating between the two. think “Bee-tho-ven Ap-ple Bee-tho-ven Ap-ple”. The form of the piece is: play from beginning to end, go back to beginning and continue until the sign that looks like a bullseye, which teleports you to the other bullseye symbol (called the coda) which is a special outro.
Shakira
Today we experimented with white key triad patterns up and down the keyboard with both hands which you had great success with.
We also tried alternating between notes a step apart which also went well.
Due to this, I think any note inaccuracies while reading are less about you physically struggling to execute the notes, and more about lacking a physical connection of what the note looks like on the page and where it is on the keyboard. Let’s start to say the note names aloud as we play them to help strengthen those connections in your brain.
Noreet
*New* Runaway Rabbit – after just one listen you were able to sing this piece perfectly!! Sing along the lyrics on pitch as you play. You noticed that the first line of the piece has a 2 bar phrase that is played and then repeated 1 white note higher. You also noticed that the second half of the piece has the LH copy that same opening melody, just with a slightly different ending (I wrote “different” on that measure). Be sure to do the big contrasting dynamics at the end for drama!
*New Scale* G Major. Same fingering as your C scale, just it starts on G and plays F# instead of plain old F.
C Major triads – today you stated that it’s a big help when you say the note names you need to find. Great idea! Sing CEG, EGC, GCE, CEG. You can play them solid (all at once) or broken (crab style).
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.