It’s almost October!! My favourite time of year:) I love the spooky season and the music that goes along with it.

Liam

Niimi Aandeg –  page 2 – really good effort! Keep the same way you’ve been practicing this. Play it one line at a time, rather than having to constantly restart whenver you make a mistake.

Raiders in the Night – page 2 – awesome! Work on getting in and out of the tricky triad part at the bottom of the page fluently without hesitation. This bridge goes through G minor, and F before using E to send us back to A minor.

In the Hall of the Mountain King – This is going to be so fun. The circled finger numbers are when your thumb goes under or your hand position changes, use the written fingering! It’s helpful! Don’t worry about tempo just yet.

Jadon

Hot Potato – all the notes are staccato in this piece. Be sure to add in the dynamic swells.

Dance with Me – this piece is the opposite of hot potato, every note must be smooth and connected. Don’t rely only on the pedal to connect the notes, but also be sure to connect the sound with proper technique of the fingers.

Katarina

Snowglobe – this piece just uses your landmark notes. They are your new best friends. You can sing the lyrics, or sing the pitches and say the note names. Repetition is the key to learning a language, and music is a language.

My City – this piece begins using two of the landmark notes, F then C. You can use your knowledge of direction and the alphabet (going up on the staff, means going up on the keyboard also) to figure out the other notes.

Landmark note worksheet – This sheet has you circle the notes we’re learning, and also has you draw them on the staff. Bring it finished next week for me to check :)

Parental support: Reach out daily and ask to hear Snowglobe, and once it sounds steady and consistent, invite her to explore My City.
There is a great app called Notes Teacher on the Apple app store that she would benefit from (it teaches note reading).
Resources like this are also very beneficial, and games/quizzes can be the perfect motivator. Note reading takes a huge amount of repetition to learn.

Sara

Black key starts arpeggios (and you can play B minor now)
Bb = RH start finger 2 then 123 123. LH start 3 then 213 212.
Eb = RH start 2 then 1 2 4 1 2 4. LH start 2 then 1 4 2 1 4 2. As a whole, thumbs only on white keys.

I’ll hear Sonatina next week.

Le Coucou – Break into much smaller chunks and practice stopping on specific beats. You need to get the LH at the very begining staccato and accented. Stop on the staccato note with both hands, to ensure evenness of the hands together, as well as to be sure you are bouncing the LH staccato. EVEN EVEN EVEN! That’s your goal, not speed.

Victress – gorgeous! I’d love to record this one :)

Maple Leaf Rag – Awesome effort! This week perhaps you can begin at the top of page 2, the tempo you’re going at is perfect! Keep it up.

Marco

F scale – nice work with the scales! The RH needs a bit more practice because of it’s 1234 1234 fingering (its special in that way). LH is 54321 321.

Zum Gali Gali – first 2 lines. Make sure you are being precise with the difference between the staccato notes and the legato notes.

Goblin Party – first 2 lines. This piece is in C minor (as you correctly identified!). The LH finger 5 stays in the same spot as the thumb extends. The RH stays in its C minor position the whole time, and demands finger independence by using all fingers equally.

Daniel

Niimi Aandeg – YOU’VE GOT THIS! Go slow and think Right Left or Together (where the lines are drawn the hands play together). Your goal is page 1 fluently, but as much as you can is an awesome stretch goal!

Final Countdown – whole page. Don’t do the notes I scribbled out, and continue onwards with just playing the top notes in the RH.

Wonderwall – chords. Use this tab, you can ignore the sus4 and other extensions like that for now. Familiarize yourself with all the LH chords first, and then you can begin playing them in tempo and figure out how the words line up. You can also play the chords along with the recording to deduce the placement. I will ask to hear the 4 chord progression from the verses next week.

Marita

Atacama Dessert – bridge section – Great work on this this week! Your tempo was lovely and consistent.

Crazy Comics – We learnt the entire piece today. We also are only playing specific notes (the circled ones) in the LH 2bar pattern, to reach success.

Haunting – G minor scale. Warmup with the G minor harmonic scale. Explore as much of this as you can this week.

Greta

Epic – explore as much as you can of this as you can.

Video Games by Lana Del Rey – Here is the chords to this. Familiarize yourself with the actual song more, and then you’re going to practice playing just the chords with your LH. A stretch project is listening to the tune while learning the singing melody by ear. The piece is in A major, and she will only sing the notes of the A Major scale (A B C# D E F# G# A). Here’s how to build the chords. Next week I’ll ask to hear these 4 chords in the context of the piece.
F# minor – F# A C#
A = A C# E
C# minor = C# E G#
D = D F# A