Gergely Szabo

Shakira

Skating Waltz – Hands separate focus before putting hands together

• Making sure LH melody is confident on it’s own – measures 1-4 same as measure 5-8, then fingers 1 and 2 wandering down B-Bflat-A-Aflat-G
• RH chords shifting – measures 1-2 on E and G (fingers 1 and 3), measures 3-4 on F and G (fingers 2 and 3
  • RH changing positions measure 11 (finger 1 on C and 4 on F)

Bartok Exercises – Reading through exercises #1-5 hands separately and together, saying note names out loud

Clara

Technical Exercises – D and A Major 1 octave scales – hands separately and hands together (trying slowly)

• Practicing as solid groups of fingerings and stepping through (legato and staccato)
• RH fingering groups of 3 and 5, LH fingering groups of 5 and 3 – Make sure you know where your sharps are in your hand position!
  • D Major – 2 sharps (F#, C#)
  • A Major – 3 sharps (F#, C#, G#)

Bartok Exercises – Working through #7-8, trying hands separately saying note names out loud

• Checking starting note (space notes – Bass Clef: All, Cows, Eat, Grass – Treble Clef: FACE in the Space)
• Checking starting finger number – is it the bottom finger of your hand position? The top? Somewhere in the middle?

Trampoline – Thinking about our time signature as we play through, our RH beat 3 leads to LH beat 1!

• Nice strong accents in our LH chords
• Making sure LH chord changes are comfortable – practicing going back and forth between them
• RH jumps at the end – make sure we don’t return to our beginning hand position! Staying high at the top of Treble clef for our larger chords in our last line.

Bluebottle – New piece! Finding starting hand positions and looking through for patterns. Notice how our RH and LH work with each other.

• Keeping an eye out for rests in both of our hands! Working through first only hands separately and noticing what exact beats we have rests on. Try playing through hands separately and breathing in on rests so we notice them on purpose, then try playing hands separately and just counting out loud.
• Once fully comfortable hands separately, try fitting hands together in small groups of measures – counting out loud will help us keep track of all of our rests.

Hakim

Technical Exercises – Continuing with A Major

• 1 octave scale hands together and separately, practicing as  solid groups of fingerings (Rh 3 and 5, LH 5 and 3) and stepping through. Trying legato and staccato
• 1 octave triads, solid and broken – blocking out solid chords first, watch out for only using our Chord notes:
  • A, C# and E (no accidental F’s!)
  • Make sure you are using the same fingerings in solid and broken triads. Always using fingers 1 and 5 for outside notes, using finger 3 on every chord except for RH first inversion (C#-1, E-2, A-5) and LH second inversion (E-5, A-2, C#1)

Bartok Exercises – Reading through #6 and 7 – be prepared to play through both of them hands together while saying all note names out loud!

• Double checking and writing in starting notes for both exercises, noticing marked finger numbers

Satie – Gymnopedie #1 – Printing off for this week, only practicing hands separately for now.

• LH practice as our main focus – breaking apart into our Bass Line and Inner Chords before fully playing
  • Make sure LH finger 5 can play through our Bass Line at least to the end of page 1 – writing in any low notes below bass clef that we aren’t sure of so we aren’t guessing.
  • Practice moving between Middle Chords without leaping down to our Bass line. Once your hand is comfortable finding these chords, try moving back and forth between Bass line notes and Middle Chords (first by looking ahead and watching your hands, then with your eyes closed when you are feeling confident)
• RH – Working through our first page only, not hands together at all yet
  • Our hand position shifts a lot, so we want to make sure we are using the same fingerings each time so we don’t get confused.
  • Write in any notes you are unsure of at the moment so you can confidently try playing through, write in fingerings that feel comfortable when you are playing- we will go over these together next week.