Gergely Szabo

Hakim

Technical Exercises 

-Continuing with our A Major 2 octave scale, and our A Major triads with inversions (just HS)

• Practicing mostly hands separately, trying hands together if we are feeling confident
• Practicing blocked hand positions before stepping through – especially for 2 octave scales, it is very easy to lose track of our position in the scale! This will help feel secure.

RH 1   2   3    1    2   3    4     1   2   3     1   2   3     4    5 

       A  B  C#  D  E  F#  G#  A  B  C#  D  E  F#  G#  A

LH 5   4   3     2   1   3     2    1    4   3    2   1   3     2     1

Calico Cat – Now that it is starting to fully fit hands together and we are getting comfortable with the flow, we want to make sure we are thinking about the energy of our piece and aren’t guessing at all for notes. This is the time to double check notes/hand positions so you are completely confident next week!

• Using the crescendos in places like measures 1-4 and 17 to the end to show rising energy
• Keeping a steady pulse all the way throughout, not letting our hands changing positions cause any hiccups!
• Make sure you are completely sure of which octave each section starts in
  • For example, in measures 1-8 LH stays low in Bass Clef while RH rises an octave higher each measure
  • Measures 9-12 and 13-16: be careful that our LH is in the correct octave – staying 2 octaves apart when changing hand positions in measure

Clara

Technical Exercises – Continuing to practice our C Major and G Major 1 octave scales 

• Playing through our solid blocked hand positions (groups of 3 and 5 fingers) to make sure we are confident in what is under our fingers
• Practicing both hands separately and hands together
• Practicing stepping through while saying notes out loud, being careful not to jump to finger 5 when changing hand positions!
• When practicing hands together, if we would like an extra challenge we can try moving our hands further apart and playing through! (2, 3, or even 4 octaves apart instead of 1)

RH  1     2     3    1     2     3     4     5

        G    A    B    C    D    E    F#   G

LH  5     4     3    2     1     3     2      1

Bartok Exercises – Continue on to exercises number 4, 5, and 6 (page 2 of our booklet).

• Make sure to double check our starting notes for both hands, as well as which exact octave on the keyboard we are going to be.
• Practicing saying our note names out loud, and counting our pulse out loud.
•  Watch out for changing rhythms, remember that Bartok likes to change things unexpectedly!

Melody in G Major – Excellent work smoothing out some of our trickier hands together sections! Now that we are able to smoothly play through this piece, we want to focus in and practice our details.

•  For this week, I would like you to avoid playing through the entire piece – only practicing smaller groups of measures and starting from places that we’ve marked in the score (not the beginning!) 
• We want to get used to being able to start anywhere in our pieces while practicing, not just from the very beginning.
• LH – Listening to our melody that is created by our LH lower notes!
  • Practicing with a “down/up” motion in our LH so that we can hear our melody on beats 1 and 3 in each measure (thinking “loud/soft” for each group of 2 notes)
  • If we are struggling with our “down/up” motion, also playing as “long/short” so we can feel comfortable landing on our “down” notes.