Hello everyone! Enjoy the week, thanks for your hard work.
Liam
*New* Microstyles 2 Struttin’ – Keep the LH smooth and exactly on the beat. Bring out the RH melody and ensure that the parts of the melody that are on the beat are locked in (for example the two quarter notes in measure 3). Great reading today!
Star Wars – very good! Don’t let it lose speed and energy in the A section due to the triads and pedalling. Keep the triads light both in volume and in touch and this should help keep the light hopeful mood going.
Fun bonus – 3 against 2 scales. Try playing triplets in your RH while playing 8th notes in your LH. Achieve this by doing body percussion like we did in lesson going “together, right, left, right” and repeating again. This video shows the same thing but on just the first 5 notes of the scale. Don’t feel pressured to do this, it’s just for fun! My teacher said “hot cup of tea” as the words for the rhythm, Hot = together, then the other words are for Right Left Right.
Marco
Terrible Trolls – Play opening C minor pattern in quarter or 8th notes hands together, ensuring it is kept steady. Don’t let yourself play it messy because that will teach your brain to play it messy! Go as slow as you need to to play it accurately. You said your 4th finger kept messing up, so common! To fix, play the 5 note pattern and make the 4th note the loudest one! You won’t actually play the piece like this, but pracice it this way C-D-Eb-F-G.
Mission Impossible – Excellent progress. Tackle the C minor line this week (line 3).
Young Ludwig – Also great progress. This week work to eliminate the hesitation between phrases. Try and make 4-6 as seamless as the rest. Go slowly to achieve this.
Marita
Heavenly Blue – practice in 4 bar chunks and repeat them multiple times before moving on. You know the notes, the goal this week is to increase familiarity and make the piece begin to actually play itself. Repetition repetition repetition :)
Angelfish – good reading today! Your playing is very even which is great, we want to keep it that way so count steadily. Ensure the LH melody is legato when it crosses overtop by using the written fingering.
Sara
Le Coucou – wow! Awesome! Become aware of the rests now before you get too far and have to add them back in. This is very impressive, have fun with it.
Memory is great for your repertoire, keep working on it. Pick a random spot to play, study it, then put the book away and go from there. Try and see the page in your mind if you can and always “fact check” yourself after by looking/playing the book!
Sonatina – fix timing last measure of page 1 and fix the G in that line as well.
Next week I shall hear your technique. Also here is an awesome 3+2 blues backing track for playing along with.
Jadon
Canon x Memories – Great work! Keep doing the root-5th-root LH part with the melodies, and after about a week of that, you could try adding the last two notes to the LH part, but don’t rush it. Work on finding how the LH lines up with the Memories portion of the melody.
Interstellar – awesome! Keep on keeping on. I’ll look into the rest of the piece where it gets more notey and see what happens. Work to “bring out” (play louder) the A-E, B-E, C-E, D-E melody in the RH so it soars above the rest of the sound.
Sina
Minuet – the point of this piece is articulation types. Make sure you get that short-short-short-long-short-short articulation. The 8th notes in this piece are always played smoothly, so ensure there is no hole in the sound between them. Remember my walking metaphor, always one foot (or finger) in contact with the ground (to make a smooth sound.)
C contrary motion scale – WOW this got me so excited! Congrats on your first ever hands together 1 octave major scale! Keep playing steady and slow, great habit. Start with thumbs on C and go out using 12312345. This is my favourite way because both hands use the same finger at the same time.