Sounding great everyone! See you next Thursday on my birthday <3
Liam – please register for exam. Teacher code is 130747
Harlequinade – Love the evenness of your LH and how you really know the piece now in your mind. In measure 3, be sure to disconnect the phrase where I have drawn the upwards arrow.
Witches and Wizards – Wow quick work! You should be proud. The metronome is for a dotted quarter note, so you will hear two clicks per measure (usually where the accents are). When you first turn on the metronome, it is a good idea to begin feeling the heat by just playing those big two beats. Then you can add in all the other notes at tempo.
*New* Rubenstein in Piano Pronto – the first page is a good goal for this week. There is a lot of chromaticism, so don’t be surprised when your LH is playing a Bb and your RH plays a B natural over it – trust your reading!
Your technique is all sounding great and is right at tempo where we need to be! Great work.
Jadon
Canon x Beautiful in White – We made great progress! Now you know the entirety of the C major part of this piece, note and rhythm wise. It is time to get it under our fingers and get it fluent through repetition.
Katarina
Bear Hug Brunch – both pieces on the flagged page. Make sure to count 2 beats for your half notes!
C major scales – Keep at it. You’re so good at your RH one, I want to hear the LH next week.
Sara
Maple Leaf Rag – AMAZING dynamics! I wouldn’t worry about it sounding “messy” a tiny bit, because it is ragtime and meant to be very loose and free. Try to take any small moment to consciouslly relax your hand out of the stretched octave position, and try to minimize tension in your arms and shoulders. Remember to breathe.
Take the A Train – Amazing counting! Playing this to a swing backing track on YouTube would be a very fun exercise. See what you think about thickening up your LH a bit more to give it a more standup bass feel, up to your personal taste!
March in D major by CPE Bach – nice job bringing the phrasing out! For each of the repeated sequences in the B section, grow louder each time.
Marco
Minuet in C – First half of the piece HT. Second half of the piece learn the LH. Your fingering is awesome.
Indiana Jones – great great great job! Keep going until the end of the piece. The only new things added are an A minor LH chord, and a RH melodic idea repeated in a different key than before, but you can use the same fingering.
Grand Day Out – refamiliarize yourself with the RH melody, and then play the root notes in put in boxes with the LH. You can play them with any finger, However, if we eventually want to make them chords, it would be wise to play them with your pinky this week so your body can get used to the position changes.
*New* Contrary motion C major scale hands together – this is your only hands together technical requirement. Thumbs both begin on middle C and then you do your standard scale fingering outwards (it creates a mirror effect where the same finger is playing in both hands at the same time).
(You’ll also see I wrote out your technique requirements on the back of your little exam prep paper).
Daniel
Pierrot Skipping – M1-16. Both hands treble clef! Good job with the rhythms. Start quieter so you have somewhere louder to go.
Formula pattern – you’re making improvements in fingering! Keep it up! Once C is mastered fingering wise, we will conquer G!
Atacama Dessert – measures 1-16. Starting at measure 9, the RH begins two measure long melodic ideas of 8th notes. Go slow and play evenly and loop the 2 bars to get comfy with the melody’s shape. Then do the same thing to the next 2 bars. The LH is simple here so you can add HT quite soon. You read the tied notes very accurately tonight.
*New* Home Sweet Home by the Crüe –
Marita
Great job playing River Dance and all of my hardest sight-reading cards today!
Prelude V – This piece uses 4 bar phrases that go somewhere unexpected harmonically at the end of the phrase. The LH is entirely 5ths and the RH uses a lot of syncopation. Listen to it here.
Greta – please register for exam. Teacher code is 130747.
*New* Minor triads broken and solid – A, D and E minor. They are all white-white-white triads. Play them hands seperate and feel triplet, like blue-ber-ry.
Red Satin Jazz – Keep going throughout the whole piece. Good job noticing the most common interval here is a 6th. When the staccato descending 6ths line at the top of page 2 happens, you can start by practicing it pinky only, and then add in the thumb. Today we played around using a 100 bpm swing drum beat on YouTube as a backing track – it’s a great practice tool. Good catch on the tied notes too.
You crushed Minuet in A minor today!! Wahoo!!