Happy October everyone! Hope you all have the best Thanksgiving weekends, regardless of what you get up to :)

Grace

Sonatina by Satie – when both voices go into one clef, use both hands. Usually, the down stems will be for the LH in this situation.  The first page is a good goal for this week.

Chopin Prelude and To a Wild Rose – I’ll hear these next week.

Intervals:  Watch this lesson first, then this one.  The specific intervals one does not make the connection to looking at the major scale for help in identifying intervals; you can imagine the first note as the root and then see how the other note would fit into the major scale.

Liam

Raiders in the Night – awesome tempo! Give some extra love to the starred section on page 2 and this’ll fly!

Mountain King – Take it slow and steady to begin with and really follow the circled 1s to see where you need to tuck your thumb under. Hands seperate work is great here.

Formula pattern: If you put the two halves of this graphic into one horizontal line, you’d get the Sunglasses graphic I drew for you. Go slow and focus on proper fingering, stopping on each octave to reset if you must. Try C Major and E Major this week because their symmetry is nice.

Jadon

Dance with Me – Great playing! Add in some more shaping (and pedal if you desire) to really elevate this performance. Your fingering to keep the legato texture today was fantastic, keep it up!

Over and Out – Resist the urge to use a different fingering and bypass the crossing over finger 2, it is an important skill, and this is a nice easy place to practice it. Nice work noticing which notes are smooth and which are staccato.

Reminder about $16.50 for the method book at your earliest convenience :)

Katarina

Nice playing!

The Spook RH version and LH version – This piece is in D position. The notes are written inside the note heads. Feel free to create your own lyrics for this fun pattern based song. Keep your eyes on the page while playing.

Fill in the blanks – this worksheet reinforces bass F, middle C, and treble G by telling a fun story of a magic wand.

Learning DEF – this worksheet shows you middle D E F on the staff. These notes make up a ton of your song, The Spook. Use the diagram in the top right of the man standing on Middle C to help you. I will tally up your Mr. Right Notes next week and see how you did!

If you need to reprint any of these papers, see here.

Marco

Zum Gali Gali – this sounded great! Your counting is really good. Continue until our next star.

Goblin Party – Great reading! You know the entire piece now! Evenness is your new goal for the opening 8th notes. Hear how even your 8th notes are in Zum Gali Gali? They should be just as even here, you can say 1+2+3+4+ and go at a slower tempo until you get it in your ears and fingers.

Minor Scales – this week we are playing the relative minors of our major keys C F and G. They are A minor, D minor, E minor. Natural minor scales are played by using just the notes borrowed from the major scale, harmonic minor is created by raising the 7th (creating the stereotypical “Egypt” sound). Same fingering as your other scales.
For example, A harmonic minor is A B C D E F G# A.
This week just do your harmonic minor scales.

Daniel

Happy Birthday – This one is your priority this week! It is in F major. Have fun with it!

Final Countdown – nice work! Add in the other passing bass notes that you liked.

Wonderwall – The chords are written on the back of your Final Countdown sheet.
The verses use F#minor, A, E, B.
The prechorus uses D, E, F#minor.
I like playing a quarter note followed by two 8th notes for the bass in the LH. To practice this, put on the recording and practice aligning your bass notes OR/AND your RH triads to the chord changes in the song. It is important to remember you are Covering the song AND on a different instrument, so it is not going to sound the same as the recording, it’s your version! You can look to the bassline in this arrangement for inspiration, but don’t read the chords off the sheet music, we’re practicing chord reading :)

Marita

Atacama Dessert – you know the entire piece! Start at the weird little last measure on page 1 and continue onto page 2 this week to bring it up to the level of the rest of the piece. Great work on the LH leaps when the A section returns.

Crazy Comics – Great great great work! Another week to really polish it up, have fun with it, show it off!

Haunting – if you can find this paper (you have 2) please practice it, it’s your Halloween piece!
IF you can’t find it, practice Breezes in your repertoire book.