Gianna

Recommended minutes to practice: 10-15 minutes a day

What to practice: C major full scale vocal warmup (from middle C up until the next C then back down, singing the letters as you go), Life is an Adventure chorus – putting notes to the melody. You can also experiment with choosing some notes for the verse and we will check those next week!

How to practice it most effectively: For your warmup, put one hand on your belly so you can feel yourself getting a full “belly breath” a few times before starting to sing. Don’t worry about scale fingering on the piano, just use your pointer finger to play the notes as you sing the letter names. Be extra careful when coming down since saying our alphabet backwards is trickier than forwards. Even though we are just singing letters names, still be clear with your pronunciation of consonants so we can make that a good habit. For Life is an Adventure, we chose melody notes for the chorus. Remember that 2 of our notes are flats (Eb and Bb), and this means we play the black key that’s just under the white key of that letter name. The starting G is above middle C and it’s the highest note (so all others will be lower). Today we learned that most pop song melodies actually use few notes in many different ways, so there are actually only 5 notes in total here! See if you can use these notes – and maybe some new ones – in the first few lines of your verse for this song.

  • “Life is an adventure” x2 the notes are G-G-F-Eb-Eb-F
  • “What’s going to happen next?” notes are G-F-Eb-F-F-Eb
  • “Life is like walking through the jungle” Bb-Bb-Bb-G-G-F-Eb-F-Eb
  • “Life is like climbing a tree” Bb-Bb-Bb-G-F-Eb-F
  • “You never know what is going to happen next” Bb-Bb-C-Bb-GG-F-Eb-F-F-Eb

For next class, please brainstorm 1 or 2 pop songs you might want to sing (I’m thinking artists like Shawn Mendez or Selena Gomez might be a good place to start – just make sure it’s a song you already know).

Ken

Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day

What to practice: G major scale hands separately, Mr, Haydn’s Theme, My Daydream, The Clock Strikes Thirteen

How to practice it most effectively: Our G major scale has one black key – an F#; fingering stays the exact same as C major. For Mr. Haydn’s Theme, please read the LH notes carefully so you don’t accidentally keep playing when it should be RH by itself! Try as best you can to connect all notes under the slurs. For My Daydream, LH should be holding down dotted half notes for the full 3 counts even while RH moves. Again in this song we should play everything connected. In The Clock Strikes Thirteen, we learned about crescendos and diminuendos – these shapes tell us to gradually increase or decrease the volume we play at. While playing with these dynamics is the main focus of the piece, please don’t forget your rhythms and legatos!

Steve

Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day

What to Practice: My Daydream, The Elf’s Silver Hammer

How to practice it most effectively: For My Daydream, the last detail to focus on as we play hands together is connecting everything even inbetween the bars. Even though no slur is written over LH’s part for most of the song, it should still all be legato. For The Elf’s Silver Hammer, play the whole piece hands together but with no dynamics. First we want to focus on learning notes and rhythms correctly. Please be extra careful in line two with the difference between eighth notes and quarter notes. Use “1+2+” counting to help you hold quarter notes their full value. 15ma means we play the written note 2 octaves higher.

Gabe

Recommended minutes to practice: 20 minutes a day

What to practice: Suitor’s Song, Theme from Don Giovanni

How to practice it most effectively: Suitor’s Song is our dynamics focused piece. Once you review notes and rhythms (paying extra attention to the dotted quarter – eighth note rhythm that happens many times throughout the piece) please play with a distinct difference between the p, mf, and f sections. For Theme from Don Giovanni, please play bars 16 until the end a few times with RH only, making sure you’re starting with your thumb on G. Afterwards, add LH and still only play these 3 bars a few times. Once that feels comfortable now you are ready to play the whole piece top to bottom!

Isaac

Recommended minutes to practice: 20 minutes a day

What to practice: F major scale (1 octave hands together), Andante in G Minor, Early one Morning

How to practice it most effectively: In our F major scale, finger 3s line up on A and finger 1s also line up on C. For Andante in G Minor, play your eighth notes a little slower so they match the rest of the piece’s speed. Please remember to detach the quarter notes since it’s appropriate to the style (a good place to practice this is in bars 6-7 and 10-11, but in time all quarter notes should be detached). For Early One Morning, please continue to practice hands separately so RH can get more comfortable with the melody. It’s extra important for RH to watch the steps and skips since the melodic pattern changes ever so slightly each line. Follow the written finger numbers carefully – when we have this many eighth notes it will help a lot!