Hello! It was so great to meet everyone for the first time today and hear what you’ve been playing.
Ken
We will add a short warmup to your practice routine – this week we will do the C position minor (so using Eb instead of E) 5-note scale one hand at a time. Be sure to use fingers 1-5 in order both going up and down. Try to play this as legato as possible.
Both of your songs this week are in C minor, using this C position from our warmup. For Boogie on Broadway, make sure you choose a quicker starting tempo so your half notes don’t feel super long. Playing with correct counting – especially holding your half notes for the full 2 counts and not rushing through them – is the main goal here. Also watch out for ties and the couple of staccatos at the end. For Scarf Dance let’s just play the RH melody. Remember that when we play in C position we never have to move our hand or switch finger numbers – each note has only one finger responsible for it.
Steve
Let’s add a brief warmup to our practice routine going forward. This week we worked on the G major scale (remember it has an F#!). The fingering for RH is 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5 going up, and will be backwards going down, and for LH it’s 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1. Please play the scale only hands separately this week so you can really learn this fingering.
The Bubble – The main focus for this song is noticing where LH comes in and the hands play together; often times LH would forget to come in for a beat or two.
When the Saints Go Marching In – When the notes are skips apart you will see this on the music as line to line, or space to space movement (there are quite a lot of skips in this song!). We also have both legatos and staccatos in this piece so please watch out for those markings.
Gabe
Singing your counting is a very helpful tool with these pieces! When a piece has eighth notes, try using the “1 and 2 and…” counting where applicable. For the Canon, it is a slow song so you can slow down your counts (and remember it’s in 4/4 not 3/4). Something to focus on this week in all your pieces is the tied notes (mostly in LH) – the second notes in the pair just hold through, they don’t repeat.
Isaac
Morning Greeting – I think you’re absolutely ready to play this piece hands together. Since notes and rhythms are solid, let’s start gradually increasing the tempo.
Climb up on an Elephant – There are a couple of new elements in this piece – first the fact that it’s in 6/8 (so eighth notes now get one beat, quarter notes get two, etc.), and second we have two flats in our key signature (Bb and Eb). Play LH by itself until bar 12 (you can look ahead if you’d like). RH can play the entire song, but don’t worry about timing for the first half; just play those triads and get comfortable with the shapes and fingerings.