Anaya
Recommended minutes to practice: 10 minutes a day
What to practice: Row, Row, Row Your Boat, A Happy Song
How to practice it most effectively: For Row, Row, we circled all our repeating notes: for both hands there are repeated Es in the middle of the lines. A Happy Song is the new one this week: as always, watch the directions and which hand plays when. Use the labelled finger numbers to help you figure out unfamiliar notes: for example RH’s first space is F, played with 4, and the first line is E, played with 3. Be really careful when the melody changes directions! For this piece we don’t play a C until the very last note.
Saskia
Recommended minutes to practice: 10 minutes a day
What to practice: “woo-woo-woo” warmup, “ooh-ah-ooh” warmup, My Favourite Things (karaoke)
How to practice it most effectively: The “woo-woo-woo” warmup is the exact same as last week. The “ooh-ah-ooh” warmup is a sliding warmup that uses “ooh” on the low note, slides into an “ah” on the high note, then back down to “ooh”. The start point of the warmup is C-E-C on your piano app. From there, just play single notes as you move up in your range. For My Favourite Things, work on making the verses and chorus feel very different in terms of tone and volume. The verses are light and softer, while the chorus is loud and strong. In the line leading up to the chorus: “These are a few of my favourite things” where it goes up, please hang on to the vowel “i” longer, and delay closing to the “ng”. Try singing along with this karaoke track! The intro is a little tricky since the timing of the count in versus the instruments don’t line up – I suggest listening to the strings since you line up with them. Once you get to “brown paper packages” it will get much easier!
Gianna
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: scale with do-re-mi syllables, Monster, writing new song!
How to practice it most effectively: For the scale exercise, the syllables are DO-RE-MI-FA-SOL-LA-TI-DO. When singing up the scale, read left to right, and when singing down the scale, read right to left. You can also separate the down portion into 2 halves: DO-TI-LA-SOL, and FA-MI-RE-DO. When you end up putting them together, you will hear the word “sofa” in the middle. For Monster, sing along with the music video, and continue to work on the enunciating and rhythm for all those verse lyrics! When you get to the first chorus, play F-G-A on the piano as guide notes. We want to be in a comfy singing range, so these notes will help you sing the exact same melody, just an octave up. Careful to not strain on the higher notes – keep your head in a neutral position instead of tilting the chin up. For our new song, please try to write a few lyric ideas, as well as play around with short, simple ideas in the thumbs sharing C position (C will be our home note – try to start/end phrases on this note!).
Ken
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: Sword Dance, Jazz Blast, improvising!
How to practice it most effectively: For Sword Dance, the whole piece needs to be an even speed: the 1st and 2nd lines will determine how fast the 3rd and 4th lines are. In bars 9-16 please be extra careful with the quarter notes versus eighth note timings; don’t go too fast through the quarters or else the eighth notes will have to be way too fast! In Jazz Blast we have important 1, 2+ rhythms in bars 2, 4, 6, and 8. After playing the song once, you can try improvising using the C minor 5 finger scale plus that Bb on the bottom in RH, and a C minor triad in LH.
Ken will need the next book in the Piano Adventures Series: Lesson book 3 within the next couple of weeks. Here is an Amazon link for it: https://www.amazon.ca/Level-3A-Lesson-Piano-Adventures/dp/1616770872/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piano+adventure+lesson+book+3&qid=1620786644&sr=8-1
Steve
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: Pirates of the North Sea, The Queen’s Royal Entrance
How to practice it most effectively: In Pirates of the North Sea, we labelled the counting in the first couple of bars: holding the quarter note for the full “1+” will help with this rhythm. This exact same rhythm will happen in the outro. RH, for your main theme in the middle of the piece, all notes are skips on a D major triad. In The Queen’s Royal Entrance, the hands are shifting between D and C blocked triads. In the 2nd last bar, RH goes to an F major and E minor triad as well. Please be careful with the articulation and counting.
Gabe
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: Frere Jacques, Porcupine Dance
How to practice it most effectively: For Frere Jacques, please play at a slightly slower tempo! This will help all the eighth note lines feel more comfortable. We decided to play the first half minor, at a piano dynamic, and the second half major, at a forte dynamic. Remember that in the major section we use F# and B natural. For Porcupine Dance, let’s add bars 5 to 8 hands together to the practicing. We start bar 5 with thumbs on C and D and then just move one step down for each bar. Always be checking on the music where the thumbs are for each beat one. As always, try adding the staccatos in!
Isaac
Recommended minutes to practice: 20 minutes a day
What to practice: Pyranese Melody, Relay Race, and finish #3 and 4 on page 70; #5 on page 71
How to practice it most effectively: For Pyranese Melody, before playing the whole thing through, take RH and isolate the intervals in bars 2-4 and 6-8 3x each. LH, think of your scale degrees when reading, and please play with staccatos. Try the 3rd line hands together! For Relay Race, isolate bars 9-10 a few times with counting 1-2-3-4-5-6. The staccato will make the quarter note shorter, but beat 2 still needs to exist in silence.