Anaya
Recommended minutes to practice: 10-15 minutes a day
What to practice: Up to the Moon, C Position on the Grand Staff, Row Row Row, finishing up #5 on page 47.
How to practice it most effectively: Up to the Moon will be a warmup song this week – play it once with your RH and once with your LH! It’s in C position and the pattern is up-down-up for the first line and down-up-down for the second line. C Position on the Grand Staff uses the same notes we’ve been playing with before, just written on the grand staff (treble and bass clef together). Please watch out for repeated notes. Row, Row, Row will be our main song this week: RH’s starting note is C and LH’s is G. You can use the opposite hand to point along while the other hand is playing so you can really watch the direction of the melody. Remember to still be doing the different counts for quarter, half, and whole notes!
Saskia
Recommended minutes to practice: 10 minutes a day
What to practice: “woo woo woo” warmup, do-re-mi up AND down the scale warmup, My Favourite Things
How to practice it most effectively: The “woo woo woo” warmup is the same as last week: single note, go through the “w” 3 times and hold the last note for a couple of counts. For the do-re-mi warmup, the syllables are do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do (and reverse on the way down). Use your piano app to help you on the way down! We start on C5 and play the white keys all the way down to C4. For My Favourite Things, remember that you don’t have to speak/sing everything exactly like Julie Andrews does (like the hard Ts for example), you can add your own style. The verses are softer/more playful and the chorus is big. For the big note on the word “feel”, please drop your jaw a little so there is some more space on the “ee” vowel. As always, go easy on your voice if you feel it start to crackle while practicing (rest and drink plenty of water!).
Gianna
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: Songwriting – think of more lyric ideas AND play around in thumbs on C position on the keyboard
How to practice it most effectively: Today we decided we would write a song about Nature, which aims to teach people a lesson about the things we do and how they affect nature. A line we spoke about being the end of our chorus is: “Nature will always finds its way”. Our chorus will have the main lesson/broad idea and the verses will have specific examples. When playing around on piano to find a melody, our thumbs share C, and each hands’ fingers spread out one per note. C is our home note, so try to end phrases on it and things will feel nice and complete. Next week we will combine more lyric ideas and pick some melody ideas too.
Ken
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: Sword Dance, In an Old Castle (student page)
How to practice it most effectively: For Sword Dance, the rhythm is the most important part – eighth notes and quarter notes need to be distinct. You can’t play the quarter notes too fast or else the eighth notes will be impossible to play. Make sure you’re thinking of the “and” beats inbetween the 1-2-3-4 beats. In an Old Castle should all be played legato (connected). We use our finger muscles to do this, not the pedal. In this song the hand are playing in unison, which means they always play the same letters at the same time!
Steve
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: Spring, Pirate of the North Sea
How to practice it most effectively: For Spring, please isolate bars 4-5 and 10-11 with RH once before playing the whole song through. We want the F# to hold the full beat so we hear the difference between eighth notes and quarter notes. Continue to do your counting and articulation. For Pirate of the North Sea, be really careful with the 1, 2 and 3 rhythm in the intro (bars 1-2) and outro (bars 21-22). Again, eighth notes and quarter notes should be distinct.
Gabe
Recommended minutes to practice: 15-20 minutes a day
What to practice: Theme from Frere Jacques, Porcupine Dance
How to practice it most effectively: For Frere Jacques, try playing it once the minor/sad version (as written) and then once the major/happy version. The major version will use F# and B natural instead of F natural and Bb. You can play this song hands together from the get go! Please go a little slower in bars 5-6 so the eighth notes and quarter notes between hands line up correctly. For Porcupine Dance, put bars 1-4 hands together. Notice how your thumbs are always one step apart, side by side. Work on getting all the notes staccato.
Isaac
Recommended minutes to practice: 15-20 minutes a day
What to practice: Relay Race, Pyranese Melody, and pages 69-7o in the theory book
How to practice it most effectively: For Relay Race, please focus on the 2nd half, noticing how almost all notes in the melody are moving in steps. In bars 10 and 14, make sure LH is playing that Bb quarter note staccato and counting the full 2 beats before coming in with the rest of the bar. For Pyranese Melody, we will do the whole song hands separately this week. Since it is hands separately, try following the staccato versus legato articulation. In bars 9-12, even though there’s no written fingers, just use a 5-finger position.