Diya
Recommended minutes to practice: 15-20 minutes a day
What to practice: Mexican Jumping Beans + L’il Liza Jane, C’s Rock, 2 vocal warmups, Reflection
How to practice it most effectively: For fun this week, you can try singing the lyrics while you play the 2 pieces Mexican Jumping Beans and L’il Liza Jane. The new piano piece is C’s Rock, which uses treble, middle, and bass Cs (as well as a few As and Gs for LH). Make sure you’re counting rests and holding all notes their full beat value. For the vocal warmups, continue doing the “ya ya ya” skips warmup, starting on C-E-G-E-C then moving through all the white key positions until A minor position. The other warmup is the sliding down “ah-ah” from E-C then moving each note a semitone down. Feel free to repeat any warmup spots a few times if you didn’t feel great on them right away. For Reflection, please continue singing along to the pink lyric video. The main things we talked about today are: keeping your vowels nice and tall/round at the ending for both the loud and soft versions of “when will my reflection show…”. In terms of breathing in these phrases, best places would be after “show” and after “am”.
Dvorah
Recommended minutes to practice: 10-15 minutes a day
What to practice: page 5 warmup, Little River, Sailing in the Sun
How to practice it most effectively: Continue gently speeding up the warmup every time you play it. This week, try it in both C and G positions! We will keep Little River as a warmup song to really get comfortable doing legato playing. Sailing in the Sun is our new full song; there are many slurs, and some of them go between the hands. RH, please notice your quarter rests. LH be careful when you’re playing B (above the staff) or G (top space). You can use your labeled finger numbers to help you find notes. Feel free to sing along with the lyrics if you’d like!
Oliver
Recommended minutes to practice: 10-15 minutes a day
What to practice: Young Hunter, Skipping in Space
How to practice it most effectively: For Young Hunter, let’s put the whole song hands together! Watch out for when each hand does steps versus when it does skips. For the second line, both hands should be skipping in the same direction (both down, then both up, etc.). For Skipping in Space, we are in 3/4 time, meaning we count to three in each bar; make sure those dotted quarter half notes get all 3 beats, and are much longer than the quarter notes! This song is all skips since we’re just using FACE in the space.
Ken
Recommended minutes to practice: 20 minutes a day
What to practice: F major scale hands together, Cossack Ride, Lunar Eclipse
How to practice it most effectively: For the F major scale, please think of your key signature (Bb) before you jump in and start playing. Remember that finger 1s line up on Cs and finger 3s on Es. For Cossack Ride, you can put the whole song hands together, being extra careful when LH has staccatos while RH has legatos. I’d isolate 3 bars a few times each in this order: easy is bar 4, intermediate is bar 2, and hard is bar 7. Really ground through the RH while LH is bouncy. For bars 25-28, try it with the pedal! Each time there is a “spike” in the pedal bracket, lift and re-press the pedal while the notes above the spike are played. Once articulation feels good, work to speed it up little by little. For new song Lunar Eclipse, watch out for slight changes in LH’s note patterns of the first 3 lines. In bars 17-24 there are moments where RH has two voices in one hand. Please play the top voice stronger and the lwoer voice (plus the LH in these sections) softer. LH should always double check notes on the 7ths intervals. Please only go until bar 24 hands together this week.