Diya
Recommended minutes to practice: 15-20 minutes a day
What to practice: Lonely Pine, Li’l Liza Jane, vocal warmups, Reflection with lyric video
How to practice it most effectively: For Lonely Pine, RH is only doing skips within FACE in the space! Just be careful that RH’s position changes from C position in the first line to F position in the second line. LH will just hold through all those ties so it’s a full 6 beats of holding every time. Don’t worry about dynamics or pedal yet, we can add them next week. Li’l Liza Jane has lots of skips but also some steps to watch out for. In bars 3-4 and 7-8, the two hands are playing the exact same notes and rhythms. Do your best to land both hands – 3 notes – all at the same time for the beginning. The vocal warmups to do this week are the “ya-ah” sliding down from E to C then moving lower by 1 semitone each time, as well as a triad skips warmup (starting on C-E-G-E-C then shifting up on white keys only) on “da da da”. For this second one, notice when the chords sound major or minor. For Reflection, please sing along to this lyric video – this week I’d like us to focus on learning the melody correctly without any karaokes. (***you can skip the intro to around 40 seconds!)
Dvorah
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: p. 5 warmup in C and G position, Firefly in C and G position, Little River, memorize bass clef spaces (All Cows Eat Grass)
How to practice it most effectively: For the warmup, see if you can speed it up little by little now that the notes and pattern are learnt! For Firefly, try transposing it to G position – the melody will still sound the same and use the same fingers, but the letter names are different. New song Little River has us playing legato, which means smooth and connected. Play slowly with bent fingers, and make sure one finger doesn’t let go until the next one presses down.
Oliver
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: Young Hunter, reviewing sayings for treble and bass clef
How to practice it most effectively: For Young Hunter, let’s try the first and third lines (which are the exact same!) hands together, but leave the second line hands separately. In this second line, notice how each hand is doing skips which always go back and forth. This song has LH in F position and RH in E position. Using your sayings will help when playing this one, especially for RH: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, and FACE.
Linda
Recommended minutes to practice: 20 minutes a day
What to practice: Bb major chords of the scale warmup, marking diatonic chords in I’ll Be Seeing You, Minuet in A Minor, and new song Tired Turtle Express
How to practice it most effectively: For the Bb chords of the scale warmup, remember that Bb and Eb will always be there regardless of which octave you’re in. For reference of chord qualities, this is what they always should be: Imaj7, II-7, III-7, IVmaj7 V7, VI-7 VII-7b5. For Minuet in A Minor, continue working on smoothness between bars, as well as staying within the 1+2+3+ counting grid whenever there are dotted quarters and eighth notes. For Tired Turtle Express, let’s swing the eighth notes to make it groovier! Note when phrases start on the “short” (offbeat) part of the beat. Go slow, hands separately, being extra mindful of all the clef changes. The articulation marking for LH is called a tenuto, which you can think of as a type of accent where you just play heavily/plodding on the keys. “simile” just means to continue playing with the same articulation as before.
Ken
Recommended minutes to practice: 15-20 minutes a day
What to practice: scales + interval warmups, Cossack Ride
How to practice it most effectively: Please continue doing a warmup of scales and intervals (from page 19), starting with C major hands together then moving into G and F, being mindful of the key signatures. For the new song Cossack Ride, please start hands separately and thinking of it in 4/4 time, counting with “ands”. For this week, don’t worry about dynamics, just notes and rhythms. RH has many low ledger line notes, so be careful whether pitches are As (2 ledger lines down) or Cs (1 ledger line). LH plays lots of 5ths! Just watch when the bottom note shifts around. In bar 15 it will be easier to reach the sharp in the chord if you slide your hand up into the keys. Towards the end of the week please feel free to play it hands together and start working on speed.