Dvorah
Recommended minutes to practice: 10-15 minutes a day
What to practice: C major scale (1 hand at a time, up and down), Yankee Doodle, A Joke For You, Football Game
How to practice it most effectively: For the C major scale, try to play connected, using these fingerings for RH: 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5 and these fingerings for LH: 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1. For Yankee Doodle, please add the intro, and try singing along to it! For A Joke For You, LH is playing some new notes – low C is on the 2nd space, and low D is on the 3rd line. In the second line, please watch out for the RH skip! Football Game has LH in low C position (finger 5 on C). As always, be extra careful with steps vs. skips.
Diya
Recommended minutes to practice: 20 minutes a day
What to practice: Ferris Wheel, Mexican Jumping Beans, Never Enough, Best Day of My Life
How to practice it most effectively: For Ferris Wheel please add in the final line of C and E skips played together – try to follow the dynamic markings (going from loud to soft). As always, be extra careful with steps vs. skips, and make sure you hold all half notes the full 2 beats. For Mexican Jumping Beans we are playing staccato – let your wrist be bouncy so you play the notes short and crisp. Both hands are in C position for this song. LH can use the All Cows Eat Grass saying to help with large space jumps. For Never Enough, remember we stay on the same note for “stay this way“, and “louder now” since the melody goes too low. Your open vowels are fantastic, just make sure your “for me” sounds like the word “me” and not the word “may” – the jaw can still be open, just make sure your tongue is higher up to achieve the correct vowel sound. Please continue practicing Best Day of My Life, we will start with this next week.
Marco
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: The Juggler, Traffic Jam 2nds, and This is Not Jingle Bells
How to practice it most effectively: In The Juggler, there should be a nice contrast between the legato and staccato sections. Bars 9 to 14 have RH hopping over LH, all on Cs! In bars 8 and 16, LH holds onto the dotted half note under the RH staccatos. For Traffic Jam 2nds, please do the repeat. A second is another word for a step – these notes are right beside each other and sound squishy. For This is Not Jingle Bells, RH is in middle C position, while LH goest between a couple of different positions – just watch the finger numbers to determine where LH should be.
Oliver
Recommended minutes to practice: 10-15 minutes a day
What to practice: Bingo as main focus, and Firefly (from the new book)
How to practice it most effectively: For Bingo, please double check all notes in the 2nd line where RH and LH play together – the pattern here is that from bar 5 to 6 both hands step up, then again from bar 7 to 8 both hands step up. The song starts with a pickup eighth note – this G is coming in on an “and” beat, and the first C in bar 1 is your beat 1. Continue whispering your eighth rests! I’d love to hear Firefly next week if you’ve been working on it.
Alice
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: Grandmother, Lemonade Stand, Let Me Love You, My Favourite Things
How to practice it most effectively: For Grandmother, continue paying close attention to whether notes move in steps or skips. The second line has LH C and G playing together at the same time as RH’s melody. For Lemonade Stand, the hands are in C position, meaning LH’s finger 5 is on C, 1 (thumb) is on G. This song introduces us to the tie – whenever there are tied notes, we don’t replay the second one and instead hold through the full value. So in this song the tied dotted half notes hold for a total of 6 beats! Here are lyric videos for both Let Me Love You and My Favourite Things: For Let Me Love You, we’ll have to sing the verses up an octave, using guide notes G and C above middle C. The melody will be the same, just higher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZbzc7jvk00
Linda
Recommended minutes to practice: 20 minutes a day
What to practice: I’ve Got You Under My Skin, Calico Cat, Pyranese Melody
How to practice it most effectively: For Under My Skin, please do the G7 inversion on all D-7 to G7 cadences. Great work on the b9 chords! Between the -7b5 chords and 7b9 chords your RH pinky just moves down 1 semitone. The couple of chords where the flat is right beside the letter tell us that the root of the chord is a flat key (so for example the Eb7 and Bb7). Eb7 is Eb-G-Bb-Db and Bb7 is Bb-D-F-Ab. You may continue to practice Calico Cat as a warmup song – just make sure you start at a tempo that’s sustainable for the whole piece. We will start with Pyranese Melody next week.
Emet
Recommended minutes to practice: 20 minutes
What to practice: Haunted House, Walk Don’t Run
How to practice it most effectively: Please start Haunted House by playing the 1, 2, and 3 warmups a few times to get the feel of eighth note triplets. The way to count these is “1 and a”, where you replace “1” with whichever beat the triplet starts on. We will play the A section (so before the endings) hands together, and the B section (last 2 lines) hands separately. No need to play the full form this week. The first bar of line three has both hands lining up on the same letters on the numbered beats – you can use this to help you. Please continue playing Walk, Don’t Run – we will start with this one next week.
Kollel
Recommended minutes to practice: 20-25 minutes a day
What to practice: B major triads, The Black Pony, The Entertainer
How to practice it most effectively: For the B major triads, start hands separately then work to have the hands together by the end of the week. Please use the same fingerings as all other triads, just with the hands higher up into the keys to reach the 2 sharps. For The Black Pony, please double check RH’s 5ths in bars 12 and 20 – they should be Eb to Bb. The last step will be to gradually increase the tempo! For The Entertainer, please play the intro hands together, and the first section hands separately. LH will find it helpful to look at the steps/skips/etc. relationship between every other eighth note (so bass notes compared to each other, and chords compared to each other). I personally like to feel this song in 4 and count 1+2+3+4+ rather than in 2 counting 1e+a, 2e+a. RH is playing a lot of sixths in this song, and LH has a lot of octaves.