Diya
Recommended minutes to practice: 15-20 minutes a day
What to practice: Best Day of My Life, Never Enough, Mexican Jumping Beans, Haunted Mouse
How to practice it most effectively: When doing your warmups, feel free to use all the different vowels! For Best Day of My Life, you can sing the “hoo, hoo” parts since these are a catchy, important part of the song. When we sing “Whoa-o-o-o”, please make sure the O vowel is open and not an “Oh-ooh” sound. In the bridge section, the melody is the middle part; the highest thing your ears hear is actually a harmony. Please continue to practice Never Enough. For Mexican Jumping Beans, use your wrist to make staccatos even shorter/crisper. Remember, this doesn’t mean we have to play fast! For Haunted Mouse, start with the first 2 lines hands together – you can read ahead if you feel comfortable. LH is doing ties – this means you don’t replay the second note in the group. RH, careful with your mix of staccatos versus legatos.
Marco
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: This is Not Jingle Bells (review song), Kites in the Sky, A Mixed-Up Song
How to practice it most effectively: For This is Not Jingle Bells, keep playing it as as warmup song so it feels really comfortable and flows smoothly. Kites in the Sky is a very legato song (including the extra long bar 17!). Whenever LH crosses over, it’s not a whole new position; you can just use the written fingerings. If you’re ever unsure about a note, use FACE in the space to help. In bar 17 all notes are moving in steps, and the hands pass them on to each other. For A Mixed-Up Song we are playing with 4ths! 4ths go from space to line or line to space. LH please be extra careful reading your letters on the bass clef – C, E, and G are space notes while D and F are line notes.
Oliver
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: Firefly, Little Green Frog
How to practice it most effectively: For Firefly, let’s add the second page of the song in – there are times where the melodic ideas repeat. Lots of skips in this song, so keep it up looking for the space-space, line-line movement! As always, if you’re unsure of a note you can use your treble and bass clef sayings. For Little Green Frog, make sure you’re staying in position (this one is thumbs sharing C position) for the whole song. Please do the staccatos by letting your wrist be nice and bouncy, and note the couple of times we have repeated middle Cs.
Alice
Recommended minutes to practice: 15 minutes a day
What to practice: Let Me Love You, My Favourite Things, All My Friends
How to practice it most effectively: For Let Me Love You, give yourself your starting note (G above middle C) before starting the song – you will be singing an octave above Justin in verse 1, but in verse 2 he goes up to your notes! Feel free to hum the little instrumental melody whenever there is the breakdown. Please do some more listening and following along with lyrics for My Favourite Things – there are many words to get comfortable with (although the good news is that the melody is pretty repetitive). For All My Friends, we have tied quarter notes from beat 4 of one bar to beat 1 of the next bar. We wrote down the counting, so if you’d like to you can count out loud as you play.
Linda
Recommended minutes to practice: 20 minutes a day
What to practice: Pyrenese Melody, Cool Groove, and I’ve Got You Under My Skin
How to practice it most effectively: For Pyrenese Melody, we discussed the rhythm in bar 5 and how it lines up with the 1e+a, 2e+a counts; you can isolate this bar and say counting out loud a few times to solidify it. Please make sure the eighth notes in bars 9 and 11 are nice and even, even when doing the down-up articulation. For the new song, Cool Groove, let’s go hands separately for now, especially focusing on the RH rhythms where there is eighth-quarter-eighth. Please keep practicing I’ve Got You Under My Skin; we will play it next week.
Emet
Recommended minutes to practice: 20-25 minutes a day
What to practice: Walk Don’t Run, Rock Around the Clock, Haunted House
How to practice it most effectively: For Walk, Don’t Run, please isolate bars 7-9 while saying the counting a few times – eventually we want bar 9 (and again in bar 17) to become the same quick speed as the rest of the piece. Be careful with the intro eighth-eighth-quarter rhythms. For Rock Around the Clock, we will be swinging the eighth note pairs (this could include rests!); the first note in the pair is longer than the second. RH please play the first page, feeling out the rhythm; LH can play the first page and the second page. On the second page LH is doing what’s called a walking bassline, which typically uses triads and is pretty repetitive. Please continue to practice Haunted House – we can start with this one next week.
Kollel
Recommended minutes to practice: 20-25 minutes a day
What to practice: B major triads (hands together), The Entertainer, The Black Pony
How to practice it most effectively: For the triads, please take note of the 3 keys you’ll be using and commit those to memory before starting. As always, remember which inversions use finger 2 for each hand. For The Entertainer, try the first page hands together! LH, you can think about when you’re playing inversions or parts of C, G, and F triads. Bar 18 specifically goes F major to F minor, with only one note changing. Be careful with all the syncopations between the hands. For The Black Pony, please count “1e+a” on the quarter rest just before the ending. The last detail to add is making those staccatos extra crisp – remember, staccato doesn’t mean fast, it just means short; you can absolutely play slow and still use staccatos.