Recital is Sunday, December 2 around noon!

Madison

Madison still needs constant reminders about her hand position, especially, playing with strong fingertips at a louder dynamic, separating the fingers well so that each individual is hammering down to create the desired round tone on the piano. But she put in a strong effort today, good job Madison! She will do Lavender’s Blue for the recital and is expected to have it memorized in two weeks. She was given the explicit blueprint for how to practice most effectively this week so that she comes next week with a smooth piece without pauses. Summary is to play the second line 5-10 times more than the rest of piece, and to play the last two bars several times before playing the song through . This is also the first week I am assigning her initiative to isolating and practicing any trouble spots before going through the whole piece. 15 minutes a day only, plus another 5 minutes on warmups and scales.

She should look at D Major scale, two octaves, hands separately, focusing on proper hand position as described above, especially for the LH. Remember F# and C#.

 

Osten

Osten is working on a minor natural scale. Practice slowly and strongly until you get the fingering down confidently!

The Entertainer: Osten knows to practice the first four bars of the piece until he has them confidently under his fingers. He knows the tricks to achieving this, as we went over them in detail in the lesson. Then he can move on to learning the RH of the full first page. I broke it down for him in the lesson and we went over two sections. 15 minutes a day of practice should suffice.

Osten needs to bring his Alfred book with him next week for us to select a song from there for the recital.

I intend to bring some practice worksheets for Osten as well as Madison to help them practice note recognition. I will make copies from the Alfred Notespeller books. Please let me know if you would be interested in purchasing your own book for use at home :)

 

Nila

Nila is working on Singin’ in the Rain for the Dec 2 recital and it doing a great job. She needs to have it memorized for next week. I gave her her own copy of the song, and told her to watch it on youtube while singing along, to help her other strategies for memorization.

Nila is getting better at not covering her sound as we continue to practice singing with open natural vowels powered by deep chest breaths.

Nila needs to complete Unit 1 of her theory book for next week.

Please discuss about the possibility of extending her lesson time to 45 minutes in order to allow for more singing as well as theory and piano.

Julia

Julia will be singing My Favourite Things for the Dec 2 recital. Julia has expressed the very strong desire NOT to perform at the recital, but is clear that she is preparing her song for performance at the recital and knows that she can sit it out and watch if she feels too overwhelmed.

Julia needs to have My Favourite Things memorized for next week. I wrote a laundry list of items for her to bear in mind about the song and she is already making wonderful progress in every regard. Summary is to emphasize the first bet of every bar (most of the time), to overexaggerate her consonants (aggressively even), and sing with natural vowels, without any shaping or holding from the tongue and jaw.

 

Good work everyone!