Dear students,
Welcome back to another school year! As fall colours bloom, let’s put our passion and effort towards a great term of meaningful learning together.
Madison
I’ll continue to remind you about playing confidently at the piano by applying more pressure and even pressure through your fingertips into the keybed to get a nice full sound and strengthen up your playing muscles!
I can can tell you are quite musical, let that aptitude shine in our lessons by playing your best every time and showing me whatever songs you’ve been making up or playing by ear.
If you are ever interested, know that I would be delighted to enrich our lessons together by teaching you how to write music, so you can get your creations down on paper and sign your name on them.
We only got to Lavender’s Blue this week, but keep working on Kumbayah along the same lines as the previous week’s homework!
Lavender’s Blue: Remember that you don’t need to find so many notes when you observe that they are the same notes that you just played. This happens in the four places I marked for you, help yourself be more efficient by practicing those indicated parts with that in mind. Just 2-5 min/day.
When practicing at home, first practice bars 7-8 and the last two bars for 2min each before playing the whole song through. You can practice the whole piece for 10 minutes or less a day!
Scales: My friend, we have some work to do on D Major! Play through one or two octaves hands separately, remembering your F and C sharps, playing with the tips of your fingers and playing loudly and confidently!
Please make sure your nails are clipped for next week.
Well done :)
Osten
To Purchase: I will purchase an appropriate book for Osten and bring it to you next week.
Please practice playing with proper hand position at home aka tips of the fingers!! This is very important for you and I will continue to remind you each week and watch carefully.
Scales: G Major and D Major, hands together, two octaves
Hanon Book: Please ask your parents to check out my teacher page and order the Hanon Virtuoso Pianist exercise book. I would like to start this book with you, it will help you immensely and it’s fun!
Kumbayah: The technique for which this piece is great for practicing is striking chords truly together so that they sound like “one note”. Focus on weighting your hands (kind of like tilting) a little more to the right and concentrate when your hand pushes down to strike the chord. You did this much better already this week, this week focus on the bigger picture of both LH and RH striking exactly together. :)
18th Century: Learn the whole song, 10-15 min/day and focus on – staccato, tips of fingers, hit all chords together right on (together)
Nila
We picked three new songs to work on going forward: Colours of the Wind from Pocahantas, Singin’ in the Rain from Singing in the Rain, and Lavender’s Blue (various versions, I will choose a suitable one)
Julia
We picked three new songs to work on going forward: Girl from Ipanema, Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again from the Phantom of the Opera, My Favourite Things from Sound of Music