Next week is parent week and tuition is due on the 20th! It is also Showtime for Turkey in the Straw. Please send a video (Marco Polo) of your child playing either their favorite part (about 4 measures) or the entire song. I love seeing your children play by themselves! As we continue to work on melodic dictation, students continue to develop their listening ears to help them determine what is being played. This program truly develops the complete musician! And now that we are working in the key of F Major, students are practicing drawing flats (B-flat in this case) in addition to treble clefs and notes on the staff. Just a head's up: Parents attend for the last lesson of the semester which is Station Day! Station Day offers a chance for me to meet one-on-one with you both (parent and student) to celebrate your child’s accomplishments thus far! Just like last year, students will enjoy a sort of “progressive dinner” approach to several stations set up in the studio to enjoy and review skills learned throughout the semester. Let’s Play Music is a results-based program and Station Days are a fun tradition to highlight and celebrate those accomplishments. It is also a fun reminder that we are halfway through the process that is working to develop complete musicians! Homework: p. 42–43 Students draw on the staff: bar lines based on the time signatures, B-flats, double bar lines, and write in counts under each measure. Jingle Bells Our fun Holiday song gave us a chance to add chords to a melody. Just like learning any new language, after you speak it, you learn to write it. Once our fingers get comfortable with playing it we will have another opportunity to transpose from C Major to F Major! Try this fun improvisation activity at home during your break, and sing all the things you're thankful for! Play as explained in the video, or switch it and sing a melody and then add the chords that sound nice with it. If you get stuck, try fill-in-the-blank lyrics like "I am thankful for _______." or leave out the 'thankful' part and just sing two words like "____ and ____" (pumpkin pie and ice cream/music and piano/family and friends and especially YOU!) For my convenience, I have preloaded content for the whole semester. I will update each future post with specific time-sensitive info before I send the link each week. If you choose to read ahead you might see details that don’t apply to your child’s class. For this reason I do not recommend reading ahead. Thank you!
Next week is Showtime for Song of Joy. Students can choose their favorite part of the song to play for me — just 4–8 measures please! Send me a video via text or Marco Polo. Thanks! I enjoyed watching each student play their 'bug' scale hands together this week! Encourage your child to keep practicing. No one played it 'perfectly,' so everyone will benefit from continuing to practice. Also, be sure to start using a metronome when your child practices. This will help them keep a steady beat — a skill that is critical to being a top notch musician! Students can also play along with the accompaniment tracks (#14–37 on the album) to keep a steady beat. We are continuing to work on absolute pitch and relative pitch by singing middle C and then finding F from it. We also played Let's Play Music and Turkey in the Straw in the key of F. F position is coming easily now! These kiddos will be transposing so easily due to their interval and solfege understanding and execution! In class we started taking melodic dictation. I played a few musical notes, and the students had to listen and figure out what they were hearing, then decode how it should be written. We will continue developing this aural perception skill throughout the rest of the school year. We also played a little bit of Twinkle, Twinkle (pg.22) : As we start to play this first theme, remind your student to stretch their right hand into the "Blue Chord" position to touch 'G' with finger 4, and 'A' with finger 5. Then when coming back down, slide your thumb from 'D' to 'C', and you'll be back in C position again! Homework: p. 40–41 Students practice drawing Red, Blue, and Yellow Chords in their HW Booklet. Then they need to play the melody of Jingle Bells to determine which chord should be played in each measure and write in the chords on the blank bass staff. Wow! What great ear training! Turkey in the Straw This repertoire piece will have us playing the melody in the right hand and NOW the left hand as well. It will also give us another opportunity to practice our transposing. Your student is doing some pretty impressive stuff! Thanksgiving will be here before you know it. Our Let's Play Music Blog has some fun ideas for a few Turkey extras your whole family can enjoy! For my convenience, I have preloaded content for the whole semester. I will update each future post with specific time-sensitive info before I send the link each week. If you choose to read ahead you might see details that don’t apply to your child’s class. For this reason I do not recommend reading ahead. Thank you!
We are to working on absolute pitch (plucking middle C out of thin air) and relative pitch (using that middle C to find the F above it by singing 'Do, Re, Mi, Fa; F is Do'). If this sounds like Greek, just ask your child to show you what we did. You'll be amazed at their musical skills! We figured out that when we play hand together (HT) on our 'Bug' Scale, our hands have to POP at different times! Please help your child practice this so they can successfully play HT in class next week! It was fun listening to Mozart's 'Twinkle, Twinkle' variations. What is a variation, you say? Well, you should ask your child — they should know after our discussion in class! Homework: p. 38–39 Students write in the counts (1–2–3–4) under the whole notes. Be sure they use a 'dash' to indicate that the note is holding for longer than one beat. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star This familiar childhood song is a great way to learn about theme and variation. You can still hear the main theme in each of the variations, it is just sort of disguised in different ways each time. As we continue to study this song throughout the semester we will discover that it is ALSO written in our classical ABA form, and will help our fingers play in an extended C position. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star is one of the most popular English nursery rhymes. It combines the tune of the 1761 French melody "Ah ! vous dirai-je, Maman" with an English poem, "The Star," by Jane Taylor. It is often thought that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the original writer of this melody. Reinforced by its appearance as a "correct answer" in the original edition of Trivial Pursuit and "Snapple Facts" (among others), many believe that the song was written by Mozart when he was four or five years old. Mozart was this age at the time the original French melody was written. Much later in his life, he did write 12 variations on the original theme-- which we hear on our CD! Check out this parrot singing his OWN variation of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star! For my convenience, I have preloaded content for the whole semester. I will update each future post with specific time-sensitive info before I send the link each week. If you choose to read ahead you might see details that don’t apply to your child’s class. For this reason I do not recommend reading ahead. Thank you!
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Clara McDonaldAs a music educator of 25 years, my passion is infusing others with music! Archives
May 2023
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