Lesson 6

How is your child’s mastery of Melodic Patterns and Chord Fingerings? Plan to spend at least 5 minutes with your child this week before Lesson 7 checking to make sure they can confidently play p. 16 Melodic Patterns and p. 14 Primary Cadence with correct notes and fingerings in both hands!

Celebrate Connection
A few ideas to bring playfulness to practice time!

• When the notes go up the keyboard, lean to the right; when the notes go down, lean to the left.
• Sing along in pig-latin
• Play (and sing) a song as *Forte* as you can!
  

​Homework: pp. 14–15 Students identify all the Middle Cs with a red x, then identify the various melodic patterns by circling them with a specified color. These melodic patterns are used in SO many songs and students will benefit greatly in their future music making endeavors by being able to quickly identify and play them! Also, be sure to listen to the specified CD songs and practice each piece. Sitting with your child at the beginning of the practice week will instill good habits and allow you to correct any fingering or note mistakes. Then they can successfully practice on their own the rest of the week!

Melodic Patterns
We get to PLAY all of the melodic patterns this week! The goal of this daily practice technique is to SEE, SING, and PLAY each pattern all at once. Though their well-trained ears might tempt them to play each pattern by ear, insist they look at the book with their goggles, binoculars, laser beam eyes, telescopic vision, x-ray vision, heat vision, freeze vision, or night vision eyes while they play and sing!

Here are the verbal cues we sing in class with our hand signs. Invite them to sing these cues, finger numbers, or be creative and make up different words on the pitches of each melodic pattern.
MRD-Baby Steps Down
SFMRD-Baby Steps Go-Ing Down
SMD-Skip-Ping Down
SSD- Same Same Leap-up
SLTD-Baby Steps Going Up

Can’t Bug Me
Drumroll please…..Introducing BEAT BUG! “The BEAT is the BUG and the others play a long!” The Beat Bug sets the tempo on the metronome! He might go fast or slow but the beat is a ‘bug’ (quarter note) and the other rhythms (beetles, caterpillars, grasshoppers, butterflies, slugs) follow and fit within that given tempo.

Lullaby and Goodnight & Go to Sleep
After we solidify the chord transitions in our lullabies, we will make them sound more serene and calm by stylizing them with broken chords. Feel free to invite your child to color the chords in their piano book to make this an easier transition.
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Primary Chord Song/Primary Cadence
Time to put on a show for the family! Your child can play ALL chords with BOTH HANDS! Invite them to perform the chords Ray Charles style while singing the chords out loud! Play them hands separate, then try hands together with the correct fingerings!

Why the importance of chords in piano playing? Kristi Ison, a Let’s Play Music teacher in Mesa, Arizona, shares the Top 10 Reasons for Learning Primary Chords!