Shakira

Focusing on reading Lead Sheets – another strategy for reading written music.

Unlike the written music on the grand staff that we’ve been working on (Treble clef and Bass clef showing all notes and rhythms for both of our hands), music written on lead sheets provides us only with our melody and chord symbols. Depending on how/where they are written this can give us information about our rhythm and exact chords we will need to accompany our written melody.

Using our strategies for working through lead sheets as discussed on the following songs:

  • Abide with Me
  • Amazing Grace
  • Scarborough Fair

Clara

Technical Exercises:

  • Continuing with D and A Major scales – 1 octave
    • Practicing hands separately as blocked hand positions and stepping
    • Practicing hands together – Watching for finger 3’s together
  • A Major Triads – RH focus – finding triad shapes (root position, 1st inversion, second inversion)
    • Practicing finding chord inversions on their own (ex.  all of the A Maj. root position triads bottom to top)
    • Then practicing moving between chord inversions slowly (ex. moving back and forth between root position and 1st inversion – watching RH finger 1 move between A and C#)
    • Watching fingerings – always using fingers 1 and 5 on our outside notes, make sure you know if we need finger 2 or 3 for inside notes.

Bartok – Exercises #7-8

Trampoline – Still thinking about our 3/4 time signature – make sure we don’t accidentally add any extra beats

  • Remember: whole rests can either mean we are resting for 4 beats, or we are resting for the whole measure (could be 3 beats, 7, 100, etc.)
  • Focusing our RH practice on our large jumps and 2 note chords at the end – watching finger 5

Bluebottle – Now that we are fitting this quite well hands together, we want to make sure we are comfortable fully with our counting.

  • Tapping our LH and RH rhythms on our lap (instead of playing on the keyboard) will let us focus on our counting.
  • Counting out loud/writing in our counting so we can notice all of our rests (breathing in on rests helps us focus on them when playing!)
  • Working on not stopping or hesitating when the pattern between our hands shifts