Kingswood School Thurs. Nov. 29 11.40-12.40pm

In our 6th lesson, we went over C major scales. We reviewed playing legato and with curved fingers, keeping a steady beat. Your scales are sounding better and better.
Most of you still need practice with the left hand. Remember that your 5th finger begins on low C.
The fingering for the left hand is: 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1

After scales, we talked about Intervals again - the distance between two notes. If you can recognize the shapes of intervals on the staff you will be able to read music faster. To find out the distance between two notes you can count up from the bottom note by line and space, then notice how the two notes look in relation to each other. 2nds are directly next to each other, 3rds will always be a line to a line or a space to a space, 4ths are a 3rd plus one, etc.
We played a game with flashcards to see how fast we could figure out different intervals.

Next, we played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and talked about the person who composed this song - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Twinkle Twinkle was orginally written as a Theme and Variations. I played the tune for you on my violin, and then improvised a few variations. A theme can be played in many different ways to make it sound faster, slower, more complex or more simple. You told me some facts about Mozart's life: he was a child prodigy who wrote his first symphony at the age of 8, he was from Germany and he died at the age of 35.

After practicing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star together, we tried a new song: Silent Night.
This song uses only the Right Hand in the Treble clef.
See if you can write down all the letter names above, or underneath the notes for next class.
Remember how we name notes in the Grand Staff. Count up from middle C, which is the note on its own line below the treble clef staff.

We worked hard today. Well done everyone.
See you next week!