J. W. MacLeod Elementary School Fri. Nov. 1 2.45-3.45pm

Hello John W.

We had some technical difficulties today, but we still managed to get quite a bit of hands-on practice done. Thank you to all of you who worked independently, and helped your classmates know what to do. I think many of you are doing very well with the piano, even if we're still getting used to the software.
Your Old Grey Goose song was going much better today, and the performances we had from Victoria, Chloe, Luke and Hannah were quite impressive!

When you practice your songs, just remember to keep a steady beat. Listen for long notes and short notes - 1 beat or 2 beats. Also, try to keep a round-shape hand position and use the correct fingering.

After reviewing how to read notes in the Grand Staff, we did some left hand exercises and learned how to play a C major scale.
Starting on C, the fingering for the Right hand is: 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5
And for the Left hand it is: 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1

Jack gave us a superb demonstration of how to play a C major scale properly.
Walk your fingers up and down when you practice, connecting the notes.

Thanks for your patience and cooperation while I was solving technical problems everyone. I am there to answer your questions. Next time, I'll have some more tips and tricks for you on sightreading music, and I think we'll be able to make things run more smoothly and efficiently with a new seating plan/set-up.

Keep up the good practicing and I'll see you again next week.

Alice

Kingswood School Thurs. Nov. 1 11.40-12.40pm

Hi Kingswood,

Lovely to see you again. After you helped me set up the table and chairs in the new room (#116), and after lunch, we got to work, performing the songs that I gave you last week for each other.

Lauren, Max, Aidan and Renee all played beautifully for us. Remember to think of the rhythm, when you practice. Some notes are short, and some are long. Try tapping a beat with your foot while you practice so you can see how the beat lines up with the notes.

We learned about the Grand Staff in our Theory Thinker lesson. You learned 4 rhymes to memorize the letter names of the notes on the staff.

For the treble clef (your right hand), the line notes can be found using: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. For the space notes: F-A-C-E

In the bass clef (your left hand), we use the rhyme Good Boys Deserve Fudge Always for the line notes, and All Cows Eat Grass, for the space notes.

These are some tricks to find the notes on the staff, but really, you can figure out letter names by counting up or down from middle C, if you can remember where to find it (it has it's own line, below the treble clef staff, or above the bass clef staff).

We played some games to really get a handle on Grand Staff notes names, and then we learned about different note values.
Whole notes are worth 4 beats, Half notes are worth 2 and Quarter notes are worth 1.

Finally, I gave all of you 3 new song sheets to take home and try out for practice.

Make sure you put them in a folder and bring them every Wednesday for Musiq Club class.
I'm going to ask for some new volunteers next time to perform Twinkle Twinkle and Ode to Joy!

Thanks everyone.

Alice

BLT Elementary School Wed. Oct 31 2.00-3.00pm

Welcome to our blog BLT!

We had a great first class. I was very happy to meet all of you.

After setting up our account and choosing partners, we got right to work and had our first lesson with Mr. Beethoven. We learned about high and low on the piano. Your right hand plays the high "bird" notes and your left hand plays low "whale" notes.

We learned that Beethoven is a composer that lived 200 years ago. He wrote some of the most beautiful music in history. He went deaf, but he still continued to compose all kinds of music for the piano, and other instruments too.

We practiced what we learned with Ms. Melody - our practice room teacher. Then we played some games to see if we could remember everything on the spot. You were all fantastic at the games, and everyone took turns with their partners to play them. Excellent work.

Finally, we learned about how to find middle C and about the musical alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F and G.
Remember, there are only 7 letters in the musical alphabet.

Can you practice naming the keys on your piano at home, for practice?
Keep a steady beat and a round-shape hand position.

Practice playing some high notes with your right hand, and low notes with your left hand.
If you become more comfortable moving around on the keyboard, you'll be able to make more interesting improvisations!

We'll try out the improvisation room again next time. We were so busy learning, we didn't get very much time at the end to play and record our own songs. But we will!

See you next week :)

Westmount Elementary School Tues. Oct 30 12.15-1.15pm

Nice work girls.

We did 2 levels with Mr. Beethoven and Ms. Melody today. We learned about rhythms - long sounds and short sounds that can be played over a steady beat.

You were excellent rhythm-makers in the bongo boy game. When we did our word phrase exercises, you could all clap together - listening and repeating the patterns that I called out ("Aoiffe is a prin-cess", "Madd-ie is a witch", "Give me some-thing good to eat!")

Practice having a good hand position over the keys (thumbs and wrists nice and high - fingers curved). Your right hand plays the high notes and left hand plays the low notes.
Find groups of 2 and 3 black keys, and practice naming the musical alphabet keeping a steady beat forwards and backwards.

Morgan, you went ahead and tried out the Princess game. At first it was a little tricky, but you kept practicing your rhythm playbacks and by the end of class you solved the puzzle - great work!
Next week, we're all going to try the Princess game.
Try making up some word phrase rhythms for practice at home.

See you then, and have a Happy Halloween!

Fleming Tower Elementary School Mon. Oct 29 2.15-3.15pm

Hey Guys,
This was a super productive class for us. Everyone finished at least 2 levels with Mr. Beethoven and Ms. Melody, and some of you even got through 3 complete levels (Congratulations Noah and Sarah, Reese and Aly!)

We were getting so much better at clapping rhythms. We did some more word phrase exercises together, and also played a real life version of the game 'Bongo Boy'.
Everyone loved this game, and you learned so fast!
Keep practicing your rhythms. Make up sentences like we did: "Scary ghosts say boo!" and "trick or treat smell my feet" clapping along with long sounds and short sounds.

Make sure when you practice high notes and low notes, finding middle C and naming the letters of the musical alphabet on your keyboard, that you keep a steady beat and a round hand position.

Thanks everyone for such a fun class - you were brilliant today!
Next week all of us will get to meet our new lesson teacher Mr. Bach.

See you then!
Alice

Kingswood School Thurs. Oct. 25 11.40-12.40pm

Hi Kingswood!

It was great to meet all of you today. I thought we had a very successful first MusIQ Club class together. We learned a lot!

First we went over the five 'rooms' of the 'Piano Suite' software that we are using:
Piano Player - for learning songs on our keyboards.
Theory Thinker - for learning how music works (the 'science' of music).
Composer's Corner - to create our own songs.
History - to learn about the great composers of the past.
and Games - to have fun and reinforce all the concepts that we learn in the other four subjects.

In our Theory lesson we learned about finger numbers. Thumbs are 1, index fingers are 2, middle fingers are 3, etc... all the way to 5 with our pinky fingers. We also talked about proper hand position and posture for playing the piano. Make sure you practice with curved fingers and sit up nice and tall.

Then we discussed the beat. You were excellent 'beat-keepers' - we practiced clapping along to some fast violin music that I played for you (on CD). Make sure that when you play your piano you keep a steady beat - not speeding up or slowing down. Feel the beat, so that your music will be organized and make sense to the listeners ears.

Finally, we did a lot of exercises naming the 7 letters of the musical alphabet. This was awesome, you were all able to find Middle C, find groups of 2 blacks keys and 3 black keys, and name the keys going all the way up the keyboard.
Practice naming the keys going backwards down the keyboard.

You can try finding, for example, all the A's... or all the F's, the way we did in class, trying to stay in beat. This way you'll get faster and faster at knowing where your white keys are, and you'll become better and better at playing the piano!

Everyone should bring a folder for next time, to keep the song sheets that I hand out at the end of class. I'm looking forward to seeing how you do with the finger number tunes I gave you: Mary had a little lamb and Ode to Joy.

Don't worry if this was a lot to think about in just one week... You can learn at your own pace in this class and I'll be here to help you, so please ask lots of questions.

Thanks for checking out the blog!

Alice

Westmount Elementary School Tues. Oct 23 12.15-1.15pm

We had a wonderful time in Musiq Club today.

Each of you worked extremely well, and I'm very proud of how much we've accomplished already.

You remembered the names of all the notes, including Middle C.
You remembered that there are high notes on the right side of the piano, and low notes on the left side.
You even remembered all kinds of things about Mr. Beethoven - our lesson teacher; he was deaf, he played the piano, he wrote beautiful music and he was a German!

Today we learned about two new songs: One by Beethoven called "Fur Elise" and another one by Grieg called "In the Hall of the Mountain King".

After playing some note naming games and practicing our songs from last week, we visited the improvisation room and I was very impressed with how all of you were able to make your own recordings with various instruments and styles of music.
Some of you have an excellent sense of rhythm. (Lily - that waltz was amazing!)

Keep practicing your musical alphabet with a good round hand position, and find all the keys for each letter, keeping a steady beat.

Nice work girls. I'm looking forward to learning more about rhythm (and new games) with you next week!

P.S. Here is a picture of you 5 from the first week. Parents, if you'd rather not have your child's photo here on the blog just let me know, and I can take it down asap.

Fleming Tower Elementary School Mon. Oct 22 2.15-3.15pm

Great class this week everyone.

We learned about rhythm today. Rhythm is when there are long sounds and short sounds in music, overtop of a steady beat.
There is a natural rhythm in language, when we talk. So we played a game making up sentences like "I like kitty cats" and "My sister eats cake".
The words with two syllables have short sounds and the words with only one have long sounds.
We practiced clapping lots of different sentences, and everyone seemed to understand after visiting Mr. Beethoven and Ms. Melody to reinforce the concepts.

We tried out the Princess Game, which was pretty hard for some students, but others picked it up right away.

Everyone can practice making up sentences and playing the rhythms on middle C on their keyboards at home.

I was very glad to see that everyone remembered their musical alphabet perfectly, and was able to find Middle C. Practice saying the alphabet backwards. We want to know our keys so well that we can name each of them quickly, without having to counting up and down.

We'll learn more about rhythm next time. Thanks for all your hard work :)
See you next week.

J. W. MacLeod Elementary School Fri. Oct. 19 2.45-3.45pm

Hi everyone,

Today was a pretty good lesson. You're all becoming more familiar with the Piano Suite Software now. You now know that it's important to listen to your lessons all the way through to get all the red check marks... that way when I come around to see how you're doing I'll know what you've completed and how I can help you.

Everyone needs to bring the sheets that I give out in class so that we can all work on finger number and letter name songs together. It's useful to have a folder to keep these in - keep them all together, and try to remember to bring them for Musiq Club on Fridays.

We did some work in the Theory Thinker, reviewing the treble clef (played with the right hand) and bass clef (played with the left hand) notes. We also talked about quarter notes, half notes and whole notes again.

Then we spent some time in the Piano Player activity. You learned a song called "Old Grey Goose" (more commonly known as "Go tell Aunt Rhody"). This went well, and all of you were able to read the notes on the staff with your right hand position on Middle C. Some of you need a little more practice with the left hand, which takes more time; most of you being right handed.

Overall, I've been very happy with how much this group has learned already. You're doing some great work at home - everyone knew what the name of the mystery tune was for homework this week. "Ode to Joy"!

Now you have 2 new tunes to practice. If this is too much too soon, that's ok... hold on to the sheets until you're ready. If you feel like you can do more, please let me know, and I'll give you more music to practice next time if you can show me how you're doing with the things I've already given you.

Practice tips:

• Play your letter name songs a few times with each hand. Exercise the left hand especially.
• Round hand position. Don't let the fingers fall flat on the keys.
• A steady beat. Each note should last for 1 beat or 2 beats at this point. Use your ear.
• Practice naming the notes on the keys. Try to memorize them as well as you can, so that when you become more comfortable with notes on the staff you'll be able to find the keys more quickly.
  

See you next week!
Alice

Westmount Elementary School Tues. Oct 16 12.15-1.15pm

Hi Westmount School, Parents and Students,

We had a great first class yesterday. There are 5 girls in this Musiq Club so far, and they were all very well-behaved and attentive.

After lunch, we did our first lesson with Mr. Beethoven. We learned about high 'bird' notes and low 'whale' notes. High notes are on the right side of the piano and low notes are on the left. When you practice playing high and low notes at home make sure you use the right hand on the right side and left hand on the left side.

We learned that high and low are not the same as loud and soft. We also talked about how to keep a good beat (always steady, not getting faster or slower) and how to hold our hand with good finger posture (pretend to hold and orange between your hands, fingertips touching, then separate them, keeping the same shape, and place your fingertips on the keys).

After meeting Beethoven, we went and practiced what we learned with Miss Melody. You all seemed to understand the lesson, so we were able to introduce middle C and the musical alphabet.
Middle C is the white key directly below the middle group of two black keys.
Remember, to find C: "group of two, down to C".

After C, we have the note called D. Then E, F, G, A, B and back to C again.
There are only 7 letters in the musical alphabet.

Practice naming your keys with beautiful curved fingers and keeping a steady beat.
Try listening to some more of Beethoven's piano music.

When I see you next time, we'll try out more new games and create some new songs of our own in the improvisation room.
All of you did an excellent job yesterday with music lessons.
I'm looking forward to having lunchtime with you again next week.

Parents, please Email me if you have any questions or concerns about this class - or if you are looking for more information about the Musiq Club program.

Thank you,
Alice