Yellow Arrows Lesson 2

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Lesson #2

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Now is the time to put the Blue Stickers on your piano for Left Hand. C-F-A. We will use fingering of 5-2-1 (NO EXCEPTIONS!). See the Making Musicians note below for a helpful trick. I will give everyone some more stickers today so they can do this. Remember, we've removed the "training wheels" (stickers) from the Right Hand so they can learn it by sight now.

IMPORTANT: If they are still struggling to play the chords with the CORRECT FINGERS in the Right Hand, please add some good reps in every day for those to their practice. Since we pick up the speed from here, I don't want to leave anyone in the dust if they're still struggling with fingering and switching from one chord to the next.

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

  • Sing and act out Robin Hood with your child, even better, as a family!
  • Find intervals on the keyboard with mini marshmallows, toy cars, legos, etc.
  • Have your parent sing while you play, the trade places. Now both sing together!

 

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Music Alphabet
“The first 3 notes just happen to be Do Re Mi!” Maria got it right teaching the von Trap children the solfege before note names. Now that our students can sing, play, and sight read notes through solfege, and keyboard geography is solid, we are getting ready to label all of the white keys on the piano. This begins with the music alphabet! The music alphabet includes the 1st seven notes of the English Alphabet except that it starts on the Letter C and after G comes letter A. The first 7 notes just happen to be C D E F G A B!

Block and Broken
Playing music is like reading a book. We start at the left side of the page and move our eyes to the right. When the note changes, so do our fingers. Help guide this song while sitting on the left of your child and pointing to the notes in each measure. Once your child is comfortable playing the song, practice making sure each measure gets 3 steady beats. Feel free to sing, “RED-2-3; DO (count 1) MI (count 2) SOL (count 3). BLUE-2-3; DO FA LA,” etc…This will help your student understand how to read the music and work towards playing this song with a steady beat.

Snowflakes are Falling
Brrr it’s cold outside! Warm up inside your home by playing this ostinato on the tone bells. Sing starting on Re, “Snowflakes are falling, falling very gently”. Then play La, Sol, Fa, Mi for “down, down, down, down”. Keep singing the lyrics then repeating this DOWN pattern until you’re feeling toasty inside and finish the song by playing a final DOWN on the Re bell. Try it in a round as a family around the fire with the CD!
 
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Who Am I? I’m the SPIDEY BLUE CHORD!

 


Spin a chord of fun playing the Left Hand Blue Chord with fingers 5-2-1.