Continuing with the theme of devising games utilizing flashcards, I had Naomi try a sight-reading/composition game. I held the set of flashcards upside down and had her randomly draw four cards. Then I allowed her to arrange them in any order she chose and play the pattern of notes under either the second or third section on the card. After playing it once, she could rearrange the cards to form a different melody and keep trying various patterns until she came up with one that she liked the best.
Brittany has had a long-time goal of learning a piano arrangement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. A couple of years ago she found a great free arrangement of it on-line and brought it to her lesson. It was still a little bit beyond her, so we set it to the side. After lots of hard work, we finally decided she was ready and she had a blast learning it! Just for fun we decided to layer a piano and string sound on the Clavinova and record it during her lesson this week.
Find three free arrangements of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony at the gmajor music theory free piano music website. Just look under the right side bar labeled, “Most Popular.” (Brittany learned the Level 3 arrangement.)
Click here to read step-by-step instructions on how to easily set up recording capabilities in your studio.
We had our second Private Eye Workshop of the year this week and our topic was Great Pianists. In addition to the student performances and judging, we enjoyed “visits” from three special guest pianists. Since I completely forgot to take any pictures during our class, I thought I would post this captivating performance we watched of Lang Lang and his father playing, “Horse.” We were all duly mesmerized!
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