Mood:
a-okTopic: Music Moves for Piano
Well, I really haven't updated this blog in a while!! I got so busy with preparing kids for the Christmas recital!! It went really well, and many of my MMP students played ensembles.
Speaking of ensembles... today I decided to try teaching an ensemble to my youngest class. It's a group of very young kinders (one just turned 5 on Dec. 31st!), and they are using Keyboard Games A. They're about half-way through the book, having just learned "Circles" this week.
For their ensemble piece, I had them learn "The Apple and the Worm". The students already knew the student part very well. Here's a basic run-down of what we did:
- T plays "Apple & Worm" while S moves to Macro/microbeats.
- Each S takes a turn playing the piece solo, the with T playing duet
- S taps both hands on knees, chanting "Du-de Du-de" (the RP for the duet part) (note: this is the first experience students have playing hands together!)
- S 'fingerpaints' (dabs fingers) duet part in the air.
- S plays duet part on piano alone, and then with T playing student part.
- Finally, S plays duet part while another S plays student part.
There were a few slips - mostly the student playing the student part playing the notes in the wrong order (descending vs. ascending) but they all kept a very steady rhtyhm even if they did play wrong notes.
It was amazing to see these little tiny 5 year olds playing a duet together! They did such a fine job!
On another note (ok, this is just me bragging!) I've been teaching my 10 year old son in my Thursday evening group. Admittedly, I'm a bit lax on helping him practice (I'm too busy teaching!). However, he's doing an amazing job! Yesterday, we were downstairs in the studio just goofing around, and he played "Porpoise at Play", but transposed it. I don't think he was even aware that he wasn't playing it where it was written. I pointed this out to him, saying, "Hey cool! You just transposed this piece! What a great job. Now, how about starting on this note..." and I showed him a different place to play, which he figured out in a flash. After that, he decided to make a variation of the piece, playing it in a different (higher) register, and on the repeat, moving up an octave.
I'm really impressed with my MMP students' technical abilities. They are doing an amazing job producing beautiful tones. I've recently started to learn the flute, and am realizing that it takes a lot of work to produce a really nice tone on the flute, and it's something you really need to work on. I think this is probably the same for most other wind/brass/string instruments. However, I think this is an area of neglect in piano lessons. We, too, need to teach our young students how to properly depress a key in order to produce a clear, beautiful tone.
Because of the Keyboard Geography activities that teach technique in MMP, my first year students have managed to completely avoid those common beginner technical pitfalls! I'm tickled PINK!!!!!
