Hooray for Orange! What a great first lesson! Thanks for coming Moms and Dads! It's always a treat to have you here. Our last semester of Let’s Play Music is packed with amazing musical concepts that some kids will get in high school music classes, if they are lucky; unfortunately most don’t get it until college. This is going to be an amazing ride as we make skipping snakes, play with the roots of chords, build triads, compose a song, add to our musical repertoire, and much, much more.
Please listen and learn the songs on the CD during these first few weeks – the lyrics do a wonderful job explaining what might otherwise be tricky theory concepts. If you’d like an extra copy of the CD for your car, you can burn one on your computer, or buy an additional copy from LPM ($5.50).
Last semester we were introduced to all of the purple flashcards. This semester, we will continue to cement those flashcards and our goal is to say them within one minute. This may seem impossible to you at this point, but by running through the flashcards 2-3 times every day, you will see small daily improvements. If you want to know the secret to mastering this, here it is…. YOU MUST DO IT EVERYDAY! You can’t do it twice a week and expect them to master this memorization. We want instant recognition - not just counting up the lines! Who will join the MINUTE CLUB???
Practice time this semester should take 15 minutes. By the end of the year, your child should have worked up to 20-minute practices. If you find that practice is done in 5 minutes flat, encourage him to play through “tricky” parts of a song several times before playing the whole song, and play through each required song several times to improve them. A few minutes at each practice should be spent experimenting and thinking of new melodies. Because we are moving right along now, my hope is you will continue to put highest priority on your practice time. Each week we will be building on concepts and skills practiced the previous week. Of course, we have been doing this all along in the other LPM semesters. However, if the students get behind this semester, they will most likely feel lost rather quickly. They won’t feel happy going to class because they won’t know the material and won’t have practiced the songs. This will quickly lead to frustration and miserable students. We’d like to avoid this from the start. By putting highest priority on practice from the beginning, it will eliminate much of the distress that could come because of practice neglect. Remind your kids about "patience" with hard things, and to persevere. You might have to remind yourself of that if they are being turkeys!!
Next week have your kids bring theory assignment #1 to class with them, along with their books. Lesson #6 will be a private lesson, and I'll need everyone to sign up for a time on Thur Feb 10th or Sat Feb 12th. I'll email the sign up time slots to all of you. Please have your kids start creating their own songs at the keyboard. I will be giving there several "composing tips" over the next couple of weeks. At lesson #6 we will get their song on paper, so they'll need to get some ideas going long before then.
As usual, please don't hesitate to ask any questions. Thanks so much for your support!
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