Seimpi Lesson 16

07 Nov 2010 (Sun):

We were 10 mins late this afternoon & teacher Marcia had to call to check if we were coming. Opps! For the whole of Nov, Rachel will be the only student as the other girl has gone overseas with her parents & wld only be back late Nov. Geez!

Today, we learned a new topic - music tempo:

Presto - very fast (like an aeroplane)
Allegro - quickly (like a car)
Andante - at a walking pace ( just a boy /girl walking)
Adagio - slow, at ease & gracefully ( like a cow pulling a cart)
Largo - very slow & broad (like a tortise)

We will go in depth the next lesson. We revised time signatures - 2/4 counts, 3/4 counts & 4/4 counts. Rachel was aware of the counts one min & the next, she totally forgotten how many counts were there in each count. Teacher Marcia got to prompt to her to look at the number on the top. For example, 2/4 counts wld mean 2 counts. (the number above the slash). We did some exercises below as well.

By listening to the player, Rachel got to circle the correct counts played & answer the following: Which car belongs to Jack?

Same thing for this one. Which dress belongs to Emma?

We learned another new piece. Its called " 5 Little Ducks ". But before we played this piece, teacher Marcia went thru " Here We Go Round The Tent ", homework for last week. " 5 Little Ducks " wld also the homework for 21 Nov. There will be no lessons on 14 Nov as its the school's SMART recital.

We also did another topic & had some hands on. Teacher Marcia gave Rachel some magnets & a magnetic staff board with both treble clef & bass clef. Rachel got to show teacher Marcia all the following notes with their correct placing on the staff. For treble clef: C D E F G A B C. And for bass clef: C B A G F E D C.

The last 3 notes of each clef were 3 new notes that Rachel learned today. This took Rachel quite some time as she has yet to know & memorize which note comes first & goes onto Line or Space. She knows C D E F G for sure on the treble clef but was unable to place them correctly on the staff. Funny. When it comes to flashcard training/memory, she cld easily loud out the note but when it comes to doing hands on herself, she gets confused. More training needed here.

I went thru with Rachel last night on Lines & Spaces. I had to explain in my own words in order for Rachel to gain an idea. For the next few days, i will use the Jewel Note which i printed from another website to help Rachel understand better. She can also do the eye training whereby she can learn all the correct placing of all the notes.

After class, we went to Mac again & Rachel had me took all different facial expressions of her while eating her fries. Going to Macs seems to be a tradition as we always ended up there after classes.

Below are 2 videos which i took of Rachel playing 2 different pieces. You must be really really patient to watch & listen to the entire video as she is very slow in her fingering. She took 1min & 32 secs to play this 1st song, title: 5 Little Ducks.



" 5 Little Ducks " @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvJ4GkKLG90



" Here We Go Round The Tent " @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks7FpaiziMI
For this song, she took 56 secs.