Monthly Archives: January 2014

Issue 120: Welcome to The Jungle

  And I’ve managed to get this week’s posts up for The Jungle! Here we go – ideas for helping violinists to play in tune, or pianists to work out which finger is which, a weird and wonderful way of … Continue reading

Posted in The Jungle | Leave a comment

Issue 120: Stickers for a young violinist

  Tonight I was running through the piano accompaniments for a young (and very tired) violinist preparing for Grade 3. One piece has a couple of Grade 1 standard A major and D major arpeggios, and she was consistently playing them … Continue reading

Posted in Lessons that might have happened, Piano, Practising | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Issue 120: Ten Seconds of Stillness

  Here’s another weird thing that is working well at the moment; challenging an extremely chatty, fidgety, distracted, noisy, class of year 3 and 4 children (aged 7 and 8 years old) to stand absolutely still for ten seconds. I didn’t … Continue reading

Posted in Class Teaching, The organised teacher | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Issue 120: Elephants and kangaroos – the tricky bits

No, nothing to do with “Carnival of the Animals”, but that’s probably why I chose these animals to teach some tricky moments in a Grade 2 piano piece. The problems started in bar 3 and continued into bar 4: In … Continue reading

Posted in Piano, The organised teacher | Tagged | Leave a comment

Issue 119: Welcome to The Jungle

  Good afternoon (it’s 5pm here as I type), or Good morning, or Good evening, wherever you are, whenever you are reading this. Posts on timbre this week; in a samba lesson and in a class music lesson. And another … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Issue 119: Timbre and Samba

  I took some time out of the samba lesson at one of my classes to discuss timbre. The samba instruments are all very different, apart from perhaps tamborim and repinique which both have a fairly hard “tak tak” sound. What … Continue reading

Posted in Class Teaching, Samba | Tagged | Leave a comment

Issue 119: La Volta

  The theme for this half term in one of my schools is “timbre”. So save my poor aching head from trying to remember too many lessons at too many schools with too many instruments, I’m kind of incorporating it … Continue reading

Posted in Class Teaching, Listening Music, Recorders | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Issue 119: Carnival of the Animals – Pianists

After the success of “Aquarium” in calming a “lively” Wider Opportunities Keyboard class last week, I was planning to play them “The Swan”. However, the children seemed much more settled, and I thought I would save “The Swan” for a … Continue reading

Posted in Class Teaching, Keyboards, Listening Music | Tagged | Leave a comment