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Aoife Pixley
Past Notes
January 24th, 2020
I guess Aoife is not coming in today (or she forgot? I've asked her teacher to send her down when she sees her).
Oops, she came five minutes late (hope I didn't worry you!) - she was crying and said she missed her dad, and I helped calm her down - asking about him, what he was working on in Toronto, what he looked like, etc...
When she was ready we continued with going through the Annie song, then played through Paw Patrol again.
Her chords for Paw Patrol are way too slow, and she said she only practiced the first few notes of the melody.
January 17th, 2020
The notebook is awesome! I should see if I can get these in bulk and just hand them out to my students!
Great job writing in the stuff from the past. We went over Paw Patrol a few times trying to get her faster at switching chords and playing both hands together.
In the last 5 or 6 minutes we reviewed the Annie Song together. (Your note writing is so clean and neat!)
I asked her to get Paw Patrol up to the speed one would sing it, and we'll add a few more lines to it each week. The Annie song we can do in the background, if that's okay with you.
Oh - here's the video from last week - I can't remember if I shared it with you already:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRgSW-HxXhE&ab_channel=RockAndRoll101
January 10th, 2020
Aoife played through her last song for me, and then said she'd like to learn Paw Patrol next, a song her sister really loves.
I wrote out the lyrics and melody rhythm for you on the sheet music, and also the notes and chords in Aoife's booklet.
We went through just the first line for now, separating hands and learning the melody, then the chords, and finally putting it together.
I recorded a short video of her playing it in case it helps. It's uploading now, I'll try to remember to send the link to you when it's done (I'm set it to unlisted, so only you will have access to it.
We'll work through this song a line at a time.
Happy New Year!
December 20th, 2019
Today we worked hard on just the melody of Rudolph, breaking it down into little segments, and going over and over it again until the rhythm was the same way one might sing it, and so Aoife was less likely to hesitate over a note.
Once the phrasing was nearly perfect, we moved on to the exact replica of that part, practicing the parts that are similar to each other (the first and third lines are identical, for example, as is near the bottom (All of the reindeer loved him).
ONce we had done this for the whole song, we played it through again from the top to bottom.
We didn't have time to work on anything else this week.
Merry Christmas! God bless you.
December 13th, 2019
Aoife did a good job today. She is really a sweetie.
We reviewed Jingle Bells, but we didn't really go over Silent Night, since she said she had been playing it from her book at home (which is completely fine - we just have to figure this all out. :)
She wanted to learn Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer next, so I wrote it out for her in C with chords - although we didn't have time to go over the chords at all.
She has some trouble differentiating between b and d, so (I hope you don't mind), I drew a little Bumble Bee on her right hand in the hopes that this might help.
We went over the melody twice before running out of time. I wrote little finger numbers above the note names to assist her in positioning.
December 6th, 2019
Hi Ashley,
I'm a little frustrated that Aoife had sheet music for Silent Night today, and that you are pushing her to learn sheet music from the outset.
It's not going to work to have me continue teaching Aoife, as it seems you have an agenda to teach her your way, rather than allowing me to teach her my way.
I completely understand that, as you are a piano player, and a teacher, and she is your daughter. You have every right, obviously, to request she be taught in a certain manner, however this doesn't work for me, so perhaps it's best that we part ways as far as Aoife is concerned.
If I've misunderstood, and you'd like me to reconsider, please let me know.
Thanks Ashley.
November 22nd, 2019
Aoife forgot her book, so she played through by memory, first Jingle Bells, and then we did the scale in C, first left hand, then right hand, then both.
We then learned to do the chromatic scale, with thumbs, middle fingers, and first fingers on the white notes that don't have black notes between them.
I wrote out Silent Night in F, and tried to indicate the rhythm as you asked for last time - hopefully this helps you as you work with Aoife this week.
She played the right hand through first (and we talked about flats, and how to find a Bb). Then I played the right hand and she played the chords. This was her first introduction to the Bb chord; I wrote out the notes, Bb, D and F for the chord on her sheet.
She's doing really well! A pleasure to teach!
November 15th, 2019
Aoife is on a field trip today.
November 8th, 2019
Aoife did very well today! We started with going through the Jingle Bells song, and she read the note values very well! I'll try to use those more in the future - I like to save reading for a little further down the road, after some of the other obstacles like coordination are resolved. But since it's important to you, we can introduce it earlier.
Then we went to the Love Tonight song, and she really did well. First I played the melody and she chorded, then she played the melody and we really focused on learning the melody. She got quite good at playing in time, and intuited the rhythms as well. Then I played the chords along with her, and finally she played with both hands.
She forgets to switch unless I remind her by counting time with my foot and saying "switch" right before the beat.
Amazing, Aoife!
October 25th, 2019
Aoife had a list of songs this week, so we started out learning the intro for the Lion King song, Can You Hear the Love Tonight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTtgVSxfr5M
I moved the key to "C" to make it easier to appropriate some of the new ideas we're learning.
She still seems to struggle a bit with switching timely to the new chords, so I'm not sure if it's not being fully comfortable with the note names, or just being deliberate... but if we can work on getting quick access to the notes and chords it will help a lot.
We also did the first couple of lines of the verse before running out of time.
October 18th, 2019
We reviewed the fingerings for scales, and practiced them twice. Aoife should continue to familiarize herself with these and speed them up.
We then reviewed Mary Had a Little Lamb. Getting faster, but still needs improvement switching between chords without pausing.
We then went over the Cminor, Eb, and Bb chords and fingerings. We did this a number of times and focused on playing the Bb especially, which she seemed to struggle with more than the others.
I asked her to write down her favourite songs to learn, and made a page for that to help her remember.
We then worked on Jingle Bells with both hands.
You've raised a very sweet girl.
October 11th, 2019
Aoife played through Mary Had a Little Lamb for me and did quite well - her stops between chords are getting shorter... still have a ways to go, but that's okay. I had her focus on that for a few times through before moving on today.
We went through the "magic scale," or "magic fingers" for C to help with future fingering. As I'm certain you know, that's when you tuck your thumb under so you don't run out of fingers going up and down the scale. We did it for both the left and right hands, as they're slightly different from each other.
We then talked about songs to learn. She couldn't think of any favourite songs, so I asked her to make a list. We then looked up a country song called "God's Country" by Blake Shelton. It's in Eb, (C minor), so we revisited what makes a minor chord (lowering the third) and played through the chords a dozen times or so before running out of time.
Aoife is a delight!
October 4th, 2019
Aoife started out with playing from the sheet music you provided for Mary Had a Little Lamb. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to play the chords in the correct places of the melody following this sheet, but I save reading for later stages in music learning anyway... I prefer to think of music as a language in which we learn to play/speak if first, and read/write it later.
We returned to the letter names and letter named-chords, and worked on playing it in time, without hesitating between the chord changes. I did this by breaking up the left hand and right hands, so she would play along with me on guitar using just the chords, and just the melody, and then both hands together.
Timing isn't so much of an issue as perhaps indecision, or fear of making a mistake maybe? The more we worked together, the better she got at playing it through without breaks, but this still needs work.
September 20th, 2019
Thanks for your notes in the margins! I usually don't focus on note time values in the beginning lessons, but more on getting right to making music, so sorry if you were expecting that. If you'd rather I teach her that from the outset, that's completely fine, just let me know.
Same with fingering - I typically save the fingering directions until we encounter it, but London Bridge is a great example of a hard decision between which fingers to use. Moving the pinky over for the 6th note is a good approach for now. :)
Today we talked about minors and majors, and I played a number of different major and minor chords, asking Aoife to choose which ones were "happy" and "sad," and then after a while, "major" and "minor." She did really well with this - she's got a great ear! She only made one mistake out of about 20 chords.
We learned the basic triad chord (tho I didn't call them that yet), and showed her C, Dminor, Eminor, F, G, and Aminor. I wrote out Mary Had a Little Lamb for both hands using capitals for major chords and lower case for melodies, and she played it through a few times.
Again, just let me know if you'd like a more traditional approach to learning music. I usually try to teach students to play first, and read second.
September 13th, 2019
We started out with learning the names of the piano keys, using the animal names, the doghouse and grandma's house.
We then tried out two simple melodies: Mary Had a Little Lamb and London Bridge.
We talked about proper hand position, and to use the right fingers for each key.
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