Rock & Roll 101

April 14th, 2025

We did Seth's lesson on my grand piano this week, because my middle C broke upstairs.

I wrote out the first part of Dance Monkey and we worked on going over it with both hands for the whole lesson.

Note: I transposed it to Am to simplify it for him a bit.

April 7th, 2025

Seth had been working on left hand notes for The Final Countdown. He has been just using his thumb for these notes, which isn't ideal, but I didn't make a big deal out of it because I wanted him to feel like he's making some progress and having success.

He had been avoiding the second part left hand, so we took the lesson to focus just on that, taking it a few beats at a time, and memorizing it.

March 31st, 2025

March 24th, 2025

Seth did very well on the Final Countdown, and today we worked out the left hand, especially for the first section. We also did the second section, but with me playing the right hand, and him the left.

March 17th, 2025

Seth had the last 23 minutes of the hour today. He had memorized the first part of The Final Countdown, but hadn't worked on the second part,so we spent the lesson trying to break that down into manageable chunks, and to play with the correct fingers, so it flows as much as possible.

March 10th, 2025

March 3rd, 2025

Seth had memorized the Final Countdown, and played it through for me. We then wrote out the next part and worked through it a few times.

February 24th, 2025

Seth played through How Far I'll Go for me, and I added the next two lines for him to work on. We had extra time, so decided to add another song. We did the same song that his brother is learning, but just focused on the melody, and on trying to memorize it.

February 10th, 2025

We went through a few more pages of the music book up to the escalator. We then added "How Far I'll Go" from Moanna - just a simple version with a few notes.

February 3rd, 2025

We went over the Pig McDonald song, and then moved to the next page, the song about a shepherd: Shepherd Count Your Sheep.

We then reviewed Crazy Frog before running out of time.

January 27th, 2025

Seth wasn't feeling well today.

January 20th, 2025

We played through Crazy Frog and Star Wars and talked about maybe adding the left hand to that in the future.
He then showed me his counting of quarter, half, and whole notes from his book (the new page last week).
We then went through the next page, the song Old Pig-Donald Had a Song - worked on going through it a few times.

January 13th, 2025

Seth did well on Crazy Frog, he's memorized it nearly perfectly.

After playing it through we went back to the book of notes, and reviewed the songs he's been working on. He could keep working on Mary's Pets, so that I can join him with teacher's part.

We then moved on in the book, and learned whole notes, quarter notes, and half notes, and played through the train rhythms for a little bit.

January 6th, 2025

We did the memory copy game for Crazy Frog and Seth did very well. He managed to get through the whole song by memory!
After that, we went through the book with the sheet music in it, and worked on Mary's Pets (or whatever it was called)

December 30th, 2024

Caleb and Seth aren't coming today.

December 23rd, 2024

We moved into the next section of his notation book, learning about the bass clef and treble clef. We did the next song on the following page, and then worked on Crazy Frog. I encouraged him to memorize it and to keep the right beat to the melody as he plays through it.

December 16th, 2024

Seth brought in a new music book this week, and we looked at the first page, and I showed him through the second page too. It's a completely different approach but it may be helpful to him.

After going through that song, we reviewed Crazy Frog.

December 9th, 2024

December 2nd, 2024

Seth has difficulty wanting to ask for help, so hadn't been working on the Star Wars theme, or both hands. We went through it once, to go over the mistakes, and then decided to add a new song. We added Axel F, (otherwise known to kids as Crazy Frog).

November 25th, 2024

Seth didn't have the chords down fast enough to play for his brother's song today, so I suggested he practise them more this week.

Then we went back to Happy Birthday and played through the first line of it for the whole lesson. He seems to have a hard time committing things to memory, so I tried to get him to play it in little pieces, or with his eyes closed, to help him focus on memorization. I think he just needs to be more diligent in practising.

Ryan mentioned he's having fun playing at home, so maybe at this stage we should lower expectations and encourage him to have fun. I would appreciate your input in this regard. :)

November 18th, 2024

Seth started off the lesson by playing some keyboard for Caleb's song... he'd been working on the verse chords this week (and will learn the chorus chords for next week).

After that, we went back to the piano, and played through his songs with both hands. I wrote out both hands for Happy Birthday.

November 4th, 2024

Seth did well today. We went through his songs, first Mary Had a Little Lamb, and I encouraged him to play with both hands... I think he may be avoiding that a bit?

Anyway, after that we went through the others, ending with Star Wars. I asked him to rate himself, to encourage him to try to up his score! :)

Last, we learned three chords which are in Caleb's song, in case he wants to try playing keyboards in that recording.

October 28th, 2024

Seth finished up the melody line of Star Wars today, and we added the left hand for the first line.

He's been able to memorize the whole song so far, which is great!

October 21st, 2024

Seth has felt a little intimidated with two hands, so we went over one hand for most of the lesson. I wrote out the next part of Star Wars for him, and helped him through it.

At the end, we revisited Mary Had a Little Lamb, and I had him try to memorize the notes to play in the left hand, and then play them while I played the melody. Bit by bit we reintroduced both hands.

October 7th, 2024

Added left hand to Mary Had a Little Lamb, Down by the Bay, and added the song Star Wars. Next week we'll put left hand to Happy Birthday.

I'm not sure why is says $5 owing, sorry- something weird in the transfer of money from Levi's account maybe?

September 30th, 2024

Seth didn't have his book but he had a photo from the phone of the music, and played it through for me. I then wrote it out again for him added the next part.
After that we started adding some single left hand notes to go along with the melody.

He got tired of that after a while, so I showed him how to play two note harmonies, and we did that for the rest of the lesson.

September 23rd, 2024

Seth came in Levi's spot again.

We went through Happy Birthday. He'd been having some challenges with it, so I helped him practise, starting first at the end, and going over it a number of times until he felt more comfortable, and then adding parts bit by bit.

We also added "Down by the Bay," but just the first line. As he gets better at it, we'll add more.

September 16th, 2024

Today Seth came in Levi's spot again, and at least for now we'll let them share the account until something more permanent happens.

I wrote out last week's notes in his new book, while he played it through for me. Mostly it was memorized, and he didn't know the last few notes at all. I had him focus on them especially, and then he played it again a few times from the book where I rewrote it.

We added Happy Birthday after that, and this is where it became evident that he still struggles with his letters. He mixes up his b and d, and isn't certain of which letter comes before which letter in the alphabet. It would be helpful for him to review these and do drills finding note names on the keyboard.

September 9th, 2024

Today Seth came in Levi's spot. (I'm not certain if this is a regular occurrence or just this time).
We learned about the keys on the keyboard today, and I wrote out Mary Had a Little Lamb on a piece of paper for him to work on this week.
I started out trying to help him learn the names of the keys using the alphabet, but he was having a challenge understanding it, so I switched to the animal names method and I think that helped a little bit.
We used:
Ants, Bird, Cat, Dog, Elephant, Flowers, Grandma