Am I alone in thinking that students aren't playing enough? In the beginning there is so much to learn, and reading music is hard. How does one get those students playing- the physical act of moving fingers to activate keys and produce sound.
Being completely reliant on reading means that students often don't have much to actually play those first few months of lessons.
However. . . in my experiments of using the cards and playing around the circle, my current crop of students is developing at an interesting rate. I've been teaching 30+ years (I know, I'm too young to be talking about 30 years ago things, sigh) and am excited that there are new things to discover.
Last week I wrote about 3 note scales, this week it's expanded.
The following video demonstrates going around the circle in both major and minor 3 note scales with the following benefits:
Improved keyboard geography
Improved fine motor skills
Ear training
Plus any of the around the circle exercises get students playing on those weeks they didn't practice.
You can always download circles of 5ths here on the blog.
The cards from the video are:
The Key name card, which I discovered this week is great to help beginning students with online lessons
5 note scale cards which I found were not necessary for some, but extremely helpful for others
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