Music For You

 Your Practice Notebook is to help your create goals within your practice sessions 1. Keep your music books and your notebook in an organized manner near the piano. Keep a pencil and eraser nearby. 2. Go over the blog post about the notebook images with your child if they are learning, or read for yourself if you are the student.  3. Notice the blank table labelled Scales/Arpeggios. The aim is to fill this in with the major and minor scales/arpeggios and exercises that you have acquired skills in. These are used as warm-ups for each practice session. 4. You will see a grid containing five items to practice and the days of the week for you to tick or sign if you have a child learning piano. This is your tracker. You can also enter the minutes you have practiced into the student portal on the My Music Staff App.  For adults, this grid is where you write your goals for the piece, tips and pointers to improve the piece. Items to practice Scales/Arpeggios - these are your war...

  Great Australian Music educators  who have inspired me in some way and contribute to piano pedagogy: Max Cooke https://www.teamofpianists.com.au/partners/max-cooke Jocelyn Kotchie https://jocelynkotchie.com/ Elyssa Milne https://elissamilne.wordpress.com/ Tim Topham https://timtopham.com/ Carly MacDonald https://creativepianoprofessional.com/who-is-creative-piano-professional/ and many others Australian Music Examination Board https://www.ameb.edu.au/

 1.   T he first Image shown on the notebook, is very hard to miss- being on the front cover.  This shows the placement of the C's which are the keys we use to map out how the alphabet is situated on the keys/piano.  Note: Middle C looks different but is actually the same key. The bottom Middle C is using the left hand and the top Middle C is using the right hand. Read here:  Why we use C in the beginning . 2.  The next image in the Notebook is the Landmark Notes Here is a good explanation of why we use landmark notes The Landmark System  I seek to use a variety of ways to help students to memorize the relative of the keys and written notes. The sooner we memorize these correlations, we build a map of sound which is able to be connected to the written score.  By understanding and internalizing this 'internal map' of the keys and sounds, we are able to anticipate the patterns of notes on the page quick enough to turn them into music! There are...