Purple Magic #10

 

NEED TO KNOW

Purple Magic #10: Your Purple Magic students are doing so great! We did some pretty intense playing this week that they can solidify at home. 

TWO HANDED SCALE: We officially played a Bug Scale with both hands at the same time! This is tricky because the hands have to pop at different times! We went super slow and one note at a time. It helps to remember that finger #3 on both hands play E at the same time, then later in the scale, fingers #3 play A at the same time. Know that most of your students will still need lots of help on this. But they had a great start and I'm excited for them to develop this skill because it's HARD and they are doing SO GOOD! It will take time for this to feel natural for them. It's okay! They absolutely understand the concept and are just needing time to physically achieve it. Here is a clip from Purple #10 of the online lessons going over this concept.

SONG OF JOY: We looked at Part III of this ensemble piece. It's mostly bass clef spaces! There is one fun part on the second line of the second page where the left hand gets to do a triangle dance! Here is a video of how that goes.

SHOWTIME: We did the Halloween Night showtime and they rocked it! C minor cadences never sounded so good!

GOOD TO KNOW

TWINKLE TWINKLE: This familiar childhood song is a great way to learn about theme and variation. You can still hear the main theme in each of the variations, it's just sort of in disguise in different ways each time, kind of like a Halloween costume! As we continue to study this song throughout the semester we will discover that the main melody is in our ABA form. We also get to use an extended C position!

FUN TO KNOW

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is a very well-known children's song. It combines the French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman" with an English poem "The Star," by Jane Taylor. The melody is also used in "Baa-Baa Black Sheep" and the "ABC Song." It is often taught that Mozart was the original writer of the melody, but that isn't correct despite Mozart being the "correct answer" in the original edition of Trivial Pursuit and other trivia places. He DID take the classic melody and wrote 12 variations on it, linking his name to the theme for all time.