The Chronicles of a Piano Teacher

  

Today Khloe is going to learn Allegro by Thomas Attwood. This piece is her first, out of four pieces that are required for her to take ABRSM Grade 2 exam. Why did she choose this piece? She likes it! Even though her fingers weren't accustomed to the arpeggios in the piece. I solved this problem by adding arpeggios to her daily warm-up and asking her to play the arpeggios repeatedly during lessons. 

 The objective for today's lesson was to play the first system with both hands. Her target was to be able to coordinate both hands while playing a simple melody over those athletic arpeggios on the left.



After warming up with scales, I asked her to play the arpeggios in the left hand with a slow tempo several times. Khloe has struggled with these arpeggios in previous lessons until today; it felt good to hear her executing the arpeggios quite smoothly. However, she played 'F' sharp instead of 'G' for the second beamed eight notes. 

To inject momentum into the lesson, I asked her brother to play the right hand (RH) while she played the left hand (LH). Khloe took the initiative to establish the pulse by counting 3 2 1 before they started- it was messy. The second attempt was equally clumsy until I reminded them to observe the anacrusis in the piece- I was expecting them to see it by themselves.

 

Subsequent attempts sounded better as the notes fell into the proper place. After about five (5) attempts, they flipped roles so that Kieth played the LH and Khloe played the RH. 

Khloe confidently assisted Kieth to play the left hand by mentioning the notes. After three failed attempts, Kieth finally managed to play the LH arpeggios steadily. The moment came for Khloe put it all together. She played with some level of difficulty but I know she will get better at it over time.

 

The next lesson will take place on Friday where we will tackle the 2nd system head-on.

 

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