M started Meadow Minuet in today’s lesson. Oddly, given how much she’s been listening to this song (it repeats 10 times on the CD she listens to at bedtime, rest time, and usually in the morning), M thought that there were four bass notes instead of two at the end of each snippet of melody. Other than that, she picked it up easily. We’re supposed to learn the melody only for now, in 8-bar sections.
For both Meadow Minuet and With Steady Hands, her studio teacher emphasized letting the melody dominate over the bass line. We need to work on this.
As for exercises, M and her teacher played the “open A” scale (the foundation for Meadow Minuet) three ways, alternating i-m: sounding each note 4 times, 3 times, and 2 times.
With respect to technique, M needs to open up her right hand to get a fatter tone.
Finally, I mentioned that I had been asking M to play the A scale with i-m-a triplets, just to give her a finger some work, and her teacher recommended instead playing Perpetual Motion with a-m or m-a alternating, rather than i-m, as a better way to get the a finger involved.