Pamela, one of our summer students, recently had a friend over to visit. The friend was being too loud for Pamela’s taste, so she said, “We’re inside – you have to use your piano, not your forte!”
Solo, Duet, Trio, etc.
On some recent paperwork sent home, I had mentioned the word “ensemble”, and had several people confused. By definition an ensemble is “a group of soloists singing or playing together”, and I used the term rather than speaking of our “duets”, as duet implies two people and I realized that some students were in larger groups (ensembles) of three, four, and sometimes five or more players. Anyway . . . I thought about this while viewing the following chart and thought it might be a helpful definition of each grouping. But mostly, I’m posting it to humor myself. 🙂
More from Madeline . . .
Sight Reading
The following was shared with me by Madeline . . .
Music Bingo
Tonight during our Winter Makeup Class, we played Music Bingo. Each question was first posed to a student who would draw the answer on the whiteboard. A student was asked to draw a key signature with four sharps and to help them out with the first sharp, I asked the class, “If you only have one sharp in your key signature, what is it?” A quick witted student replies, “Lonely.”
Upbeats
I was reviewing a new concept with one of my students. “Can you explain to me what an upbeat is?” “Yes.” he says. “It’s the note that stands all alone.” “Ah . . ” I reply, “Like the cheese. The cheese stands alone, right?” His reply: “Well, not always. Sometimes there’s crackers.”
Calendar Comedy
In preparation for Piano Guild, coming up in a matter of a few short weeks, I was explaining the deadlines to one of my students. “Today is May 17”, I say. “You have to be memorized by Class on May 23. That’s just six days away. Then you have a lesson the following week on May 31. Then just three days after that . . .” My student interrupts me to say, “Yeah, that would be the 34th”. Actually….
