New Video and a Free Halloween Piece

There's a new video up on my YouTube channel! This one is an explainer on how to read intervals quickly. I'm big on intervallic reading with my students, and in this video, you'll hear how I teach them to move past the stage of counting lines and spaces when identifying intervals by number, and how I apply what they learn from flashcards (or apps) to actually reading the intervals quickly in their pieces. I share these videos with my students as resources for extra help during their practice time at home between lessons. I hope you'll want to share them as well! 

I'm still new to this whole YouTube business, and these videos are learning experiences for me. I discovered in this one how to use Zoom as a screen recorder! Very helpful! I also learned that my laptop camera results in the aspect ratio being off on YouTube, so I look slightly too tall in this video, and I need to angle my lighting better. I'm not as tired as I look! I'm not going to bother re-doing it right now. I literally finished editing this one while in a hotel room waiting on my high school senior daughter to take the ACT at a location 2 hours away from home. Covid reality. I have many other explainer videos planned and want to move on. I'll get better as I go! 

I hope you'll consider subscribing to my channel. If you have suggestions for topics, let me know in the comments.

If you like using apps for drilling intervals, I'm enjoying using Note Quest. This appears to be available for iphone/ipad only. Please correct me if I'm wrong. It's hard to find an app for interval recognition that's kid-friendly and isn't primarily for ear-training, and this one is good. But, as I explain in my video, using flashcards and apps is a starter point - you've got to translate your good work on flashcards/apps to recognizing intervals quickly in the score. 

I'm almost too late sharing this with you, but here's a freebie Halloween piece for your students. I had intended to write several and upload them as a collection to SMP Press where I have a few other pieces for sale, but didn't get it done this year. (Click here to view my collection.) In my studio, I've moved from having a yearly Christmas recital to a yearly Fall recital where we play Halloween and Autumn pieces. Students can choose to wear costumes, and it saves me from trying to find a date amid all the other festivities for a Christmas recital. Keep this one in your files for next year! You can use it to focus on legato vs. staccato, shifting to a new LH position, playing flats, identifying half steps vs whole steps, creating dynamic contrast, and of course, reading intervals! Scroll down for the link to download a free copy of Halloween Night.

Halloween Night - Click here to download.