To follow up on my post from last week about my last group class (we call them “Piano Parties”), I wanted to share about the other two activities we did.
We started with this fun triad worksheet from Pianimation.com. This worksheet was a good reinforcement about what they learned from playing their major five-finger patterns, and was a good preparation for playing the 12-Bar Blues as a duet (as described in the previously-mentioned post).
Before playing the 12-Bar Blues, though, I had them playing the Happy Birthday song as a duet. I created a simple arrangement of the melody in Finale, with the chord symbols included above the staff.
I assigned the younger student to play the melody as written in the treble range of the keyboard, and instructed the other student to create a simple accompaniment by reading the chord symbols.
This was an excellent exercise in learning how to listen to each other! 🙂
I found out later that two of my students played the Happy Birthday duet for an older sibling’s birthday, a couple days later. What good timing! I think it is great for students to be able to play basic tunes like the Happy Birthday song for their families.
I also wrote an easy arrangement of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” but we didn’t have time to use it that day. You can download both arrangements as free pdfs on the Printables > Sheet Music page.