Foundation Songs
Playing songs at the correct tempo
One of my adult students is in a valley (or plateau) because even though she can do Alma Mater Blues very well super slowly, she is impatient with herself and she said “I will NEVER be able to play it as quickly as Neil Moore…
Fur Elise – Order and B section
Recital Question for Fur Elise (Level 9): Would you rather have the student just play one time in the beginning, or have it repeated like what it says in the music? It’s a lot of repeats to listen to. All the repeats is how it…
Lead Me to Light rhythm
Please help me with the rhythm of Lead Me to Light. I can’t feel it, and my most advanced group is ready to learn it next week. I’m getting it with counting, but I need to teach it playing-based. I sometimes will sing a lyric…
Church Song rhythm
I am preparing to teach Church Song for the second time. I’m finding it a little challenging for my student to get the rhythm right. I have just watched the teacher training video and noticed that Neil made no mention about the rhythm, but the…
Canon in D
Foundation 7 has Canon in D, but not the fast part? Do we add the fast part in Foundation 8/9? No. It would be an opportunity for a student who wanted to learn the rest to do so in Development Levels as an additional project.…
Order of teaching Fur Elise sections
Any reason why the C section of Fur Elise is learned before the B section? Is the B section really more difficult? The third part (Level 7) is more pattern-based. The fourth (Level 9), which is technically the third, is a little more complicated. The…
Fragmenting and Positioning
Can somebody tell me where I can read more on “fragmenting and positioning”. I tell my students it’s dividing the piece in small sections and that the position of the fingers help remember the sequence. But the fact that it is written in big letters…
Teaching Fur Elise to a group
Are there any guidelines for teaching Fur Elise to a group? Neil Moore teaches it on the training videos right at the piano. I’m not sure how to transfer this for a group. This is for the very first portion from Foundation 1. I usually…
Teaching Canon in D
Does anyone else struggle teaching Canon in D? I feel like we’ve done “all the right things”, and yet it still seems SO hard for some of my students. Neil talks about several possible playing-based strategies throughout the TTMs for Canon. I use them all,…
Halloween song idea
I started teaching the Dm variation of Dreams Come True and it ended up perfectly timed for Halloween. Many students renamed it “Spooky Dreams” or “Nightmares”. The end result was that I added the very beginning of Bach’s Toccata in Dm as an “intro”. Very…