TEACHING TIPS - 'Prelude in Db Major' by Catherine Rollin

This Stately and Lyrical Piece by contemporary composer Catherine Rollin is an excellent Intermediate Piece to work with students.

Students are Challenged on many levels, and as they work through the piece, they come out as finer musicians.

This Piece is presently a part of LCM's Grade 4 Repertoire List.

It took me about 6 months to Prep these students (they had done their Grade 3 in August 2022), and I only started doing material from the Grade 4 Book about two weeks back.

PREP WORK

1) CHORD THEORY: Students took the time to Learn and Play the Primary Triads (I, IV and V) of 12 Major and Harmonic minor Keys. The activities were centered around recalling a Key and its Primary Triads quickly

2) CHORD INVERSIONS : Intentionally study and recall quickly the 3 Inversions of the 12 Major and minor Triads.

3) CHORD PROGRESSIONS : Students learnt play different 4-Bar Chord Progressions in a specified Major or minor Key on the Spot.

4) TRANSPOSE : Students practiced Transposing pieces that they learnt in previous Grades into other Keys. For eg, Dancers of Taranto (in A minor), was also learnt to be played in E min, DP min, F min, C min and G min

5) CONTEMPORARY PIECES : Students learnt pieces that was constructed using Broken Triads with Melody on the Top Note (eg Soaring by Joyce Grill, and Starry Night by Catherine Rollin)

As mentioned earlier, the above Prep Work Activities took about 6 months to do, and we started with the Grade 4 Book work about 2 Weeks ago.

In 2 weeks, we managed to get a lot of work done, such as:

(A) - 2 Octave Scales - E Maj, B Maj, Bb Maj, Eb Maj, Ab Maj, Db Maj... I have asked them to only do Hands Separate so far

(B) - Analyzed the Chord Names, Progressions and Inversions used in the first 8 Bars of 'Prelude in Db Major' by Catherine Rollin which is part of their Grade 4 List B

(C) - Played these Bars in keys other than Db Major (such as C Maj, G Maj, D Maj)

(E) - Practice the first 8 Bars in Blocked and Broken arrangement so that their fingers know exactly what needs to be done.

I can easily say all of the above work wouldn't have been possible in a Group Class of three students (of varying skill sets and interest levels) in 2 weeks if I wouldn't have taken the time to Prep them.

A good way to know what and how to prep would be to List down the Skills required with the 'Framework of Checklists' for each Grade by carefully parsing through the Syllabus.

It takes time and effort to do, but once done, it is easy to sequence and execute