Get Unstuck 1 – Earliest hands-together music

Description

This collection of 16 short pieces is ideal for children or adults in the early stages of learning to read and play music for two hands together.

When a young learner has mastered keyboard geography, and has learnt to read a limited number of pitches from traditional notation in a middle C position, then played lots of tunes with each hand separately then some with the melody shared between the hands with only one playing at a time, the next stage is playing hands-together! This is often a major challenge and often needs much reinforcement and embedding. As a teacher of many years experience I find this is where students get stuck, and disheartened as their method book seeks to make them run before they can walk and jumps ahead to the next technique or a new key, a different hand position, more difficult rhythms or articulations. Learners can end up stuck on a piece for weeks on end, never quite mastering it before moving on to the next.

This collection of music is ideal at this stage, they could switch to it until they have completed all 16 pieces, or use them to supplement their method book. It will help develop and embed the coordination skills that they needs when starting to play hands-together music, and will expand their repertoire with beautiful and contrasting pieces. It sticks with middle C position until the very end when the right hand moved to thumb on D for the final two. All pieces are in 3/4 or 4/4 time. Only basic note values of crotchet, minim, dotted minim and semibreve are used. Pieces employ balanced phrasing and much repetition so that melodies are catchy and easily digestible.

Time and time again, I have found these pieces are what my students need to Get Unstuck!

Teenagers and adults might reach this stage a little quicker than young learners but can still encounter the same issues with progress if they haven’t spent long on developing basic coordination and hands-together reading skills. Older learners may also find that Get Unstuck 1 is a useful collection of sight-reading exercises.

This product is provided as a digital download for you to print at home or use directly on your device.