October 21, 2026 (5 of 8)

2026-2027 Events

  • October 17-18, 2026 — Group Classes

  • December 5-6, 2026 — Group Classes

  • January 24, 2027 — Performance Class & Guest Artist Workshop

  • February 27-28, 2027 — Group Classes

  • April 10-11, 2027 — Group Classes

  • May 22, 2027 — Student Final Recital

How to Practice

Use the Practice Guide below. It writes your practice down for you, no comments needed.

  • Tap the first assignment on your list.

  • The timer starts by itself. Read it and practice.

  • When you are finished, press Done. It saves your time and opens the next one.

  • Need to stop for a minute? Press Pause.

Lost? Press My Assignment List at the top to go back.

Log only what you actually did, on the day you did it. Five minutes is a real entry.

Some assignments finish. Those carry a Done for the Week button. Press it when the job is done and the assignment comes off your list.

Need the metronome, a recorder or the Section-Work colors? They are in Practice Tools. Tap one and it opens inside your assignment. Tap Close to put it away.

Log every practice session from today. Official tracking starts Monday, October 19, the Monday after our first group class. Logging now is how we get the kinks out.

🟩 on track · 🟨 needs extra attention · 🟪 didn't get to it at the lesson · 🟥 priority · ⬛️ on hold, don't practice this one · 🟧 mine, not yours

[PRACTICE TOOLS]

Technique

1. 🟨 Technical Requirements for Piano, Level 4 (RCM), E-flat major arpeggio, left hand

THIS WEEK: Same assignment. Clean up the two things from today.

  • Don't drop the wrist on the thumb.

  • The fingering at the top was wrong. Check it against the music.

  • Two octaves.

  • More time on the cross, so it joins up instead of breaking.

2. 🟨 Technical Requirements for Piano, Level 4 (RCM), G minor arpeggio, hands alone

THIS WEEK: New this week. G minor arpeggio, hands alone.

  • Two octaves.

  • Right hand first, then teach the left hand what the right one did.

  • Your left wrist and elbow wobble more than your right. Watch the right hand play it, then copy that.

  • Let go of the note on the way down instead of holding on through the cross.

3. 🟨 Technical Requirements for Piano, Level 4 (RCM), broken chords

THIS WEEK: Same assignment. Use your technical tools to make them clean.

  • All of them, not a selection.

  • C minor had a lot of small pauses in it today.

  • Pick the tool that fits the problem: close-loud, accent practice, rhythms, sprints. Any of them works on six notes or more in a row.

  • Be proactive. If something is hard during the week, use a tool on it without waiting to be told.

Theory

4. 🟨 Celebrate Theory, Level 5, Unit 2 (RCM)

THIS WEEK: Unit 2. Do as much as you can in the time.

⏱ Max 7 minutes per practice session.

  • There are a couple of pages left.

  • It is in Newzik. Print it out and put it in your binder.

Musicianship

5. 🟪 RCM Online Ear Training

THIS WEEK: Same assignment. Melody playbacks only.

⏱ Max 8 minutes per practice session.

Done for the week after 3 sessions.

  • We did not get to it. Same assignment.

  • You do not have to go as fast as the examiner plays. Right notes beat the right rhythm here.

  • When you hit a wrong note, pause, work out where it goes, then play it.

  • After the third session the button appears and the assignment comes off your list.

6. 🟩 Piano Adventures Sightreading Book, Level 3A (Faber)

THIS WEEK: Pages 74 to 80. One page a day.

Practice type: Learning.

  • Pages 68 to 74 are done.

  • You move on from a page when you can play it through with no mistakes: notes, rhythm and expression, all of it.

  • Press Done for the Week after page 80.

7. 🟪 Four Star Sight Reading and Ear Tests, Level 4 (Berlin and Markow)

THIS WEEK: Same assignment. Set 10, one day of the set per practice session.

  • We did not get to it. Same assignment.

  • Sets 8 and 9 are done.

  • 6/8 is compound meter. Two beats in the bar, three eighth notes inside each beat, three plus three.

  • Press Done for the Week when the set is done.

Repertoire

8. 🟩 Ballade in C minor, Op. 100 No. 15, from 25 Études faciles et progressives (Burgmüller), mm. 3-4

THIS WEEK: Close-loud in measures 3 and 4. No sprint practice this week.

RCM Level 4, Etude 1.

  • Left hand alone first, close-loud on each one.

  • Then add the right hand in soft chords. That coordination is the job.

  • The wrist popping forward is much better this week. Keep it.

  • Take more time before the fast notes so you can play them faster, cleaner and tidier.

  • If three in a row come out untidy, slow down, then speed back up.

  • The only thing missing now is the diminuendo in mm. 89 and 90.

9. 🟩 Minuet in D minor, BWV Anh. 132 (Anonymous)

THIS WEEK: Hands alone, slower. Every single quarter note stickier.

RCM Level 4, List A · from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.

Practice type: Review.

No faster than m.m. 66 per quarter note, hands alone.

  • Sticky, not staccato.

  • Slow and medium tempo is the best kind of review practice. Fast review is how a piece rusts away without you noticing.

  • It sounds like you are running through it. Slow it down.

  • The three gentle slow-downs are still there: end of m. 4 into m. 5, the first ending at mm. 5-8, and the first ending at m. 16.

10. 🟩 Masquerade, from Fancy-Free (Niamath)

THIS WEEK: Close-loud and accent practice on the ascending arpeggios, hands together.

RCM Level 4, Etude 2.

  • Hands together is what makes the accent practice tricky. That is the point.

  • The sound is uneven: some notes ghost, some sit above the others. Close-loud and accents are the tools for uneven sound, not the speed ones.

  • Start the arpeggios from the movement, without an accent on the first note.

  • Play the first four measures as if an examiner is listening.

11. 🟩 Sonatina in G major, Op. 36 No. 2, III. Allegro (Clementi)

THIS WEEK: Same sections. Set the metronome to the eighth note this time.

RCM Level 4, List B.

m.m. 152 per eighth note.

  • One click per measure was too hard to hold. Per eighth note will pull you back into the tempo instead.

  • Listen to the clicks first and internalize them before you play.

  • The upper note is the downbeat.

  • Your tempo is cleaner and you are not rushing as much. Keep going until the metronome stops pulling you back.

12. 🟩 Fröhlicher Landmann, von der Arbeit zurückkehrend (The Happy Farmer), Op. 68 No. 10 (Schumann)

THIS WEEK: Right hand alone and left hand alone, with a speed limit.

RCM Level 4, List C · from Album für die Jugend.

No faster than m.m. 66 per quarter note.

  • Hands apart as review keeps it solid in your ear. It means much less work in the couple of weeks before the exam.

  • Play it like you are showing someone how good the piece is. It is your favorite.

  • Happy face the whole way through.

13. 🟩 Joyous Etude (Bober), mm. 14-16

THIS WEEK: Measures 14, 15 and 16. The dynamics and the pedal markings in pencil.

RCM Level 5, Etude.

🎥 Joyous Etude, mm. 13-17 https://youtube.com/shorts/8DfFQK03W6s

  • I wrote the dynamics in. Follow what is on the page.

  • Start piano, then come up.

  • Hold the pedal for the first two beats only, not the whole measure.

  • The rhythm is much better.

  • Keep playing along with the video.

14. 🟩 Prelude, Op. 39 No. 19 (Kabalevsky)

THIS WEEK: Two to four measures at a time, with the metronome. Exaggerate everything.

RCM Level 5, Etude.

m.m. 46 per quarter note.

🎥 Prelude, Op. 39 No. 19 https://youtube.com/shorts/rSf4RxRNgJY

  • Exaggerate the dynamics, the articulation and the wrist movements. More than you think you should.

  • Your staccato is a little lazy. Come further up off the key than you need to; training the hand that way is what lets you keep it when the tempo goes up.

  • The crescendo is bigger than the page asks for. Do it anyway.

  • The whole point of the etude is the wrist: staccato against legato.

  • Fixing this at a faster tempo once it is in your muscle memory is painful. Get it all at the slow tempo first.

Setup

15. 🟧 Binder dividers

  • Dividers for your three ring binder. I am bringing them.

Level 4 Exam Program

Your program is in the practice guide, under Royal Conservatory of Music.

Exam session: November 28 to December 10.

Joyous Etude and the Kabalevsky Prelude are Level 5 etudes, so they stay out of the Level 4 program and out of that list.

When You First Sit Down

Close your eyes, put your hands across the keyboard, and feel your way from one end to the other. Two black keys, three black keys, two, three. Flatten your hand out so you can feel the groups instead of one key at a time.

Do that before you practice this week. It is how the keyboard gets into your hands as well as your eyes.

Review Pieces

Level 2

  • List A: Minuet in G Major, BWV Anh. 114, attr. Christian Petzold (1677-1733), from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach

  • List B: Sonatina in G Major, Anh. 5, No. 1, II. Romanze, attr. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

  • List C: Play by Béla Bartók (1881-1945), from Mikrokosmos

  • Etude 1: Prelude No. 4 in F Major by Elvina Pearce

  • Etude 2: L'Arabesque, Op. 100, No. 2, by Johann Friedrich Franz Burgmüller (1806-1874)

  • 💚Bird in the Bebop by Wynn-Anne Rossi (L. 2, Etude)

  • Etude in F Major, Op. 190, No. 27, by Christian Louis Heinrich Köhler (1820-1886) (L. 2, Etude)

  • 💚A Ditty of Yimeng Mountain (L. 2, C)

  • 💚Minuet in A Minor by Henry Purcell (1659-1695) (L. 2, A)

  • 💚Rhyme Time (L. 2, B)

Level 1 and Preparatory

  • 💚The Snake by Renée Christopher (L. 1, C)

  • 💚Andante in G Minor by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) (L. 1, A)

  • 💚Detectives by Christine Donkin (L. 1, Etude)

  • 💚💜Angelfish (L. 1, B)

  • 💚Celebration by Anne Crosby Gaudet (b. 1968) (L. 1, Etude)

  • 💜💚💚The Calico Cat by Helen Marlais (b. 1966) (Prep. B)

  • 💚💚💚Freddie the Frog by Anne Crosby Gaudet (b. 1968) (Prep. B)

  • 💚💚💚Allegro in C Major, Op. 1, No. 4, by Alexander Reinagle (1756-1809) (L. A)

  • 💚💚💚A Skating Waltz by Boris Berlin (1907-2001) (L. A)

  • 💚💚💚What's That Noise? by Martha Mier (b. 1936) (L. A)

Seasonal

  • 💚The First Noel, Traditional, arr. Edwin McLean

  • O Christmas Tree, Traditional

Step-by-Step Practice Flow

  • Record your section once — video is best, but audio is fine too.

  • Listen back with one color/goal in mind.

  • As you listen, mark your music using that color anywhere it needs improvement.

  • Repeat for each remaining color, one at a time, until all five have been addressed.

  • Choose a small “spot” section from your markings — just a few measures or a tricky passage.

  • “Spot” until it's solid — ✅ 3 times in a row correctly, or ✅ 5 total correct repetitions, then move on.

  • Focus on one or two colors at a time while practicing that spot.

  • Use the troubleshooting checklist below if you're stuck.

🔧 Troubleshooting Tips

🎯 If you've tried to fix something three times in a row and it's still not working, don't just repeat it — troubleshoot:

  • Do you need to slow down?

  • Should you practice hands alone?

  • Could you make the spot even smaller?

  • Would technical exercises help (staccato, accents, etc.)?

  • Do you need to think ahead more clearly?