Piano Recital

The girls put together a private piano recital. We invited their grandparents to watch and listen via Zoom.

This recital was a nice way to mark the progress they have been making.

Now we are making some adjustments to their piano schedule, so they can continue to progress:

We're increasing the amount of time they each spend with their teacher. 

Thus far, they have been sharing one hour once a week with the teacher, because our budget is limited. We are able to increase that to three thirty minute sessions. So they will each be with their teacher thirty minutes a week. While I see the value of time spent with the teacher and realize they could use even more time with their teacher, we are doing what we can.

I am making them each practice ten minutes more everyday. 

So their practice time has increased from thirty to forty minutes daily. Note: Adele, who is just beginning and only eight, went from ten minutes to twenty.  (We usually end up skipping one day of practice a week for various reasons.)

We're not doing piano lessons so anyone will become famous. We're just stewarding God's gift of music.

Several encouraging ways I have seen (and heard) how piano lessons are changing my daughters' lives:

They don't like pop music anymore. They complain when they hear it, ask me to turn it off, call it "noise," etc. (If nothing else comes from piano lessons, this makes the money and time spent on lessons worth it, so far as I am concerned. Not that I hate all pop songs, but a lot of them are noisy and filled with trashy, base ideas represented in their lyrics.  So this development shows me hard, fast proof that the lessons are shaping their musical aesthetic. I love that!)

They choose to listen to more and more Classical music on their own, requesting more and more Classical music on Alexa, etc.

They can sing in tune.

They sing together now while they play or work.

They simply sing more often.

They have started composing their own simple tunes.

They have started recognizing the notes or chords in songs they hear and figuring out the music for songs they don't have sheet music for.

They are learning the chords on the ukulele.

They have stared recognizing themes in Classical songs that are similar to themes in other songs.

I'm really grateful for what is happening in our home though piano lessons. It was several years ago now that we started dreaming, planning, and working towards the goal of brining more music into our lives. Back then, we didn't even have a piano!  God is faithful.