Piano

Months and months ago Joe put masking tape on the keys of our keyboard and wrote out the letters for "Twinkle Twinkle." It was a brilliant idea (hey, why have a 18 year old keyboard if you can't put tape on it?) but Nicholas wasn't really up for sticking with it and instead just hit whichever keys he wanted when "playing the piano." This weekend, however, I noticed that he was carefully putting music up and using his finger to "follow along" in the music while playing.

Now, what he played bore no relationship to what the notes were, but since he wanted to play the music, I decided to give it a try. I have an old book of Lion King music from middle school (when I bought the keyboard he is playing, by the way) that I remembered had the letters written inside the notes. And Nicholas loves Lion King, so perfect! So I got that out and showed him the correlation.  He thought that was pretty cool and went at it. 

He ran into some problems, though, because he only had labels on one octave.  So I put additional pieces of tape on and explained which ones were the high ones and which were the low.  And he got it!  He carefully chooses which C, D, and E to use based on the music.  (He then was very upset because there is one song that has a high A and our keyboard doesn't go that high.)  We then had to deal with flats because this book labels them at each note rather than just at the beginning of the line.  Nicholas can find the correct key for the flats, but if you ask him, it isn't a flat, it tells you to go "below" the letter.  Hey, it was the best way I could think of to explain why the note had what looked like a letter "b" next to it!  He wasn't playing any songs with sharps, so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

And so here is a video of Nicholas playing the piano.  It doesn't sound like much since he has no rhythm, but he is playing the correct notes.  My favorite part, however, is that he switches from saying the name of the note to using its phonics sound.  You can tell what mode we've been in this house recently.

From 2013 February

If the video won't play, click the 2013 February link above and select the image of him at the piano.