The Bare Necessities...

...or Piano Basics for the Recalcitrant Preteen

Okay, so Lizzy’s piano teacher (shout out to Michelle C at 4/4 Music) is awesome. She’s written her own beginning piano books, teaches piano and voice, and is an all-around Patient Human Being.

Which you have to be when teaching Lizzy.

Don't get me wrong; Lizzy is a great kid. She is kind, generous, empathetic, and super smart. She's also adolescent, know-it-all, lazy, and often puts the ass is Asperger's (though these days it's called Autism Spectrum Disorder Level One: Minimal Support Required, because Hans Asperger was a Nazi).

Some of her issues with piano are related to autism - like her inability to cope with the fact that 6/8 and 3/4 are not the same thing in music notation as they are in math - and some (probably most) are just Being Almost Twelve and Snarky With It. She has also recently had the Growth Spurt That Ate Seattle - a whole new wardrobe including shoes and all in the last three months (thanks, Kirkland Grandparents, for helping with that!)

These are not excuses for her lazy attitude toward practicing, but they are likely contributing factors; they certainly were for me at her age. She gets bored with songs she doesn't already know, and doesn't seem to grok the need for exercises like etudes or "baby songs" as building blocks (she does seem to grok scales, arpeggios, and chords as building blocks, but that's a different post, I suspect. Or maybe a paper for a pediatric neuropsychologist).

In any case, she's willing enough to do her scales and all that, but she seems to dislike most songs she doesn't know, and I was getting frustrated. She doesn't have a lesson next week as her teacher will be out, or the week following because it's her twelfth birthday and I can't see her being able to cope with the first day of middle school, her birthday, dinner, and a music lesson in the same day. We use her makeup days for Abby's voice lessons over and above the ones her dad bought her for her birthday (whenever we can squeeze them in) so there's no loss there.

So I was discussing with Awesome Teacher Michelle C, and she said that there are in fact beginner books for piano for Disney or anime, or current pop songs, whatever Lizzy might be interested in. And I thought, hey, her is birthday coming up, and her Amazon wishlist needs more updating in addition to what we did this afternoon, so...

So, any ideas, Internet Hive Mind? Aside from Goodnight My Someone, I suspect, (if it's in a manageable key) because I know that one is a beginning piano song... it's right there in the play... any particularly good (easy/beginner; she knows three major keys as of yet) piano books in the animation, current pop, or musical theater categories?