Theory Testing is This Saturday!

A couple months ago, Mrs. Clark said that Hannah and I should do theory testing given by the Lynden Teachers Association. After showing us all the different things we have to do, Hannah and I decided that it would be very beneficial if we want to be piano teachers to learn some more theory.


These are all the different things we have to do:

We have to learn two songs of contrasting styles, one memorized. I'm playing Daydreaming by Timothy Brown (a romantic piece) and Musette in D major by Johann Sebastian Bach (a baroque piece). We have to give a verbal description of the memorized piece (i.e. tempo, mood, dynamics, etc.)

We have to prepare six scales (two white key major, two black key major, and two minor played both natural and harmonic). I'm going to play A major, E major, A flat major, E flat major, A minor, and E minor. (I choose A because A is the only letter in the music scale that is in my name and E because it is the dominate note in the A major scale.) We have to do the primary triad inversions, chord progressions, and a whole bunch of other stuff that has escaped my mind at the present moment.

A few other things we have to do are rhythm and pulse development, sight-playing, a lot of different things to do with counting, the order of sharps and flats, the major key signatures, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

The only one thing I not too excited about is the listening. The teacher will play a piece on the piano and we have to say whether it's in 3/4 or 4/4 time and if it's a major or minor key. We also have to listen, while turned away from the piano, while the teacher plays different intervals, and be able to say if they are 2nds, 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, 7ths, or 8ths.

Well, all of the agony, stress, and pain of this theory testing will be over Saturday night, so if you run into me the days prevailing the test, don't think anything of it if I seem to be otherwise engaged.:-)

~Susi