Piano Teacher

Austin has been teaching his brothers how to play the piano. Austin doesn't actually read music, himself. He plays by ear. He can, however, identify notes on the keyboard. He's a bit puzzled as to why  the notes are described in terms of octaves, since there are only 7 notes. He seemed to accept the explanation that the octave needs to include the note at the beginning and the end, which means, for instance, A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A (8 notes).

To teach Aaron how to play American Jesus, by Bad Religion, Austin applied strips of masking tape to  about 15 keys, and coloured them. He told Aaron to play by colour, and Aaron was able to play the basic melody after only about 30 minutes.

Yesterday, Austin added letters to the coloured tape strips, and this is helping Aidan to learn the notes. Aidan is learning to play the violin and to read music. Fortunately, the violin is also a C instrument, so the notes in his violin music, match the piano keys.

This morning, Aidan was playing a Star Wars song, Battle of the Heroes. Austin has written the letter-notes for Ode to Joy, so Aidan plays this as well. Austin can play Beverly Hills Cop, Requiem for a Dream, and the Davy Jones Song from memory (he learned these in his piano lessons three years ago).

It's particularly fun when the boys have both instruments playing at once (Aidan on the violin and Austin on the keyboard).