Two Week Plan

    My plan for the next two weeks is to launch off on learning how to read sheet music, which means I'm basically going to be going through a book [the one I'm using is called Progressive Class Piano, a book specifically directed at older beginners] and practicing the pieces specific to learning how to read music. It's kind of difficult to explain exactly what that means, but I'm basically just playing simple pieces with notes that are easy to recognize and then increasing the difficulty of the notes (?)
    I'm probably going to spend a whole month on just reading sheet music because I definitely need the practice. I guess I didn't mention in my last post that I would be taking lessons with Mary Ann Miller. She also teaches my little sister, so I kinda get to hang around her house a lot. Anyways, my lessons are every Monday at 5:30PM, so that'll be happening every week. In addition, I'll be practice for at least half an hour every single day [this is actually going to be monitored by my mom... boooo haha]. I actually haven't asked my mentor who'll help check up on me yet [YIKES], so I should probably get on that.  So Ms. Lord agreed to be my mentor, and we will be meeting every Monday as well, during 7th period. 

   As for research right now, I'll probably start reading my sources on music therapy. At the same time, I'll be starting to listen to music every night as I fall asleep :D

-last edit 02.13.11

Dear Reader

     It's incredible how music is such a big part of life nowadays. I don't think I've ever gone through a day without turning on the radio or dancing to my iPod. But that's music in the digital sense. There's a lot more to music than just what you find on iTunes.
    One of the first instruments I've ever really been instructed in was piano. I think I was about eight years old at the time, and I memorized the fingerings to Fur Elise from my Casio keyboard. Even though it seemed amazing at the time, it was a terrible way to start off piano. Why? Well, I ended up not being able to fully dedicate myself to learning how to read sheet music. I figured I could always just learn by memorization, so why worry about reading the scores? Haha... sucks for me now that I realize it's so much harder to re-memorize the things from before than to just re-read the music. So anyways, that's pretty much why I decided to dedicate my English project to piano, to learn how to read sheet music.
     I guess it's also more than that, if you want to take into consideration the fact that I'm aiming to learn some specific pieces and that I want to learn more about the correlation between a person's behaviors and their exposure to music.
    Have you ever heard people do a cover of a song where they both play it and sing it? I so want to do that! Well, at least the playing part. So that's why I'm certain that at least one of the pieces I will learn will be some modern song. I'll definitely learn classical pieces too, but I really want to be able to do a cover of a song at some point. And aside from that, I've been noticing how music helps calm me down slash it affects my mood a whole lot, especially when I'm stressed or upset or something. So I'm kinda investigating how music correlates to a person's behaviors and such. I mean I've found some key pieces, like music therapy, so that's definitely something I'll be researching. After a couple of months, I'm kinda hoping to evaluate how my experience with this piano learning affects my personal behavior through my own perspectives.
  I'm really looking forward to the end result because being able to play piano well would not only give me a hobby, it would make my parents happy as well. I think I'm really going to enjoy what I get out of this project, because it's a skill I'll be able to keep forever. Of course there's going to be challenges that I'll need to face. A definite one is overcoming my lack of daily commitment. I've never really been able to follow a routine and do something everyday, so this will be one of my top challenges. I think another challenge is going to be finding the time to do all my practicing and working on piano related material because, like everyone else, it's a fun year AND a busy one too. Good luck me?

-last edit 02.13.11