Sunday's Reflection && new goals

For: last Sunday
Last week's goals said:

1. Ask Julianna to critique.
2. Look through all past journal posts and REMEMBER WHAT YOU SAID YOU'D UPDATE (speaking to me)
3. Try to journal as soon as things happen, if possible (ie. right after a mentor meeting or right after practice)
4. Use this week as a last week for Canon in D, practicing and "perfecting" (? possibly ?)
5.  Brainstorm a bit more about end project ideas.
6. Research on history of the piano.
7. Contact Yuangting Li, a Chinese girl at IHS who gives piano lessons, for some help in trying to work on Fireflies?

   Yepp, I finally did it. On Saturday, I asked Julianna to sit down with me for a bit while I played. It was definitely awkward because for me, it was weird having someone younger act as a teacher, and for her, it was weird being the "older sibling" or the "more experienced" one. My sister commented on my fluidity and also told me that I was speeding up a lot in certain areas where I shouldn't have been. At first I had a lot of trouble pulling words from her, but soon it worked out okay. According to Julianna, I had to look at my fingers a lot more than the music, which could be an issue as I'm not supposed to focus on my fingers, but the notes on the sheet. She also told me that my fingering was also wrong in the last section, but that wasn't too big of a deal. This was actually a funny story because my little sister could not make herself 'critique' me until I offered her a bribe (Reese's cups, yumm). 
   In terms of my other goals, I am slightly lacking, as can been seen in the recent couple of days, so I will be extending this goal period for a while to fulfill these goals, (especially 2,3,5,6). I did get to contact Yuanting and will post a short interview at some point in time!

Mentor Meeting After Break

This is for Monday 04/25/2011
   After my mentor meeting with Ms. Lord, I realized some other "homework" that I have to do. A big thing is making plans/an outline on what to practice and when to research (the specifics of the rest of my project). The "deadline" I should expect for the project is around the 10th of June, so make sure to get everything done before then. In this mentor meeting, I also realized that I should be focusing a lot on the macro portion of research and not just the micro portion. This means I should be doing more research on the piano in general! (I feel like this has been repeated multiple times in the past couple of mentor meetings...?) Hm... and a little idea for future journals is to write about how my project process is now different in comparison to before, when I had Mrs. Miller and there was someone to guide me through everything. Other ideas for future aid include trying to watch someone else practice or play or go to a recital or something of the sort. It is also important to consider the method of learning/approach, because there are more than one way to approach things, and sometimes it's hard to realize the fact that one specific way of approach may not be the best or only way to approach things. I guess this means that maybe I should be exploring my directions in learning and the paths I'm taking because there's definitely more than one route.
   The sample presentation that will be shown to our class will be on the 26th of May and Ms. Lord reminded me that everything's actually coming up pretty soon, so there's not too much time before I need to come up with a finished product. Gahhh so much to do...

Reflection && New Goals (explicitly stated) -- 5 for the week

  I think I've done pretty well this week. I know in the past couple of weeks, it seems as if I did nothing, but I definitely did work, it's just not as much as I have done now or before the entire "thing". I know there was that little (or is it big?) bump along the way, but I think I'm moving past it alright. As part of my "new plan to keep track of my progress and to make sure that I'm progressing", here are my goals both in general and for the week:

GOALS

1. Make goals for the week every Sunday.
2. Upload a video once very weekend (I only have access to recording during weekends).
3. Learn the rest of Pachelbel Canon in D.
4. Try to make ^ sound more fluid/pretty.
5. Ask Julianna (sister) to critique.

Out of these five goals, I think 1, 2, and 5 are going to be more difficult than the other two, and they are the ones where I'd be stepping out of my comfort zone the most. This is because for 1 and 2, I'd be making another commitment, which I always knew would be an obstacle, and for 5, I'd be asking someone younger to "teach" me. 

Hmm something new....

   Okay, so hopefully this works... I went and took a video of myself with an iPhone and uploaded it to 4shared. I didn't realize I could just upload it through Blogger, but too late I guess. I just posted the embed code into the Edit HTML section and messed around with the <br> break lines and other HTML stuff I learned from when I was in middle school and I was playing around online with coding and layouts and such. Anyways, here's how far I've gotten with Canon in D Major. This song went a lot smoother than Fireflies (not my playing, but the process of me trying to play). Ahhhahaha it's so embarrassing. [Is this stepping out of my comfort zone? I think so!] It definitely doesn't sound anywhere as good as the other youtube version by the tiny child, but... oh well. Don't laugh. Or mock. Or whatever else, comforting words won't help either.

   If you saw the video, you would've noticed that I made a super big obvious mistake at the end before I stopped recording. I also probably made several mistakes prior to the end, but yeah... that's how far I am this week. I think this is how I'm going to keep track of my progress. I'm going to try and upload a video every weekend to show how far I've gotten with my playing, and to show what I'm playing. I think it's a very good "doing" demonstration. As far as this song goes, I'm still kinda bad at moving from one position to the other, and everything sounds chunky, so that's something I'm hoping to fix with practice. I'm not even finished learning the piece yet (I think the beginning was the easier part), so next week, I'll be moving further along there too... yepp.

OH AND I ALMOST FORGOT! Sometime next week, I'll be asking my little sister to comment on my playing and to tell me what I'm doing wrong and where I'm doing wrong, as Mrs. Miller had instructed I do during our last lesson for the purpose that the mistakes that I don't see get pointed out.

The Search part 2

   So there's some really old research that I've kinda just left there that I did like wayy back a while ago. I figured I'd put it here since I forgot what I really aiming for in this post.

How to Read Sheet Music

   Tadaaa... so yeah, these were sorta things I learned when I was younger that Mrs. Miller didn't really want me to use, but when I couldn't remember anything, I would be coming back to this and thinking:

"Every Good Boy Does Fine"

"FACE"

"Good Boys Do Fine Always"

"All Cows Eat Grass"

    This link also had some good tips, most of which had already been covered verbally to me by Mrs. Miller.

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ANYWAYS. My ORIGINAL intention was to share this:

zeldaxlove64's cover - FIREFLIES by OWL CITY

Isn't it pretty? I totally envy her, both her playing ability and her voice. It's really amazing, and definitely inspirational. Each time I hear her play, I just imagine myself doing it as well. After listening to this, I actually went and sat down to practice "Fireflies".

   I really think this song itself is really pretty. It's one of my favorite songs ever, here's the original. 
I've actually been listening to this song when I'm trying to go to sleep. It's on my nighttime playlist, along with a couple of other songs that are also by Owl City. Owl City = Adam Young, who is super talented and who writes, sings, and plays all of his music. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl_City)

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   I think after working in this project, I've lost sight of my clear goal. I mean I knew what I'm aiming for overall, but it's the little things that I forget, it's the exact words that I said before and the exact thoughts I had when I said them. This is probably why a lot of people's goals change as time progresses because as they work, they always progress a destination, and sometimes that destination is different from their original goal. Anyways, I do sort of remember mentioning about researching the correlation between music and mood, and that's probably why links relating to this topic are plastered all over my initial bibliography. This one website says that it has actually been tested that music improves mood. A study was conducted for college students that had results that showed that music, regardless of what type (whether it's country or rock), improved the afterward moods of the students who listened to it. The students kept diaries and worked with a psychology teacher to determine that they got positive emotions after exposure to music. (http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20031022/music-improves-mood)

   [Reflection on this?] I feel like this means that I'll definitely be depending on music in college. I mean I am listening to it a lot even now too. At least once a day (definitely as I go to sleep), I listen to music. I wanted to listen to piano music to study whether or not piano music especially has an effect on one's mood, but I got realllyyyyy bored after the first couple of days. However, I think this study that was done helps me think positively, because I sorta am conscious that I am in a better mood after listening to music, and I want myself to always be in better moods.

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