This is an exercise that focuses on listening and team work to create something.
1. close your eyes and listen closely to the sounds around you (ticking clock, shuffling feet etc.) 2. try recreating the sound with anything but your voice (snap, clap, etc.) 3. Listen to the other people around you and create a rhythm/melody depending and the sounds chosen
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The song I chose is Burn Your Village To The Ground by A Tribe Called Red. This song is about Thanksgiving and their complicated view ion the holiday. The words used in the song was taken from Addams Family Values when Wednesday breaks the scrips while playing the role of Pocahontas. This is what the group said : “On this fourth Thursday of November, you might ask yourself: do Indians celebrate Thanksgiving? Well… Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday for Native people. In a way, each day is a day of thanksgiving to the Creator for the original people of Turtle Island. This doesn’t mean that we don’t enjoy turkey, pie and family as much as the next person, but at the same time the Thanksgiving myth largely shared in mainstream culture perpetuates a one sided view of a complicated history surrounding this holiday.” First I was brought aback when she said to name one instance where someone with courage and stepped up was also vulnerable. You never hear courage and vulnerability in the same sentence which really need to change. Being vulnerable isn't always a bad thing it can be an amazing thing. Something that I haven noticed before is how when something goes well and I'm in a good mood I quickly switch to negative thoughts of bad things happening and never knew why. I always thought that it was just me who thought like that. Joy should not be something we feel vulnerable about. When she mentioned that a lot of people experienced something at school that made them think less of themselves made me think of the time that I got up in front of the class in grade 8 and my teacher said I had the best mark in math so he got me to answer the question on the board but i got it completely wrong and I wasn't very popular to begin with but that didn't help people were making fun of me for weeks. but then she mentioned how even more people could name teachers who made them believe in their self and I can name six teachers that I have had who I went to with problems and they always helped me through it when I felt like I had nobody else. When she brought up the "shame shields" I found my self to be more move away. I tend to hide, wear my hoodie, keep my head down and not talk to anyone. Overall, I think this is a talk every teacher should see as it is very important in a childs development to know that these things are okay. the first article I found it interesting that we don't know everything that is going on in our bodies especially when we sit down. We assume since that we are sitting down we take all the pressure off of our body but really we are still putting pressure on out body just in a different position. Good posture does not always mean sit up, back straight, shoulders back. It means to sit how you feel comfortable and not putting to much stain on your back. Being hunched over is not good for you and neither is sitting up straight like a ballerina. Another position that I think can hurt us is laying down to sleep. Sleeping in the wrong position can put serious strain in your neck and your back leaving you in bad pain. I always find myself in a lot of pain in the morning because I have yet to find the perfect position. We need to be aware of our body and what it needs to feel alive. We need to focus more on our intentions. We need to know our intentions and not shy away from it. Being aware of our space and surroundings is important for our intentions to go to plan. If not we may see the music out in front of us while we are holing back (second article).
1. my goals at the beginning of the semester was to better my tone on the flute and fix my stage fright as a musical goals and actually step outside of my comfort zone and make friends as a personal goal
I did succeed with my music goals. My tone has gotten a lot better and I used to shake before performing and even sometimes during a performance however so far it has not happened. For my personal goal did not happen how I would have liked it to. I kind of made a friend but only the type I sit next to in class and don't speak at all outside of the classroom. 2. I got sick a lot this semester and it held me back a lot but not as much as I expected. Another challenge I faced was a lot of mental health problems. I feel like if I feel sick. I should take medicine even if I'm not completely sick so I can catch it before it happens. 3. Stay focused! Don't forget to take tome for yourself One day this week I focused on my melodic minor scales. I am very very bad at them. My studio teacher gave a great tip during my lesson to work on them playing the relative major going up and the minor key going down. I ran through all of the minor scales thinking that way and it has helped tremendously. They are far from perfect but after focusing on them for an hour with the new technique I see myself getting really good at them.
One day this week I focused on my tuning. As a flute player I tend to be out of tune a lot. So I focused on my tendencies. I took out a tuner and a piece of paper and played tuned to my tuning note then played every note in my full range chromatically and wrote down whether I was sharp or flat or in tune and by how much. I then realized how unaware I was to exactly how out of tune I was playing. I then played every out of tune note again and rolled my flute in or out depending on whether it was sharp or flat and wrote down what way I rolled. Creating a personal tuning chart for my tendencies is really helping me play in tune. Some of them I have memorized and they already sound a lot better.
one day I focused on double tonguing. I have always struggled with double tonguing and it is still far from perfect. My tongue always gets tied. What I did was write out a rhythm put on a metronome and just played a single note double tonguing and when I got it I sped up the metronome speed until I could't go faster. After that I went back to the slower metronome speed and played the rhythm twice once on one note and then down a semi tone and repeating until I got a smooth transition. Then I repeated my process by speeding up the metronome until I couldn't do it. The last thing I did was play the rhythm again but playing 8 16th note double tongued then go down a semi tone then play another 8 and go down another semi tone and repeat back to the beginning. Again I repeated the process and sped it up when I got comfortable with the speed.
I may not have hit my target speed but it sure helped with my double tonguing a lot because I was never once focused on my tongue placement so I didn't have the chance to over think. My activity I chose was catching popcorn in my mouth and applied the target practice technique to it. I was never good at it. But after focusing on it and making myself get it right and calculating where everything should go I don't miss anymore.
I started by doing what I always do, throwing it a bit to high to give me time to follow where it goes. But I found for me that that wasn't a good strategy. so I angled the toss a little lower and tilted my head back a bit further and then I was throwing it to low. But then I found the perfect in between and finally caught 5 in a row. Afterwards what I did was compare what I did before and what I'm doing now to feel the difference and see where the changes were made so I can permanently fix my movements and patterns. I did the old way 10 times and got it 1/10 times and did it the new way and got it 8/10 times which is a big improvement. I think this strategy is a great strategy for fixing old habits and getting better at something. It's a great way to train your brain the right and wrong ways to do certain things and to not go back to old habits. In the first article I relate to Ghislaine when she mentioned how when she stops there's an unfinished feeling there. When I'm practicing a new piece and start getting frustrated especially right after a lesson, everytime I stop it always feels unfinished and I can't pinpoint why. Is it the dynamics? Is it my phrasing? Is it my tuning? She also mentions how shes in a failure mode and not a learning mode. When I get this way I don't know what to do so I take it as a failure and stress myself out even more.
The rainy day story in the second article makes me directly think of a time we got a new piece in band that we played two years before. The kids who never looked at the piece before were very excited to finally play Christmas music. The kids who enjoyed the piece two years prior were feeling nostalgic and the kids who hated the piece who played it two years prior were not happy playing it again. I was in the group that loved it because it had excerpts from my favorite Christmas movies. |
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