30 Aug 2012

This is me practicing the deer hunter soundtrack. I have gotten better in playing this song compared to the previous videos. I have also learnt further parts of the song. For next class i am going to keep on practicing this song along with the Chet Atkins song

30 Aug 2012

This is me practicing a song called "the poor people of paris" by Chet Atkins. I just learnt this song yesterday and only tried a few bars so the sound is not clear yet. Next class I am going to ask more on this piece.

Week #5 27 Aug - 31 Aug 2012

27th Aug 2012

Today the other groups present their presentation about the different musical genres. The groups that presented their work today was the group that did classical music. I learnt that there was not any piano during the baroque era and instead of it they use the harpsichord. It was only until the classical era did the piano was introduced. I also found out that baroque music was the first to introduce chamber music.

During instrument class, I kept on learning the deer hunter soundtrack.

28th Aug 2012

Today it was my group's turn to present our work. We did a presentation about rock and roll. I thought we did well as we give enough music samples and videos about the genre. Other groups also present their findings to the class. These groups were the jazz, and pop/rock groups. I learnt that jazz is actually a branch of blues.

There was not any instrument class today as all time was taken to do the presentations.

29th Aug 2012

Today we learnt about music notations. We learnt about upbeat, tied notes and the different time signatures. We also discussed our next quiz which would be on monday about 7th chords. There was not much today and soon we were dismissed to our instrument classes.

During instrument class i continued practicing deer hunter. We also learnt a new song called 'the poor people of paris' by Chet Atkins. I am going to keep on practicing both songs.

18 Aug 2012

This is a video of me practicing the deer hunter theme song again. In this video my tempo is better as i tried to play the song with the same speed as the original one. It wasn't that good but at least i tried it out. I need to be more fluent in sounding every string i pick and basically play the song better.

18 Aug 2012

This is a video of me practicing the theme song of deer hunter again. I've made some improvements. I am now playing it considerably smoothly. Although i still have to improve on being able to fully barre the 9th fret.

14 Aug 2012

Today was supposed to be our presentation day. But due to the lack of students present we postponed the presentation until after the break. What we ended up doing that day was just to practice our presentation and to see which parts we can improve. That is basically it for today, we did not have any instrument class again because all time was taken in rehearsing the presentations. During the break i am going to improve the presentation.

13 Aug 2012

Today was our singing assessment. We came in front of the class and sung the western song of our choice. We could either do a karaoke or play the instrument ourselves while singing. I chose the latter. I thought i did well during the assessment, my pitch was good and my playing as well. But laughter is probably my issue, as i was performing the student in front of me was making funny gestures and i cant help but laugh. I did another try and this time i did much better, mostly because i closed my eyes but i found out that if you close your eyes you can focus better. There was no instrument class as all the time was taken in doing the singing assessment. I am going to finalize my presentation for next class.

12 Aug 2012

This is me practicing the deer hunter song again. I haven't improved much but the second try was a bit better than last time. For next class i am going to keep on practicing this song and the song im going to play on monday, piledriver waltz.

12 Aug 2012

In this video i am playing the deer hunter soundtrack that i have learnt during the previous instrument class. As you can see i am far from decent and still need to work hard on it.

8 Aug 2012

Today we had rehearsals for next monday where we are going to sing a western song in front of the class to be assessed. I went up second and i thought i did quite. I could have improved my eye contact more and be more confident in singing the song. Then after  rehearsals, we went to our group and discussed out presentation. Our group decided to do the rock and roll genre.

We did not have any instrument class as there was no time left. For next class i am going to research about the rock n roll genre and practice my singing.

7 Aug 2012

Today we were assigned to our different groups. My team-mates are Shavira and Ezra. We are assigned to make a presentation about western music next week. Today we discussed about what we know and what we want to know about the subject. We knew a lot about western music because we listen to it a lot and so we wrote what we know about it on a piece of paper. We as a group, would like to know more about the jazz and blues songs structure and theory. We also did a music notation quiz and i am very happy that i got a good mark at it. This time last year, i had absolutely no clue about the notations so I'm glad i've dealt with that problem now.

During instrument class we learnt a song called deer hunter. its a really intricate slow song. I am going to keep on practicing this song.

6 Aug 2012

Today we sung the "bagimu negeri" song in front of the class individually. I thought this time i did better than last time and i'm satisfied with it. After all the students finished their performance we did a little bit of theory was dismissed to our instrument class. But since the singing took a long time to finish we did not really have time to have instrument class. Just 4 minutes. For next session i am going to research more about western music.

4 Aug 2012

In this video I am practicing the mario brothers theme song on my guitar. I did not play it fluently but i do remember the first parts of the song and i can now build on that. I want to keep on improving my skills on guitar in the future.

4 Aug 2012

This is me practicing the G major scale. First try was not that good but the second try was better. I will keep on practicing the scale and make myself fluent at it.

1 Aug 2012

Today the teacher showed us how to do the blog reflections for the new music students. The teacher also showed us the video he took during our final exams last school year. The performance was good and i am quite pleased by it. There is a project that we had to do, musical genres. we were given previous students' booklets as samples as what we should do. We were told to make a group presentation about genres with the groups being assigned to us on monday.

During instrument class, we learnt how to play super mario. I have tried learning the song before but i cannot seem to get it right. But during this class i managed to get it, so now i could play bits of it quite decently. Next i am going to just keep on practicing my guitar skills and upload two videos for the week.