This is it, week six and it seems this chapter is coming to an end. When I started this project, I decided I wanted to learn how to play the cello. I had always wanted to play the instrument, but I lacked the structure to do it on my own. My goal was to be able to play one song by the end of the six weeks. I would try to achieve this by planning out my learning goals. I now feel I have come to a better understanding of all three of my goals.
For my first learning goal, playing the cello, something that I now understand is the first position finger placements. Before learning how to play I was confused as to how players knew which spot on the fingerboard would play a certain sound. Now I know about the first position and even have tapes on my cello to help me memorize the placements. The first position is the first set of finger spacings taught to beginners. For my second learning goal, music theory, something that I now understand is how to tell what note I'm reading based on its position on the staff. Before learning about music theory I always wondered how people could understand what the dots meant on the sets of lines from music sheets. After learning about the major scales, I've memorized the location of the note C and from there I can count my way up or down the notes which is easiest for me. For my third learning goal, classical music history, I now understand how the cello came to be. Its design was based off of the violin but created to play lower tones and for its sound to reach larger audiences. Invented by Andrea Amati in the 16th century, the standardization of the cello has made way for virtuoso players to flourish. I decided to make my project learning the cello because we have had one in my home for a while. I had always wanted to try playing it, but put it off many times and made excuses. After school had shifted to online learning I decided to give playing the cello a try as my project as I believed it would help me stay motivated. I've always loved classical music and the cello was the instrument that spoke to me the most so I decided it would be a great opportunity to dive into a new interest. A key point during my project would be learning about musical keys and notes. Although it took me a while to get a basic understanding of sheet music, learning about notes made it easier for me to understand my lessons. During the project, there was a period where I was struggling a lot with motivation. Although I liked my project I felt like I was losing the passion I had when I started for the instrument. It wasn't until I needed to choose a song for me to learn that I started heavily listening to classical music. Taking the time to listen to the instrument and appreciate its sound helped me move forward and continue working towards my practice. Another key moment during my project would have to be, showing the recording of my first time playing the song silent night to my peers. Although it made me anxious sharing it, getting all the positive feedback from them boosted my confidence and made me excited to continue the project. I think my biggest struggle throughout the project was time management. Working from home was something that I had to become used to little by little. As the weeks passed I learned to shift things around my daily routines from school work to exercising and eating meals. Though start and end work times varied by the day, I managed to make a progression of studying that works. Managing the break time also had a huge influence to keep me on task and prevent burnouts. If I had to evaluate myself for this project, I think I would give me a 6.5 out of 10. Although for a beginner I think I did as well as I could have with the cello, I feel like my work ethic could have been a lot better. Looking back on my experience, something I am proud of is just the fact that I started. I had put off playing the instrument for such a long time, that I started to believe I would never even try. I'm really happy that I pushed myself to do this project and my plan is to keep practicing after this. Something I would have liked to change is the pace at which I worked on my music theory classes. I think that If I had tried to get ahead and complete them sooner in the project, it would have been easier for me to try and read sheet music by the time I began practicing playing a song. A global pandemic is still upon us and online school is something new to me. During these trying times, something that I learned about myself is that I need structure. Before I had routines to follow by, but now that I'm staying at home they've all changed. Without deadlines and schedules, it's become harder for me to focus and make smart decisions when it comes to allocating my time. Managing during a pandemic as a student was difficult for me. Aside from the stressors that come from school, now I have to worry about what my college education is going to look like. All of this while seeing the news every day that things are only getting worse. As a human, I think I fared as good as one can be. I'm getting to spend more time with my family and enjoying more free time at home. Though it's become increasingly difficult to relax as time goes on with my growing cabin fever. Although this project is now over, I had fun doing it and I want to continue playing. I've never been much of a hobby person, but it looks like this can be my first one!
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We're getting close to the end and this journey has been enjoyable so far. I've kept practicing silent night in order to feel confident for the video I plan to make to show my progress. This week I learned about chord progressions, when two or more chords are used in a song. Progressions are determined by a key and are shown represented as a Roman numeral. The numerals can be lower case or upper case, where the lowercase numerals denote minor chords.
This week my biggest struggle has been producing what I can best describe as an even sound. I know I'm new to this so it's going to take a while to become experienced, but I'm very frustrated at myself. I keep making this squeaky and screechy sound when playing and I don't know why it's happening so I have to figure that out. Moving forward I plan to continue to practice the cello and complete my research. A high from this week would be cutting my dad's hair. I bought some professional scissors so that I could try cutting my family's hair over quarantine. The haircut I gave him came our pretty good for my first time if I do say so myself, so I'm excited to try it again. A low from this week would be that all the cable tv shows I was watching either ended or were put on pause, so I'm a little bummed. This means I'll have to go browsing for new shows. It is now week four and I am starting to get a little nervous about the project deadline. Thankfully this is a measure of skill growth and not a final product presentation. On that note, this week I began practicing the song silent night. I'm following along with a youtube tutorial by Sarah Joy where she shows you what notes to play on the fingerboard. Although when it comes to using the bow I've been having a little trouble playing the strings and producing an even tone. I chose the song because although it may be simple, I think it's an attainable feat and the piece itself provokes a lot of emotion.
This week's history research was focused on modern classical music figures. My favorite artist of the bunch that I researched has to be Joe Hisaishi. Although not as widely recognized as say, Yo-Yo Ma, Hisaishi is often referred to the John Williams of Japan. I know of Joe Hisaishi because of the Studio Ghibli film scores he composed from their movies such as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and My Neighbor Totoro. Throughout his career, Hisaishi has won multiple Japanese Academy Awards for Best Music and has even been awarded a Medal of Honour with a purple ribbon by the Government of Japan. Hisaishi's musical style is similar to that of Debussy's and he is known to incorporate different musical genres into his pieces such as European and Japanese classical, minimalist, and experimental electronic. What I love about most his compositions is that when you listen to them the music paints such vivid imagery in your mind. Although I've been learning about music theory, I'm having a lot of trouble being able to understand music sheets. I was very worried that I didn't have enough time with this project to be able to read them, but luckily I found a youtube tutorial that I can follow without reading music sheets. This is helping me move forward, but I think I need more time studying in order to be able to understand the sheets. Now that the project deadline is reeling in, being able to show my work has become a concerning thought. Along with the documentation of my learning notes, I also want to create a presentation on the cello and classical music history. A low from this week is that I've been feeling unwell physically. I've had low energy levels and I have a couple aches and pains, so I'm hoping that gets better. As for a high this week, I found out that my class is going to have a graduation after all! I was sad that I would be missing a lot of senior year events, but I'm really happy that I get to walk the stage. We've hit week three and at the moment, I've continued to watch fundamentals videos and practice playing the strings. I tried doing some vibrato while playing, but it seems moving my hands in opposing movements it too much for me at the moment. I end up making weird movements or I buffer because my brain can't coordinate with those levels of playing yet. Nevertheless it was fun to try. This week I learned about influential classical musicians from the past. Since my project is centered around the cello, one of the musicians I focused more on was Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach is a renowned composer and is most often recognized by his Cello Suites No.1 in G Major prelude composition. Funny enough I learned that Bach wasn't very popular in his times and was instead well known for being a master organist. It wasn't until music historians rediscovered his works that the musician became famous.
This week my biggest struggle has been trying to find a song to learn. I'm having trouble understanding sheet music and I feel like I have to learn a lot more to get to the level that I would like to be at. Since I can't read sheet music, that limits my options to YouTube tutorials, which there aren't that many of. In regards to changes, I need to make I feel like I haven't done a good job of documenting everything that I'm learning regarding music theory. I'm thinking of creating a learning document that I can put on my digital portfolio when it's finished to show my learning. A high from this week is that it's also, coincidentally, my eldest brother's birthday! Birthdays mean nice dinners in our family so I got to eat steak this week. Birthday dinners two weeks in a row? I would call that a win-win for me! A low from this week would have to be that I'm missing a concert. Due to the pandemic, the BTS concert I was attending this week has been postponed until further notice. So I'm sad I won't get to see them live what looks like anytime soon. Two weeks in and my mind is all in a jumble! Taking in so much new information has got me a little worn out. This week I've continued to practice my playing posture and getting myself adjusting to learning this new instrument. Since the cello does not have frets like a guitar, the finger placements for different notes were getting a bit difficult for me. Since I'm not taking professional classes I feel like I'm going at a slower pace, but I am getting the hang of it. I did some research and learned about the first position. I took some time to put some tape strips on the neck of the cello that aligns with the first position placements. So far it has definitely helped a lot with practice.
During my week two music theory lesson, I found out about a helpful chart for determining the key of a musical piece. Its called the chart of 5ths and it's useful in figuring out which notes should be played as flats. and which notes should be played as sharps. If memorized you will be able to easily read the key signatures at the beginning of a music sheet and play the song to the correct key. I'm still trying to memorize it myself but the lesson gave me some helpful mnemonic devices to remember the chart placements. For the clockwise direction, the mnemonic is Father Christmas Gave Dad An Electric Blanket and counterclockwise it's Blanket Explodes And Dad Gets Cold Feet. This week my biggest struggle has been sitting down and doing work. All week I found myself getting distracted with so many things around the house, that I ended up completing work at odd hours. Next week I plan to create a work station. Not having a controlled space to work in has been messing with my creative flow so I need to fix some things up! I plan to clean and organize my desk and get rid of any distractions lying around. I also want to make a little snack station so I can recharge as I work. I think this will help me with sitting down and staying put so I can get some work done. A low for this week would have to be my overall mental state. Getting things done that are routine to me was difficult to get through and motivation was at a low. On the other hand, a personal high was getting to celebrate my brother's birthday! The first quarantine birthday in our family was spent sitting around the table and digging into some crab boil. Birthdays always bring a cheery mood to the family atmosphere so it was a bright spot to look forward to considering current events. Senior project has officially started! Coming in from such a long break meant I would have to make a real effort to get accustomed to having a daily workload. To ease myself in I spent this week preparing myself to dive deeper into my project. What's my project, you might ask? Well, I'm going to learn to play the cello! That's not all, in order to have a full comprehension of this new journey I decided to study up on some relevant topics as well. I started by finding some useful resources for my studies. I plan to spend an allotted amount of time each week learning about music theory and classical music history. I found a great music theory class from a university on the website Coursera, that I've spent around an hour on so far. My first lesson was focused on introducing pitches, scales, modes, and chords. For the classical music history genre that I wanted to study, I found and read three articles centered on the cello. Did you know, the creation of the cello was driven by the desire to accompany the tones that signers could produce back in the 15th century? Singers were leading the ideals and trends in western European music so there was a high demand for an instrument that could associate with their vocal range. As for playing the cello myself, I ended the week off by tuning and cleaning my cello. I also watched some beginner youtube videos on proper handling and posture. Overall, the week went off as well as I expected. I struggled with time management in terms of scheduling, but I felt really good about the fact that I'm finally getting to practice this instrument which I've wanted to learn how to play for so long. My plan for next week is to continue to music theory and history studies and to begin practicing playing techniques on my cello! Since I struggled with the workload, I also plan to reduce the time I spend on the music theory classes. My high for this week has been getting the chance to spend more time with family since there have been some work schedule changes. A low has been struggling to make my college decision and worrying about what my future in higher education might look like. Still, the future is unknown and there is so much to look forward too. Let's hope this school year ends off with a bang! |
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