The start of junior year
This is my third year working with Ms. Chase in band. I absolutely love how far I have come since I started. My goal for this year was to learn in depth tunining of my instrument. I have a few other goals such as learning all the different major and minor scales, but I am mostly focused on the tuning of my instrument. I want to learn not only how to tune my instrument to itself, nut how it tunes with the different instruments and how to match the people in my section. I want to learn about the tendency of different notes and how to fix wrong pitches before they even happen. I took the pretest today and I don't think I did too bad. At the part where I had to write out the counting, I had some problems. I always struggle with that because I learned the counting a different way than most of the other students. There were just a few terms and symbols I didn't know. I am pretty sure I did good on all the major scales asked, but I was not able to fill out the minor scales. I got a 40% on the Smart Music test. I did not play a lot of the 16th note runs, that is probably why my score was so low.
9/11 Performance
The 9/11 performance was not as much of a trainwreck as it was last year. Although, I still feel like we could have done better. The flutes had absolutely awful tuning, especially in "America the Beautiful". Some people didn't notice, but I thought it stood out horribly. Overall, the sound of all the songs we did was really good, if you consider that we have only been practicing them for a couple weeks.
|
Major and minor scales
I kind of understand the relationship between major and minor scales. I know that if you know the notes in your major scale, finding the minor scale is super easy. You go to the sixth note in the major scale, which is 'la', and that is your starting note for your minor scale. The key signature remains the same, it's the tonic that changes. By simply changing, the starting note of the scale, you can change the whole sound of the scale. The major scale's relative minor is exactly how it sounds, it is its relative. They share everything but a starting note.
christmas music first impressions
The first song handed out was "Rejoice the Season!". Right off the bat, I can see in measures 12-24 and also in 104-107, there are some pretty high and quick notes. Those shouldn't be a problem with the right amount of practice. The rest of the song doesn't look too difficult. It is in a Bb key so that isn't anything new. The song is marked as "festive" for most of the way through, so I can't imagine it being played slowly. The next song handed out was "How the Grinch Stole Christmas Concert Medley". This song is extremely in range and really doesn't look hard. It is also in Bb which is a very familiar scale. I can tell dynamics and articulations are going to play a big part in this song. The third song we got is "Once in Royal David's City". The only parts of this song that might give me trouble is the runs. They start at 50 and go on for a few measures. There are also a few switches in time signature and key signature throughout the song. The last song we got is "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24". This song might give me a few problems with knowing the Rhythm. Other than that, the notes are easy and it is also in an easy key. It has some trills at the end, I really like those. The only problem flutes ever really have with trills is going back and forth between the same notes. I'm really excited to start this Christmas music, it looks great and I love Christmas music.
First time playing
The first time playing "Rejoice the Season" was rather awful. Some parts went okay for me. At measures 45-95 I did alright. The rest of the song though was way faster than anticipated. I hope we are able to play this one better and soon because I really like the sound of it.
Smart music: First Round of scales
I can safely say that I am very happy with how I did on my Smart Music; I got 100% on all of my scales. When I did my Smart Music at home, I saw that I could easily get 100% on the scales, so I went back and redid them all picking the set that was leaning more towards being out of my range, whether the notes were super low or higher than normal. I still did not miss any notes even when I tried to make it harder on myself. With memorizing the scales, I feel like I am doing a lot better. For the most part, I try to just know them off of memory, but it is kind of hard to just full on memorize them. I found that as long as I know the basic key for each of the major scales, I can look at the order of flats or sharps and easily figure out my key signature. As long as you know the major scale, figuring out the minor relative is super simple, so I don't worry about those too much.
Smart music etude
On the etude we were assigned from page 204, I got 100% on my first try. We had been practicing it a lot in class, but on the morning I decided to do it, I showed up late and missed the band practicing it. I just had a hard timeremembering the tune of the song, but the notes were easy so I focused mostly on dynamics and articulations. I feel as though I did a pretty good job at matching the ones indicated.