Hello for the last time. Welcome back, this week nothing much happen in development of my skills. I finally got a new reed which help me get a better sound in my higher notes. I think throughout the project I’ve improvement somewhat. I haven’t improve as much as I would hope so, but I didn’t expect for me to a grand bass clarinetist at the end or to even have a chance in making wind. I don’t think I’m ready for all district, but it’s coming in less than a month so it doesn’t matter if I’m ready or not, because it’s happening sooner rather than later. I still have trouble with my death note and I don’t see myself fixing that soon which makes my Ab scale my hardest scale since it ventures past my death note and ability of high notes. One thing I have improved so much is my marching. The parade got canceled, because of the snow which is kinda funny cause we went to chicago, but it didn’t snow there haha. I felt proud of myself at the end of season and I hope to be better next season. I’m glad we have smart lunch, because it makes practicing ten times easier. I’m always busy doing homework, chores at home or I’m at school at some type of practice. Smartlunch makes it easy for me to practice my instrument without stressing about homework and practice. I think this project went okay and I hope to continue working on my skills. Goodbye.
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Hello everybody, hope y’all are having a great day. This week I didn’t practice much. I had in car almost all week and had so many projects to finish up, but I did squeeze in some practice. After I finish recording my ap world song I used the rest of smart lunch to practice my music. Today, Sunday I also practiced for about a hour. I played through most of my music and played my scales. While practicing my scales I noticed how much I really need to hit the high notes. I have trouble hitting notes above the staff which is problematic because the all district solo has some high notes and a couple of my scales do too. I think part of the problem is my reed which is very shameful. I’ve needed a new reed for weeks now, but I just never had time to stop to buy some and when I do they don’t have any (newflash counterpoint sucks). I have a tenor sax reed, but I don’t want to use that as my primary reed cause of course cause I play bass clarinet and not tenor sax. I need to really get into super practice mode, because the all district auditions are only a month away now. Christmas break is going to be a whole lot of practicing so in January I can say I did my best. Weeks into the project I still believe I won’t make into All District. That’s not a bad thing there are many talented musicians I know that didn’t make it last year, but that doesn’t undermine their talent. One thing I’m kinda striving for right now is the possibly of wind ensemble. The best of the band program. I know I’m not ready for that level and even though it makes me feel sad at times I like to think that when I’m a senior all my work will lead me to a spot in the band. I know Kenan wants to try out and join him, but like I told him I don’t feel ready for the expectations of that class. Mr. Jimeson is changing the bands anyways for next semester. I’m glad he is because there are so many apathetic people in symphonic band that deserve to be in concert band (the freshman band). I honestly miss freshman year just because of band. I think I learn so much more in concert band than I am right now in symphonic band. Plus in concert band if we goof off it made sense, because we were freshies who haven’t learn yet, but in symphonic band there are upperclassmen who still goof off way too much and it makes me upset at times, because I want this band program to be amazing. I know many of my friends and classmates hate the band kids, but the band kids are my family even if I don’t talk to them all. I’ve had bad days even some the worst days of life so far during school, but the one period of band just makes it better. I just find it amazing how we can turn sound into music. I’m proud of this band program. It’s one of the best in the state how could I not be proud? Anyways I’m proud of being a band kid and with that I’ll end this blog before it gets any more longer. Thanks for reading and again have a great week.
Welcome back to my blog.
This week was an eventful one to say. The marching band finally made it to Chicago! It was an amazing experience to everybody who went. The bus ride was super long, but well worth it. The city was amazing, and full of life. I really enjoyed seeing the Blue Man group. It was super cool that I went from watching them in class in 5th grade to five years later to seeing them live in front row seats. Anyways onto the day of the parade. I woke up early to go eat breakfast so I wouldn’t pass out during the parade. That food did not feel so great when we got to the parade site. I was so nervous I wanted to throw up. When I’m nervous I usually just need to go to the bathroom, but this time I felt like I was actually going to throw up. I gagged a few times, but lucky we started moving to our parade spot. When we got to our spot the parade had already started, but we had to stay and wait for our turn to start moving. We were the second band to go so we didn’t have to wait too long. Once we started marching we didn’t get far, because a commercial aired so we had to stop but continue marching in time. During this I think drumline was confused on what to do so they started doing taps instead of playing Christmas Spectacular, but I don’t think it caused too much problems. As soon as the commercial ended we started marching forward till the end. I stayed in time for the majority of the time. I messed up because I got nervous and over thought about my marching. I fixed it so I think it was okay. I couldn’t see myself that well on the video clips I saw. It sucked that a commercial played as soon as we got on tv, but the best part was that Cielo got her face zoomed in. We were told that we played better than the band in front of us which had a 500 members program so that was cool. Well we still got one more parade to do (Advance Parade). Thanks to anybody who watched, have a great week. #dcaw Hey Guys!!! This week is finally the parade. I’m super excited, but also so nervous. I really don’t want to be the one who blows the parade for us. I’ve been practicing so much, but I know I’m still not great. I’ve been listening to Christmas Spectacular everyday now. I’m trying to get the beats in my head so I won’t march out of step. Last week on wednesday we had a sectional. Nobody but my section leaders and me showed up. Shelby one of the drum majors and both section leaders helped me out. From the time school let out till about 4 pm they worked on me. We started off with marking time. When I marked time in the past I would speed up, but the problem was I would slow down when we actually marched. I think we spent 20 minutes working on that and as well as staying in time. After that we started marching around the room to see if I could still march in time. It took a few tries, but I got a hang on it for the most part. At home since that practice I’ve practice on my own marking time along the song. At the Mocksville Christmas Parade I stayed in time for almost the whole parade. I was kinda confused at the beginning, because we were walking and suddenly marching. I was confused on whether to continue walking or to march, but then I started marching when I heard the taps. I don’t think staying in time is my biggest issue anymore. I think it’s my toe height now, because my toe height is lacking. Without a good toe height it makes it look like I’m walking instead of marching and that just looks really bad. I’m really worry that at the end the judges will say something like “the bass clarinet was out of step” or “the bass clarinet can’t march” etc. I’m the only bass clarinet going so it’ll be easy to noticed me in the middle of the tenor saxes. That brings me to another issue. I’m in the middle of my line. Almost always the person in the middle has experiences and is an excellent marcher, but this time it’s me. Everyone in the line is suppose to follow me and keep up with me, but I tend to get a tad close to the person in front of me so my line ends up off. My section leaders told me that I was too close to the front line, but that I kept the space at a constant rate so that it wasn’t terrible. Of course I don’t want it to be close enough because close enough still means it’s wrong. I want to make this good, but I fear I’m just not going to be good enough for the parade. Hopefully it doesn’t look super bad on tv. Well that’s it for this week. The parade starts at 9 am in eastern time zone and ends at 12 pm. It’s on the wgn network which for dish viewers is channel 239/4934/5533/9446:time warner cable 126/98:dirctv 307. If I didn’t include your tv provider use this link to find it. http://www.wgnamerica.com/channel-finder/ It’s also going to be online just look up wgn website and it should be one of the first links. Thank you guys, have a great week.
Hey Everybody. I’m kinda late this week, sorry. I completely forgot last week, and I’m not quite sure what week this is to be totally honest. I have overwhelm with homework load and practice. The Thanksgiving parade is coming super soon, and I’m still a mess. During sections I can march in time okay, and play my music decently. As soon as we start marching in parade format I start messing up. I get out of step and start marching way off. I take too big of a step which causes me to get ahead of my line. I start thinking too much about getting out of step that I get out of step, but if I don’t think about I get out of step. See the problem? I need to find the balance between those two things. Another major thing is that I’m too slow. While I try keep up and in line I end up taking too slow of a step. I need to get the tempo in my head and start marching faster. Once I get that down marching in time will be much easier and I will be able to focus more on music. As for the music I know most of it, but I seem to mess up on the half notes. I think this is because it changes the type of notes I’m playing and there is new notes to play. The rest of the music is relatively easy and not hard to get the hang of. I think my horns up and horns down is pretty okay. Sometimes I’m too slow or too fast in the horns up, but I think it’s overall well done. I’ll make an update post for when I remember the channel numbers, and I’ll post the livestream link on the website. Also our winter concert was changed to December 19th( day before break). If you'll like to go the fee will be $6, and it'll hopefully be a good concert! Thank you for reading, have a good rest of your week.
Hello. This week I’ve been practicing marching band stuff. Chicago is coming really soon and I still need a lot of work. One of the most major things I need to work on is stepping in time. I don’t know why, but I always seem to get out of step. It was really bad on Thursday's practice. I could tell everybody was frustrated with me. I could hear them saying “Left, Left, LEFT”. I was trying really hard, but I just couldn’t do that day. At Friday’s game I did much better. My friend Hannah helped me for a few minutes before getting dressed. So shoutout to Hannah for helping me and for Dracy giving me encouragement. I think the problem is I either think too much or think too little about it. I need to find a balance and for the most part at the game I did. The one thing that I keep messing up at is when we do dips. When I drop my neck down my left foot is suppose to up and the opposite when I drop my bell down. I’m going to get more help and practice daily so that maybe I can march decently. I’m really nervous about the parade. The good thing is the mocksville christmas parade is a few days before the Chicago trip so it’ll be practice run. I rather mess up in front of a few people than a million. I really want to make myself proud. As for the music I need to work on the second to last line and I should be okay. That line always trips me up, because the rest of the music has a pattern or uses the same three notes. This line changes things and uses more different notes. I hope it goes well. Have a spectacular week!
Welcome, I hope you guys had a great week.
This week in class we have been sight reading some pieces for our winter concert (December 1st) ,but I think we got all our pieces now. My favorite piece for our winter concert is The Nutcracker. The bass clarinet part is really neat. I like it because it has a lot of different elements, and everybody’s part sounds really cool. The other pieces are okay. They sound cool, but my pieces are super repetitive. It's fine though, because at the end it goes well together and sounds great. In marching band we’ve been practicing parade formation. This week we need to have our Chicago music (Christmas Spectacular) memorize which I'm sure basically everybody has. The music isn't very hard to memorize especially when you practice it often, and most of the notes are easy. I just need to work on the ending some more and it'll be good. Overall I think the music portion has been coming together very well so hopefully that won't be a problem on live tv. If any of you guys reading this want to watch the parade, the channel numbers will be added on the webpage soon. (check extra) So on Friday at the game while I was putting my instrument together I noticed my mouth piece was chipped badly. I put my reed on to see if it’ll still work, but nope it wasn't good at all. I had to borrow a used one from a friend. I'm glad she wash it before so it wasn't as gross using it. It's still gross just, because someone has used it before. I'm going to need to buy a new one before Chicago. I haven't told my parents yet since I've been at my friend’s house all weekend. When I do tell them I hope they won't be too upset with me, because buying a new mouthpiece is kinda expensive. Plus with all the rest of my and payments I don't think they'll be glad to have to pay for something else. This week I'll be working on my marching band stuff more since Thanksgiving is getting closer. I hope you have a fantastic week. Welcome back, this weekend I had a lot of time to practice.
On Saturday I practiced about 3-4 hours in total. For about a hour I practiced fundamentals. I kept practicing simple rhythms, but going faster each time. I did this so that when I have these rhythms in my music no matter the tempo I can play it clean. I went over my scales as well. I still have trouble on playing my third octave G in tune. Not being able to play it really affects my scales, I need to be able to play that well. I worked on my solo after warming up. Most of it is okay at the moment, but the measure in which the notes are a bit higher than the rest messes me up. I need to continue working on that measure. The tempo is also a issue. Currently my tempo is all over the place, going too slow in some notes and other places speeding up. My dramatics seem okay at the moment. I just need to be more gradual with some measures. At the homecoming game I messed up on pregame. My 8 to 5 step was wrong and again I took too big of a step. After that I didn’t messed up much. Overall it went well for the most part. I haven’t pratice my chicago music as much as I should be. Instead of practicing that yesterday I instead played a lot of fun pieces. I spent a lot of time looking for this youtube channel, but I couldn’t find it. The youtube channel was really cool because it had a lot of sheet music for popular music and included bass clarinet music. It’s really hard to find good bass clarinet pieces online. I usually just use clarinet music if it’s lowish and tenor sax music. I like to play some fun pieces I find online just to keep happy with my music. I played Be our guest, How far I’ll go, etc. My goals for next week is to practice my chicago music, winter concert music, and continue to work on my solo. Welcome, back this week.
I wasn’t able to go to practice on Tuesday, because I had confirmation at church. Confirmation is basically the official process of someone becoming a member of my faith, in case you had a question. Anyways, I also was late to practice on Thursday. I had to take the driver ed (I got a 71) after school, but I still made it to practice at least. We’re working on Chicago music and “Hey Jude”. Our Chicago trip is in about a month away and I’m really excited about it. I’m also worry about it because there will be so many people watching. Our concert (Tuesday) is this week and I’m very nervous. We only have 2 rehearsals before the concert. I’m in Symphonic band and quite frankly we kinda suck. We have an amazing band program I’m definitely grateful for that, but I don’t think symphonic band is great compare to the other bands. We need a lot of work as a whole band not even just sections of the band. I need more confident in my performance because there’s parts in which I need to play much louder. I also have a problem with rushing in certain parts of the music. I need to listen to my section more and watch Mr. Jimeson for the tempo so that I won’t rush it at the concert. This is our first performance at the new auditorium and I don’t think we’re going to be proud of our performance this quarter. Maybe we’ll somehow get it done well without too many mistakes, who knows. I losted my reed at friday’s away game so I wasn’t able to practice this weekend. I brought my instrument home and just clean the mouthpiece. My instrument also is not working properly. If I can play low notes and below the staff then I can’t play above the staff or pass high “D”. It’s the other way as well. Hopefully I can get it fix soon before the concert. That’s all this week, have a good one. "Hakuna Fermata...it means keep playing for the rest of your days”-unknown
Hey, Everybody. Thank you for joining me again this week, hope you all had a good week. I have updates on the football game, band concert, all district. At the latest davie football game the band did pretty great in my opinion. From my point of view I saw very few errors compared to our last few home games. I’m not very good at marching even with the fact I got extra help since I missed band camp, but on friday’s night game I finally got to my spot on the first try. I felt proud even if I should of done that much earlier. Throughout the whole halftime show I got to my spot or only slightly off. I messed up in some of the music, because I focused on my marching and forgot to play. I didn’t noticed any other major mishaps and from a video my friend showed me we sounded good. I was and am proud of our marching band. I’m really excited for how well we’ll sound and look at Chicago. If you don’t already know the marching band is going to Chicago for the Mcdonald’s Thanksgiving Parade which will be airing live on WGN-TV and livestream on http://wgntv.com/. Next month in November so I need to be practicing my Chicago music a lot. I’m sure we’ll have the music down but what I’m more worry about is the marching. I always get off beat because I get nervous about it and it happens. I’m really hoping to have improved greatly by the time Thanksgiving comes so that way I won’t look dumb on TV. It’s already nerve wracking playing in front of my friends and community, but it’s even more scary performing on live TV where literally thousands of families are watching you. Since most of our band this is either freshmen or first years like me we don’t have as much experience as others and that might cause some problems. This week I’ll have to miss practice, sadly. I’ll be getting confirm which is a really big deal in my religion (Catholicism). I hope that missing that practice won’t hurt my progress in band, but if I really need to work better I’ll ask for help. That’s what I did in the beginning of the season. Shelby one of the Drum Majors offered to help me before practice to give me the basics of marching. Since I already knew Shelby it worked out well and I did well for someone who only had a hour of practice. My neighbor Marvelyn also helped me since she lives close by and I still needed some more practice. So if I need some extra help I always have someone I can ask to help. In other band news our concert is coming up soon! The date is October 17th at Davie High Auditorium. I’m worry about our performance since we only have a few rehearsals left and we need a lot of work. I want our first performance in the Auditorium to be amazing, but unless my class starts practicing it’s going to be rough. I’m not worry about Wind Ensemble since most of them practice their music which makes sense for our best band. While January is months away I’m still nervous that I won’t be ready for the audition. I fear my level of skill won’t be good enough. I know already that I won’t make it, but I have hope that the audition will be well. I’m mostly doing the audition to prove to myself that I can improve rather than trying to make into All district. Some of the best band members I know don’t even make it or get a high chair number. I won’t be disappoint if I don’t make it I’ll only be disappoint if I knew I could've done better. I really need to practice my solo more and my Ab scale. I keep messing up easy rhymes and notes for some odd reason. There is no good reason why I keep doing that. I really want to do good, but right now I’m really discourage of my progress in band. My friends tell me I’m good, but I know they say that to be nice. There is a lot I need improvement on and what I’m good at doesn’t outweigh my weaknesses. If you have asked me how I felt about band in 8th grade I would've said “it’s fine I guess”, but things have changed in the past two years. Mr. Jimeson and this band program had made me feel more passionate about my music, made me want to improve for not only myself, but for the program itself. Last year my peers and I made history for being the first freshmen band to get to go to MPA and get a Superior. Even though we got lucky and scored a few extra points to barely earn us that Superior it felt good. I want to actually be worthy of that status. I want to mean something this band. I thought choosing this for my Genius Hour project would just be a easy way to get honors credit in band and pass english, but instead it has made me think if I got what it takes to be a true musician. I’m not sure of the answer yet, but I hope the answer is good. Hope you have a good week, if you need anything check out the “contact” page. |
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November 2017
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