Sound Lab Reflection #1 : GRAPHIC SCORE
Sound Lab Reflection #3: GROUP EXERCISE
COUNT TO TEN
The task is to count from 1 to 10 out loud, in random order, with each group member saying one number at a time. If two people say a number at the same time, the game stops and begins again with 1. Anyone can say a number whenever they want, but they can’t say two numbers in a row. Prior to the game, the group will complete a breathing exercise led by the person in charge to ensure everyone is as focused as possible for the game. Since the task has quite simple instructions, I think it will be very clear to everyone that they have to work as a group as well as listen and be aware of others to complete the game successfully.
This is an exercise where the group will count out loud from 1 to 10 (or higher) as a group without a specific order. Although it seems like an easy task, it really forces people to be aware of others and to be listening and engaged with everything. Count to ten forces the group to heighten their awareness of their peers, practice patience and listening, and work together to accomplish a difficult task.
COUNT TO TEN
The task is to count from 1 to 10 out loud, in random order, with each group member saying one number at a time. If two people say a number at the same time, the game stops and begins again with 1. Anyone can say a number whenever they want, but they can’t say two numbers in a row. Prior to the game, the group will complete a breathing exercise led by the person in charge to ensure everyone is as focused as possible for the game. Since the task has quite simple instructions, I think it will be very clear to everyone that they have to work as a group as well as listen and be aware of others to complete the game successfully.
This is an exercise where the group will count out loud from 1 to 10 (or higher) as a group without a specific order. Although it seems like an easy task, it really forces people to be aware of others and to be listening and engaged with everything. Count to ten forces the group to heighten their awareness of their peers, practice patience and listening, and work together to accomplish a difficult task.
- The task can also be completed with the alphabet if numbers are too easy
- Added Bonus: keep a steady beat and attempt to count to ten on each beat successfully. This will add a “musical element” to the game as well as make it more challenging.
Sound Lab Reflection #4: BODY PERCUSSION
Sound Lab Reflection #5/6
Andrea Menard's "Silent No More"
Andrea Menard's "Silent No More"
Born of Métis descent, Andrea Menard is a Canadian singer-songwriter and actress. The song of hers that intrigued me most was, “Silent No More” which written in partnership with Andrea Menard's TED talk, called "Silent No More - Using Your Voice to End Violence Against Women.”
Silent No More was written to encourage everyone to end the silence around violence against women in children. The video represented this very well. There were clips of women and communities holding signs, protesting, with slogans such as, “#metoo” which relates to the me too movement - a movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault. The video cuts between clips of Andrea singinging as well as clips with women coming together as a community to speak up about this issue.
I appreciate how she is spreading positive messages through music while still creating music that is relevant to the Indigenous community. The lyrics that speak to me are, “A rainbow of people walk on this earth, Too many suffer in silence.” Sometimes the people you least expect are the ones suffering. I love how she is empowering both the Indigenous and the Feminine voice by advocating for the well-being of Indigenous women and all women through these lyrics.
Andrea Menard believes that, “VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN SILENCES TOO MANY VOICES IN OUR SOCIETY.” This is a sad fact. She is encouraging people to sing her song to bring awareness as well as end violence against women.
It was a very uplifting song which I wish would get as much recognition as some current songs on the radio do. The meaning behind the song as well as the simple repeated lyrics presented convey a strong message. I hope people listen to this and reflect on the ideas being presented, because the message is quite beautiful.
Sound Lab Reflection #7
A specific time where I felt frustrated with my playing and the result was during my audition at McGill University. It was my first audition out of all the schools and I did not feel very confident in my abilities. I had only made the decision to audition on the French Horn a couple of months prior to audition season which made it a very stressful time. Since it was the first school I was auditioning for, I felt extra stress because all my friends had been getting into schools, but I had to wait until auditions were over to see if I would be going into music. Audition day came and I was a nervous wreck. I did not get to practice with the accompanist prior to the audition which did not produce good results. I played both pieces quite poorly because of how nervous I was and I could not wait for the audition to be over. I had worked so hard and it felt like all my work had gone to waste because of how awful the audition was. When leaving to audition, I felt sad, and angry with the playing I had just done. After I cooled off, I started to feel slightly better, and proud of myself for auditioning in the first place. I didn’t think I would be auditioning on the horn months before so it took a lot of courage and hard work to do it in the first place. It was a scary experience, but it helped with all of my other auditions, especially Western, and I’m so happy with the results because I could not imagine myself at any other school.
Failure is Hard, but Learning is Easy
Patterns of Joy - Your Internal Compass
A specific time where I felt frustrated with my playing and the result was during my audition at McGill University. It was my first audition out of all the schools and I did not feel very confident in my abilities. I had only made the decision to audition on the French Horn a couple of months prior to audition season which made it a very stressful time. Since it was the first school I was auditioning for, I felt extra stress because all my friends had been getting into schools, but I had to wait until auditions were over to see if I would be going into music. Audition day came and I was a nervous wreck. I did not get to practice with the accompanist prior to the audition which did not produce good results. I played both pieces quite poorly because of how nervous I was and I could not wait for the audition to be over. I had worked so hard and it felt like all my work had gone to waste because of how awful the audition was. When leaving to audition, I felt sad, and angry with the playing I had just done. After I cooled off, I started to feel slightly better, and proud of myself for auditioning in the first place. I didn’t think I would be auditioning on the horn months before so it took a lot of courage and hard work to do it in the first place. It was a scary experience, but it helped with all of my other auditions, especially Western, and I’m so happy with the results because I could not imagine myself at any other school.
Failure is Hard, but Learning is Easy
- “That if you approach things that failure mode way, it can really slow your learning down.”
- If you only focus on the negative in any situation, such as the way I felt after the audition, nothing will improve. I took those feelings of anger and sadness and put in more effort to make sure the following audition would go better - and it did!
- “Before, this frustration made it so that I could not move. My way of seeing things wasn’t reality, but it still prevented me from doing what I really was able to do.”
- By reflecting on the whole process and being content with the fact that I auditioned at all, I was able to move on and work harder to improve for all the experiences afterwards. It does not help your overall ability as a musician to overanalyze one poor performance, you need to reflect and move on for the best results.
Patterns of Joy - Your Internal Compass
- “Blaming the situation or another person for what you are feeling is an indicator of misunderstanding your response system.”
- I blamed the fact that one of my pieces did not go well because the accompanist was playing too fast and that if it was different, I wouldn’t have done so poorly. When in reality, I did my best and I did not receive the results I wanted which is natural! Nothing can be perfect, but if you give something your all, you should be happy not matter the results.
- “Discern – Separate the response from the stimulus. I am terrified but, it isn’t the rain that is terrifying.”
- I was nervous, but it wasn’t the audition that was terrifying, it was the idea of failure and letting myself down that was nerve wracking. Once I took a step back and realized that it was amazing that I put myself out there in the first place, I started to feel better in what I had accomplished.
Sound Lab Reflection #8
Learning the piano requires a lot of skill development. It takes time and patience to see results and most likely, you will find yourself making lots of mistakes. The amazing point is brought up in the article that, “a “miss take” is what your system has to do to find the target; you have to go off target to learn where the target is. Each mistake made on the piano will bring you that much closer to playing a song well. You need to have a clear intention, in this case it could be learning a full piece. You would then practice and see what you are capable of doing. Then you would assess; If you are successful, then apply this to your next goal. If you aren’t able to play a full song after weeks or months of practice, or are constantly making a lot of mistakes without fixing them, take a step back, maybe slow down tempo, ask someone for help, or practice more and see what can help you improve. It is important to ask yourself, “how close did I come to my target, my intention, and, what didn't I like and what do I want? A point that the article brought up is that it is extremely important to be able to assess whether or not you did or didn't hit the target. In all practices, it is very easy to get in your head and throw away all the good work you are doing because of one, or a couple bad attempts. If something didn’t go as planned, take a step back and ask yourself why. It can get discouraging, but reflecting like this and using this approach is very healthy and can lead to great results.
Learning the piano requires a lot of skill development. It takes time and patience to see results and most likely, you will find yourself making lots of mistakes. The amazing point is brought up in the article that, “a “miss take” is what your system has to do to find the target; you have to go off target to learn where the target is. Each mistake made on the piano will bring you that much closer to playing a song well. You need to have a clear intention, in this case it could be learning a full piece. You would then practice and see what you are capable of doing. Then you would assess; If you are successful, then apply this to your next goal. If you aren’t able to play a full song after weeks or months of practice, or are constantly making a lot of mistakes without fixing them, take a step back, maybe slow down tempo, ask someone for help, or practice more and see what can help you improve. It is important to ask yourself, “how close did I come to my target, my intention, and, what didn't I like and what do I want? A point that the article brought up is that it is extremely important to be able to assess whether or not you did or didn't hit the target. In all practices, it is very easy to get in your head and throw away all the good work you are doing because of one, or a couple bad attempts. If something didn’t go as planned, take a step back and ask yourself why. It can get discouraging, but reflecting like this and using this approach is very healthy and can lead to great results.
Sound Lab Reflection #9
Monday, November 11, 2019
Today in my lesson with my studio teacher, I am going to experiment with the natural horn. I’ve been working on a Brahms excerpt and it has been difficult to make smooth transitions with the valves. On the natural horn, you can play the whole excerpt without changing hand positions (except for one note) which allowed me to focus on air and note accuracy. Right off the bat, my teacher and I both noticed a nice overall shape of the excerpt that wasn’t happening on the regular horn. I played around on the natural horn then switched over to my horn and applied the same ideas. Immediately, my tone was a lot clearer and the shaping of phrases was much easier to execute. The stress free environment allowed me to experiment and helped with the excerpt. We are going to be using the natural horn more often to help with technical difficulties like this!
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Today in the practice room, I am going to experiment with dynamics and see how soft I can play. I struggle with playing soft and tapering the ends of notes, and I find if I’m concentrating too much on it, it rarely happens. I blew in the horn, and on whatever note that came out, i would go from mezzo forte to forte and slowly getting softer too see how quiet I could play. I experimented and tried this multiple times with random notes. I then applied it to a scale and I found that the tone while getting softer as well as my execution of the piano dynamic was getting a lot better. This will be something I continue experimenting with to help with playing softer.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Today in the practice room, I am going to experiment with pitch bending. A lot of times in performances, your instrument will go out of tune after a while and you aren’t able to grab a tuner to fix the issue. I started on the mouthpiece and played a note on the piano that i would match, then bend the pitch up and down by a tone. (more of a gliss). Then, I played a note on the horn and bent the note up as high and low as I could to the notes beside it. This helps with lip placement for when you are sharp or flat without changing slides and having to get a tuner out. It was interesting to see how note accuracy changed after experimenting with this. I found myself hitting notes better and being able to change my lip position for a more full tone.
Monday, November 11, 2019
Today in my lesson with my studio teacher, I am going to experiment with the natural horn. I’ve been working on a Brahms excerpt and it has been difficult to make smooth transitions with the valves. On the natural horn, you can play the whole excerpt without changing hand positions (except for one note) which allowed me to focus on air and note accuracy. Right off the bat, my teacher and I both noticed a nice overall shape of the excerpt that wasn’t happening on the regular horn. I played around on the natural horn then switched over to my horn and applied the same ideas. Immediately, my tone was a lot clearer and the shaping of phrases was much easier to execute. The stress free environment allowed me to experiment and helped with the excerpt. We are going to be using the natural horn more often to help with technical difficulties like this!
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Today in the practice room, I am going to experiment with dynamics and see how soft I can play. I struggle with playing soft and tapering the ends of notes, and I find if I’m concentrating too much on it, it rarely happens. I blew in the horn, and on whatever note that came out, i would go from mezzo forte to forte and slowly getting softer too see how quiet I could play. I experimented and tried this multiple times with random notes. I then applied it to a scale and I found that the tone while getting softer as well as my execution of the piano dynamic was getting a lot better. This will be something I continue experimenting with to help with playing softer.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Today in the practice room, I am going to experiment with pitch bending. A lot of times in performances, your instrument will go out of tune after a while and you aren’t able to grab a tuner to fix the issue. I started on the mouthpiece and played a note on the piano that i would match, then bend the pitch up and down by a tone. (more of a gliss). Then, I played a note on the horn and bent the note up as high and low as I could to the notes beside it. This helps with lip placement for when you are sharp or flat without changing slides and having to get a tuner out. It was interesting to see how note accuracy changed after experimenting with this. I found myself hitting notes better and being able to change my lip position for a more full tone.
Sound Lab Reflection #10
The articles were very interesting. Something I noticed in my everyday practice that relates to both, “The Great Big Rump” and “By Intention Alone” is the attention to my posture and how it affects my playing. In “The Great Big Rump”, the author shares that, “We often do the same for 'sitting', or 'standing', or 'running. We assume those are separate activities that require you to withdraw from your basic, relaxed awareness of what's happening around you so you can go inside yourself in your attention and make those things happen.” When playing in a lesson, I never focus on my posture until I am reminded by my teacher. I am so focused on my playing and how I sound to realize that posture is an integral part of my musicianship and making sure my sound is clear. Secondly, “By Intention Alone” had an interesting point that was said, “Okay now really get clear that I’m not doing anything to pull back, so there’s no point in me trying to let go because I’m not trying to hold back…” Often times we don’t realize mistakes or small things that limit our playing because we are so stressed from thinking about it. Often times in my lesson, I will have a “choked” sound while playing and not understanding where it’s coming from and I get frustrated and never end up changing it. Instead of focusing on how I can improve - even by slightly changing a seating position or letting loose, I focus on how I didn’t like the way something sounded which gets in the way of completing tasks. This article was very insightful on how I could change one thing to have success in a task.
The articles were very interesting. Something I noticed in my everyday practice that relates to both, “The Great Big Rump” and “By Intention Alone” is the attention to my posture and how it affects my playing. In “The Great Big Rump”, the author shares that, “We often do the same for 'sitting', or 'standing', or 'running. We assume those are separate activities that require you to withdraw from your basic, relaxed awareness of what's happening around you so you can go inside yourself in your attention and make those things happen.” When playing in a lesson, I never focus on my posture until I am reminded by my teacher. I am so focused on my playing and how I sound to realize that posture is an integral part of my musicianship and making sure my sound is clear. Secondly, “By Intention Alone” had an interesting point that was said, “Okay now really get clear that I’m not doing anything to pull back, so there’s no point in me trying to let go because I’m not trying to hold back…” Often times we don’t realize mistakes or small things that limit our playing because we are so stressed from thinking about it. Often times in my lesson, I will have a “choked” sound while playing and not understanding where it’s coming from and I get frustrated and never end up changing it. Instead of focusing on how I can improve - even by slightly changing a seating position or letting loose, I focus on how I didn’t like the way something sounded which gets in the way of completing tasks. This article was very insightful on how I could change one thing to have success in a task.
Sound Lab Reflection #11
1. A goal that I had at the beginning of the semester was to stay on top of my classes while maintaining a good practice schedule. To grow towards this goal I had to schedule specific times for practicing and work to make sure I was dividing my time well. My focus changed when I joined the skating team. Practices are early meaning that I had to go to bed early. Because of this, I had to make sure I was spending enough time on practicing and finishing assignments and studying.
2. I felt a decline in motivation after the music history midterm. I felt like I had put so much time into studying and preparing, only to receive a mark that I wasn’t happy with. I reminded myself that one grade won’t define my university career and reflected on how I could improve for the next assessment. For exam season I’m planning to make a schedule on how to study and making sure I’m meeting with TA’s to answer any last questions to ensure I’m doing the best I can.
3. The biggest thing I have learned is that you need to relax and take time for yourself. I have seen the biggest boost of motivation in my school work and practice schedule when I let myself go out with friends or watch netflix to destress. It is important that grades aren't the main focus of your motivation. Being smart about study habits and keeping a positive mindset will produce the best results.
RELAX AND TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF!
1. A goal that I had at the beginning of the semester was to stay on top of my classes while maintaining a good practice schedule. To grow towards this goal I had to schedule specific times for practicing and work to make sure I was dividing my time well. My focus changed when I joined the skating team. Practices are early meaning that I had to go to bed early. Because of this, I had to make sure I was spending enough time on practicing and finishing assignments and studying.
2. I felt a decline in motivation after the music history midterm. I felt like I had put so much time into studying and preparing, only to receive a mark that I wasn’t happy with. I reminded myself that one grade won’t define my university career and reflected on how I could improve for the next assessment. For exam season I’m planning to make a schedule on how to study and making sure I’m meeting with TA’s to answer any last questions to ensure I’m doing the best I can.
3. The biggest thing I have learned is that you need to relax and take time for yourself. I have seen the biggest boost of motivation in my school work and practice schedule when I let myself go out with friends or watch netflix to destress. It is important that grades aren't the main focus of your motivation. Being smart about study habits and keeping a positive mindset will produce the best results.
RELAX AND TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF!
Sound Lab Reflection #12
I really enjoyed this video. Her approach on shame resilient classrooms. We can make education so much more effective by leading with empathy! Knowing how to deal with shame would have helped us all as grade school students. Her overall message is very impactful and shes discussing many things no one talks about. By not allowing yourself to be vulnerable you cannot continue to grow and be abundant.
So many students are afraid to show their true colours in the classroom, but encouraging students to open up could lead to learning in a more personal and intentional way. Something that Brown said that stuck with me throughout the video was, “The number one exacerbator of shame in a conversation is empathic failure.” Empathic failure is responding to vulnerability with “You’re fine!” instead of, “Tell me why this was so painful.” This is something a lot of people, myself included, do. It’s easy to dismiss something because it is easy. This simple fix could help a lot of people open up and feel better in certain situations, especially in a classroom. Teachers need to be vulnerable so that students are comfortable opening up to them. There needs to be balance which can be hard, because many chose not to open up.
I am looking forward to watching more of Brené Brown’s Ted Talks!