This will be the ninth year I play my flute so by now I am quite used to the routine of starting new projects and songs in music. For this activity, I will work on improving my sound and finger technique (especially the first since it's the one I have most issues with). This year, I will be playing with two or three other musicians who are all strings. Even though I am used to playing with other people (I have played in a band, with an orchestra, and with a piano) it is a bit different this time because I will be playing the melody most of the time and I wwon't have anyone who plays the same instrument as I do in the group, which makes a difference because I won't be able to ask anyone for help. I am excited for this experience and I think playing in the group will hel imprive my confidence as a musician while my private classes will improve the more technical aspects of playing the flute.
1. Increased their
awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth.
Taking on this activity will help me realize that I am capable of playing
a larger variety of styles of music.
2. Undertaken new
challenges.
I am playing a piece from the classical romantic musical era, a period
that I am not very familiar with. It will be a challenge to play new rhythmic
and melodic patterns. The piece is also of a higher level than what I have
played in the past.
3. Worked collaboratively
with others
I will be playing the piece with two or three other musicians, (violins
and a viola). In order for the song to be a success, it does not only depend on
you to play everything correctly but also listen and communicate with the others
while playing.
4. Shown
perseverance and commitment in their activities
In order to play this piece well, or in order to play the flute in
general, regular and consistent practice is required to improve.
5. Developed new
skills
I will learn how to play a new song
with new rhythms. It also has some difficult note transitions which I will
learn to do.
DURING THE ACTIVITY:
September 29th, 2014 - October 5th, 2014
In just the first week of this activity, I feel like I have already learned a lot of things. The first is that it is much easier to learn how to play a song well if you plan to play it alone but once you try to play two or three others, it becomes a lot more complicated because every note that is not in tune or a beat that is out of place is ten times more obvious than if you are playing on your own. Therefore, my goal to play Beethoven's Op.25 Serenade in three months is not realistic because the whole group playing it needs to be on the same page. In my private class, I have been given a Ballade by Reinecke to play which I am very excited about because I absolutely love the melody. The following is a link to an audio of me practising the first movement of the Ballade:https://drive.google.com/?tab=mo&authuser=0#folders/0Bz-jeSYhLsfYYlJCR1VwV0oyWDg I also had to make an important decision this week because my teacher told me that if I want to improve my sound, it takes a lot of commitment and effort because sound improvement requires doing tedious exercises repetitively. I have decided to take on his challenge and will start with these exercises next week.
November 3rd, 2014 - November 9th 2014
This week with my flute I have been concentrating a lot on emotion. With my teahcer, I have been preparing Gabriel's Oboe by Ennio Morricone from The Mission, a sad but also uplifting song. In order to transmit a certain feeling, the WAY in which you play affects the audience's perception a lot. In this case, my teacher suggested I pay a lot of attention to the dynamics (pp, p, mp, mf, f, ff, crescendo, diminuendo...). This is something I have always had trouble with because I always seem to concentrate a lot more on getting every note correct that I don't pay attention to where the melody is going. This reminded me of a scene in the movie "The Black Swan" where a dancer's trainer tells her that perfection isn't what people want to see in the end, it's feeling and compares her to a girl who might not get all the steps correct but since she is smiling and you can tell that dancing is her passion, people are more drawn to her on stage. This is something I am working on and it is a challenge: leaving aside the technical part a bit to actually make music.
November 17th, 2014 - November 23rd, 2014
On thursday the 20th of this week I had a small recital I had to play at, the one I have been preparing for in class and practicing with the piano. I played the song "Flute de Pan et les Bergers" by Jules Mouquet. When I was first given the piece to look at which was at the very beginning of the year I thought the melody was beautiful and almost exotic and I was very excited to play it. I didn't know that it was going to be for a recital (what we usually do every three months is prepare about three or four songs and then choose one for the recital and practice it more in depth and also with the piano). I chose to do this one because I felt like I knew the melody very well. So I had my recital (as always, my throat got dry because of the nerves and it was hard to really control the air...) and filmed it and then, listened to myself in the car. Honestly I was very disappointed and not for the reasons I thought I would be. I knew I had gotten a few notes wrong but they were so fast that to an untrained ear, they were practically inapreciable. But it was SO SLOW... It usually happens to me that when I play in front of an audience I become very cautious and play extremely slow. This goes back to what I commented on two weeks ago. I need to learn to let go and be more free about how I play. I need to be confident and not strive for technical perfection because if I do, the song loses its musicality.
November 24th, 2014 - December 7th, 2014
December 8th, 2014 - December 21st, 2014
December 22nd, 2014 - January 4th, 2015
break
January 5th, 2015 - Januray 18th, 2015
Vibrato
January 19th, 2015 - February 1st, 2015
These past weeks I have been struggling a lot with a certain issue, which in general i have been struggling with all year, but mostly now. I am concentrating too much on the technical issues of playing music (fingering, rythm...) that the song becomes nothing. Just notes, but not music; something that people don't really enjoy. Both my private flute teacher, Ohiana and my chamber music teacher Carlos told me the same thing (Carlos, as always, a bit more agressively). It hurts to hear the truth, and because of this I went into a period of self doubt and started thinking negative thoughts like "Why am I even doing this? It's been nine years and if I still can't do it well, I'll never be able to..." Even though I felt like giving up, my teachers didn't and gave me suggestions to improve and are showing me what I am already doing which I should do better. Ohiana told me that the reason she chose this Ballade by Reinecke was to work on exactly this. She said that it's a piece from the Romantic era which concentrated more on emotions and imagination than anything else, so if I played this piece well, I could improve on giving feeling to the music I play. We thought of a technique I could use since in some way, I am a visual learner. For each song I play, to imagine a situation, or context that fits with the style of the music and imagine that that music is playing during that scene, almost as if it were a movie, no matter how strange the thoughts might be. For example, for this Ballade, I could imagine someone in love, floating on white clouds, to give it a more dreamy feel. Carlos on the other hand, who is a little more traditional in his teaching, said that my problem was a lack of "musical phenomenology" which means that I don't understand the song, which he said comes with experience. However, he suggested listening to music, classical music at all times, even if I hardly realize it's there. This is because I will come to understand, hear and be able to distinguish between the different phrases (or sentences) the song has and in what direction the dynamics are taking the song without having to think to hard. The goal is for this to become natural for me so I will have to work on what they suggested: imaginig scenarios when I play and listening to more music.
February 2nd, 2015 - February 15th, 2015
China
February 16th, 2015 - March 1st, 2015
Tchaikovski on radio-Nutcracker
March 2nd, 2015 - March 15th, 2015
March 16th, 2015 - March 29th, 2015
March 30th, 2015 - April 12th, 2015
April 13th, 2015 - April 26th, 2015
April 27th, 2015 -
December 2015
This month I
February
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