Being in grade 11 is a huge step in life. It is by far the hardest, labour intensive year you'll face outside of anything post-secondary schooling. So, what will ensue success? Goals. Not just any goals, SMART goals. This specific goal, is about the grade 11 music academy and what I wish to do in it. In order to understand this goal, first we have to understand what my choice big end of the year project is. My goal is to write a small album of at the very least, 4 to 6 folk songs (or anything around the genre) with my newfound banjo. My end of the year project is to become proficient with banjo and show my learning through the songs written with said banjo. Specifically, writing a folk album. My success (as stated by my previous personal goal) will be measured by utilizing a few handy tools I have. The first of which being the video blog (vlog) that is required to be posted every month, measuring my musical progress and skill. These vlogs are a year long assignment for the music academy this year and will be a rather useful source of progress measurement. I'll achieve this goal both enthusiastically and realistically because for one, I adore the banjo and I have the proper drive to learn this new instrument. And two, writing music isn't that big of a task when you stay organized and on top of what you need to do. Which is something that I can quite easily achieve, with the help of a few plans I have set in place. Firstly, I have a time table, one that is both for logging time spent doing what is needed, to fill a set quota, but also to schedule which days hold each activity. A prime example being days to record, and days to edit. With that, missed time will be made up for in later days.
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Another school year and its time to set myself straight. So, I have some new goals for the not-so-distant future. Personally, I acquired a banjo, a rather nice Epiphone banjo, which I intend to incorporate into my music this year. I have set my personal goal to become proficient at playing banjo. However, in order to do so, I will have to keep track of this and there are a few ways I can do this. Firstly, we have a required vlog post for our academy youtube channels which is a sorta check-up video to measure your musical progress. This is an excellent monthly progress check for my banjo proficiency. I also have a time log to keep track of my progress. With that I shall practice 2 hours every day on weekdays, and at least 4 hours every weekend. I feel this can be fairly achievable, and has a very realistic basis, I love the banjo and it has always been a dream instrument of mine. I believe I can achieve this.
Like a good many things. The music world needs some form of vocals to give it life, and that's what I've been working on currently. While writing "Expensive Tastes" I realized that it was starting to go down this path of a more personal level. Everything I was writing about was remarkably similar to love interests I've have before and what I can say is that I personally really enjoyed writing it because of that. I got a lot of inspiration from a few slow, Smooth blues songs that I had been listening to casually. I think the thing that went the absolute smoothest for making this song was that the lyrics came to me so easily and I figure I owe that to the blues songs I was listening to which gave me the rhythm I needed. I think what I would do different would be to write the guitar riff before hand and then make the lyrics, I think that would make writing the riff easier. I think this piece does actually sound good despite my lack luster ability to sing anything higher than baritone comfortably, like, Stage fright kinda comfort, not physical discomfort. And I certainly look forward to editing the piece, because editing has always been more fun than writing the piece because when you edit you have just this amazing ability to be critical about your work and to change it to be better.
The semester is over and I’m kinda left here… thinking. What was is that I learned? Where am I going with this? I think this really needs to be addressed before it drives me mad (more so than usual). Really the semester has been full of crazy bumps wrought with ups and downs and blocks in the road. Artistically and emotionally. Really everything’s been a big mess of crap. And I got some days of inspiration and some days of absolute laziness. But despite it all I still felt like I achieved something. I still felt like I was doing something right, and like I learned. Maybe that thing was a greater understanding of music? Maybe a new knowledge base on how to become something more with my music and it honestly blows my mind away that I can find that, and how fun it can be to do it too. The world is full of incredible things and this… music is a path to it. A way of speaking. It really showed me that there’s more to life. And there are some incredibly amazing quotes that really back this up. One of my favourites is “You can’t say you don’t love music. Everything has music. You can’t say you don’t like music side it’s everywhere. Even the sounds of passing cars, is music in its purest form”. And this kinda thing is what really pushed me to look for… an inner happiness. That really worked! I started writing my own music and I think that really was the highlight of the semester. But more importantly my achievement of happiness. I’ve learned so much and I’ve really gotten to figure out the kinda music I love. Really playing and listening to rock, metal, classical and all sorts of similar music. I really do appreciate the classic rocks too. Nothing too modern but modern enough for things like avenged sevenfold, Boston, KISS, etc. From everything that’s happened I really think that I’ve become a better musician and I continue to get there. Of course, it’s expected to have challenges. They are part of life as is and I think they do more good than they do any damage while they go underway. One of the things that really challenged me was a lack of motivation to do musical things. We were only doing covers and I felt… empty I guess. I didn’t feel like we were living up to our full potential. But around when we started making more of our own songs instead of playing other people’s riffs I really felt like we were getting somewhere. Now as for goals? Right now I am really satisfied with the pursuit of making our own riffs and I think it’s really gonna pay off. As an artist I want to… make my music for people to know and enjoy. I want people to like my music and I think I can make that happen. So as for semester 2? I really want to have quite a few riffs made so I can bring them to Nashville. Everyday from here forth I will take an hour or so out of my day to develop my music skills and make some riffs that I can start putting into a song. Then hopefully I can bring my dream closer to life.
Recently we Snow Sentinels had a little performance at the celebration of learning.
Personal and Group Reflection Honestly the performance really showed me what I need to work on personally. It showed me that I need to put more of an effort into practicing, and I need to check my sound. As a group though, we did pretty well. Jevon and Daniel really pushed for it and it worked. Feelings About the Performance Before the performance I was really nervous, doubting my abilities and what I could do. But after the performance I really started thinking: “I like doing this!” It's a way to speak for me and nothing is better. What Can We Improve? The biggest change I want for the performances is to correct our sounds. Turn myself up, and equalize our sound. Of course I want to work hard on the practice aspect as well as really pull the band to work on their personal issues to bring their skill into greatness. A couple weeks ago, we looked at procrastination and prioritizing. As a result we came up with a manageable calendar to keep us on a time schedule so we get things done. Personally I think this will assist me in creating smaller, easy to do smart goals that I can use to get where i want to go. A topic this has really helped with is completion of a music research assignment where we are required to look up 5 different single musicians and their websites and then analyze and even correct any mistakes, and how design elements are used. Of course, this included a set of questions for each musician which amounts to a lot of questions. So armed with the knowledge and skills of anti-procrastination I was able to break it down and make use of the week I'm provided with so the work isn't super overwhelming. As a result the project was broken down into answering the questions for each musician at intervals of one musician a day. We mark this all out using Google Calendars which is a very useful application that makes time management just that much easier. Google calendars really helps to figure out what we need to prioritize over the next thing and shows us the best way forward.
Personal Goal-keeping
I have a very large desire and hunger to improve my skills and complete the practice i need to get there. So I created this SMART goal to assist me in the long run. Over the period of a year I will practice the various branches of music theory, like composition, and scales, for 3-5 hours, everyday. This goal can be easily measured by progression of knowledge "bass" (No pun intended) in the music theory field and more specifically with tests on every subject. I believe I can attain this due to my passion for study, and music; And my tendencies to over study. Realistically this goal is very achievable with hard work and a good desire to learn, and I believe will be a very fun journey. As for being timely; I have my study timing and structure all planned out. 3 hours of study a day for all 12 months in a year. Academy Goals
I am going to produce a new song every month. To do so, I will work on building the song through each month, and will at the very least, practice my composition and music writing for 3 hours everyday. Daniel, my fellow band member, will assist me in creating these songs for the band. I will develop the song at home and school, and record it at the recording studio in the school. I’m doing this because I think it could really improve my musical skills and get me into the flow of song making, and i love letting my music express feelings. I’ll measure my goal by my progress through each song’s completion throughout the month. I think this goal is entirely attainable because I can really push myself to study and create my songs. My goal will entirely meet my academic and personal needs and is very worth my time. In the end, i will have at least 12 songs (1 per month) over the course of a year. |
Brandon ParnhamWhy do I musician good? I think that, personally, music is the ultimate expression of emotion, feeling, and ideas. The flow of music is unmatched on what it can do. Archives
September 2018
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