☞ Sabrina's Good Old Music Reflections ☜

January 20, 2009

"WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE?"

"I want and need to achieve the goal that I set, which is to master my piano skills. I know that it will take years to practice, but I'm willing take the risk and do my best so that I could perform my best and make everyone that I know proud!"

January 27, 2009

"My group and I had a discussion about the Japanese Music, which is our given assessment for our presentation.After a while of non-stop laughing and negotiating, the teacher told us to "stop what ever we are doing" and gave us a paper, in which is a guide that we are going to fill up for our PowerPoint Presentation. "

February 6, 2009

"OUR FEED BACK FOR THE PRESENTATION"

"It was the due date for our presentation about the Japanese music, as we came onwards to the front, I sensed that my group felt nervous which was normal considering I was too. After a while, it was MY turn to speak, no doubt that the pressure was on me now. In the end of my speech, i had realized that i spoke to fast (reminds me of how our class president speaks, haha). We also showed a sample of a Japanese music video, and if you think that all was going smooth, you're so wrong. I did not know that the video was supposed to be put in the real directory as the one I put in my PowerPoint presentation! Good thing I have it backed up in my FlashDisk, so we opened the from there, My team and I were saved, thank God. So, after all of those troublesome events, all turned out well!"

February 17, 2009

"It was our time to exchange our knowledge like Guenna pigs and be rated smart or dumb, a.k.a: quiz. "Oh my lasagna, I'm doomed!" Well that was what I thought! When it came to the time where we had to exchange our knowledge, I was the FIRST one to be asked to stand up and was asked by Janice, the other person who was chosen (yes, it's some-what like a team test) the questions. So it goes like this: we got a paper, and create questions and give it to the teacher. The question is made by all of the students, but the students must create the questions according to the Asian music that they had presentate. I studied Japanese music, so Janice was given a paper of questions which is created by one of our team mates (we answer the questions from the ones that one of our team mate created, since it's the topic that we learned). Luckily, I was the ONLY ONE who created the PowerPoint presentation, and they took they're information from there, which obviously I know. So yeah, it was easy, considering the circumstances (the one I wrote above). Maybe this will teach the boys a lesson to DO THEIR PART OF THE WORK when grouping with a female (I was absent, all the girls teamed with other girls, I was forced to be one team and guys, pity), but I think they don't learn the lesson or moral at all, especially...Nope, I won't tell you the brat who is very naughty indeed, and is one group with me."

March 10, 2009

"Nothing special happened today actually. We learned and was given examples of "Pentatonic scale" and "Diatonic scale" by our teacher. Of course learning from the white board wasn't all, we were also ordered to make our own examples for each of the scales. Took me a while to finish it, I had to ask my best friend, Eileen, to explain some parts of the pentatonic scale to me, for my brain to absorb the information."

March 13, 2009
"Not again...*sigh*. In this session, we learned about the scales, sharp, flat, chords, and lot's of other basic things actually. Nothing special came up for this session (maybe it's because it's only theory..), although some of the boys in my class got lectured because they were brave to speak out loud and break the rules that the teacher made, or just plain noisy..Did I mention naughty as well?"

March 31, 2009
"REFLECTION FOR THE WHOLE TERM 3"

"The main golden thing that I want to say for this reflection now, is that I learned many important things during this term. Example; from getting a reminder for not doing a homework and submitting a task over it's deadline (got one minus point because of it), to answering a question correctly and NOT getting into trouble!


I also learned A LOT of things, which is related to the traditional Asian music (i.e. Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian). Now, from our brain to the computer/laptops! We were asked to make a PowerPoint presentation about the Asian music that we choose, along with it's history, style, instruments, and famous composers. My team and I performed average, because we had not practice together before, and our plan was just to create a lyric version of the PowerPoint presentation and label the names of those who would say a certain part. It sounds easy, and it actually was, for them, unlike the one who actually DID all the work..But it's okay, I like doing to be the one doing the work, rather being the one who just slack off, cause if so, I won't learn a thing, and that's bad, very bad. After all of the PowerPoint presentation business, we were suppose to make a '10 pages version', of the presentation it self. It's like 'De javu' all over again, but I managed to survive and finished it, although I submitted it late..It's not my fault, the printer's ink was finished!


I'm quite average or below average at the practical lesson. I was asked to play the same song as the 2 boys from my class who played piano for years...!! I mean, it's just not fair! I only had re-continued playing piano for less than 5 months, also without anyone's help and randomly choosing an easy piece and playing it! The last time I remember playing piano seriously (new comer's level) was on grade 5! Also, to be honest, I'm not too fond of the song "Arabasque", the current piece that I'm playing.


For theory session, we learned all about the pentatonic scales, diatonic scales, chords, flat (and more) which was quite hard, considering we did not have music for the past 3 years (2007-2009). Fortunately we managed to survive and pass through. I say that the key to pass hard lessons is to review again and home, then, for sure you will understand and remember it! At last, it has come to the end of this long, whole term reflection. I hope it's not too boring." ☺

April 14, 2009

"On this fine day, we were asked to make a 16 bar song, with the 2nd pentatonic scale style, which is the do, mi, fa, si, notes. The teacher also told us we have to add lyrics to the song that we just made, not liking my song because of the thought that it does not suite when being added with a lyric, I decided to re-do and make another song. The teacher also explained about a music creating program named "Finale 2009", the reason behind it is because we are going to make our own song with that program. Although is was mostly complicated, we all understand the basics, so we were okay.

April 21, 2009

"Doomsday!! Haha, just kidding. It's the day we will be tested to perform our pieces. First, we all saw the violin players playing. The first one to play was my best friend, Esther, she played with an extraordinary talent, with some small mistakes. I specially liked the part when she does a duet with the violin teacher, even I heard the girls at the back of my seat whispering that she played a wonderful duet with the teacher. But the problem comes next. Every and I mean EVERY other violin players got stopped and was failed by the teacher before they could even finish the song, just because they played did not play well enough. To be honest, that seems like a discrimination, the violin teacher should at least give a chance to those people and let them play, even if they played badly, because they were doing their best. I saw the expressions in the faces of the people who was stopped, it was gruesome, pity on them.


The guitar players didn't play quite well too actually, well some, but their performance was okay, because I think it's their first time playing guitar for some.

And for the piano, we all passed, yay! Although, there is one little, single person who messed up her performance, me. The piano teacher congratulated every piano player except for me, he said that "What happened to you Sabrina? You forgot your staccato..". My acknowledgment is that I know I messed the performance but, the piano teacher forgot that I had made no mistakes on the notes, which he didn't say. I mean, making mistakes on the notes the last time you play, and making no mistakes on the notes in your performance is and IMPROVEMENT right? I don't understand why he didn't at least acknowledge that kind of improvement.


Now, I will state the fact that I am NOT jealous, if you think this is jealousy, then you're wrong. Everyone is NOT perfect, only God, so I am proud of my self and proud of everyone else, Proud that we all did the best we can!"

April 24, 2009

"It was right in the morning when in the midst of my sleepiness, the teacher teaches "transposition" of notes. On and on he goes, I had yawned a few times, but still pay attention and wrote down notes. Afterward, we watched solo singing performances from the vocalists, which made me even more sleepy (hearing music makes me sleepy at times). Though I must say, they performed 'almost' like professionals, unfortunately it was 'clear' that some of them, the voice did not reach some of the tones correctly, not that I think can reach them correctly as well (if I were to sing just now), haha, we all know our limits."

April 28, 2009
"It's the deadline for our song that we create using the "Finale 2009" program. We submit it to the teachers via USB/FlashDisk. After all is done transfering their assigment, the teacher explained to us how to make a blog, which was very easy, considering many of us had made 'blog making' projects since elementary. The teacher then told us we have to type our music reflections for term 3 and 4, in the blog. I'm sure we can all make this last assigment (hopefully it's the last) and get a good old score! ✌