Category: edci306a

Overall, I thought our lesson went really well it connected to our subject of music in social science and I thought our concept of drumming around the world was very unique. We did a good job in terms of researching background information about the specific type of African drumming we wanted to bring into the classroom and provided a short clip from a video that connected the song we were learning and tied together with our social science concept. The king is coming song we played with our students incorporated playing a tone, slap, and bass in the drumming pattern. I could have been better in terms of memorizing historical facts I wanted to bring up in order for the lesson to go smoother. I also read the information off my phone and in hindsight,  it would have been more professional to have written it down on a piece of paper instead. I thought we did a good job of making sure all our students were on the same page as to what the difference between a tone slap and bass were before moving ahead with learning the song. When playing the song we taught what rhythm was and how to incorporate it within the students drumming. 

In terms of incorporating the first peoples’ principles of learning, I thought we accomplished this. The principal that we focused on was Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story. Learning involves patience and time. Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place). We definitely included the history and story aspects when we talked about the history of the djembe drum and our song. This was especially shown when we talked about the importance of using wood for the djembe drum because it connects to the family tree which connects the youth (fruit and leaves) the family (branches and the trunk) and the ancestors (the roots underground). This connectedness was also an important aspect of our lesson plan because it connects to western African historical culture. We also started our lesson with a territorial acknowledgment which I thought went very well. Further, we allowed our students to explore the drums themselves and explore the instrument in an experiential way. This I feel like could have been more structured to avoid it being chaotically loud but the experimental process was definitely valuable.  

All in all, I feel like our lesson plan successfully tied music and social sciences together in a lesson that incorporated the first peoples principles of learning in a productive way.   

In this video, I will show the four aspects of music theory that I have learned which include inversions, octaves, diminished chords and augmented chords.

• Inversions work for any note example C can be played 3 different ways all making the same sound of C. Inversions must still include the same letter notes.
• Octaves are the next highest or lowest pitch of the same note. For example, an octave up from C1 on a piano is C2. An octave down would be C0. There are 12 semitones in the octave.
• Diminished chords sound tense, dissonant, and dramatic. They have a root note, minor third, and a diminished fifth (six semitones above the root). For example, a C diminished triad has the notes: C-E♭-G♭.
• Augmented chords sound dissonant, unsettling, and mysterious. They have a root note, major third, and an augmented fifth (eight semitones above the root). For example, a C augmented triad has the notes: C–E–G#.

The song I have chosen is “a beautiful day in the neighborhood” the Mr. Rodgers theme song. I will play the main chorus with two hands and then play the end of the song with my right hand by ear. I will also be using the pedal which will hot be shown in the video.

Song

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Overall, this has been an amazing and valuable experience. I never thought I would be able to play and enjoy an instrument like piano. After many bad experiences with music in school where I felt incapable simply because I couldn’t read sheet music.  Now I know that music is much more collaborative and full of exploration. Being able to share music with my peers and learn from my peers was incredibly valuable for gaining a greater appreciation of music. I really enjoyed the atmosphere during our lectures where my peers were running lessons and when we were all playing Orff instruments, African drums, etc. At the beginning of the class, I was incredibly anxious about learning to play an instrument but now I feel so much more comfortable around music and the possibility of implementing music into my classroom.

I have really been enjoying planning the piano. I have made it a habit of staying late after music class to practice for an hour or so.  My roommate just bought a keyboard so I have also started practicing on that at home. I have started to learn a new song which I thought sounded really pretty its called “a beautiful day in the neighborhood.”  I really wanted to challenge myself and this song was definitely a big challenge. For this song, I am playing different keys at once on both left and right hands, I also use the pedal in this song to hold the left-hand chords. Before this, I was only playing songs with my right hand and my roommate gave me some hand isolation exercises because playing with two hands felt very weird for me to practice and I noticed that that helped.

I have started learning Christmas songs! I am so excited to be able to play some Christmas songs this year for my friends and family. I have learned to play “Carol of the Bells” just the beginning with a very simple left-hand part which I have slowly been able to play.  This was something a friend showed me and they learned it by ear. after learning the basic beginning part I then learned to play the rest of the right hand by ear which I was very impressed with myself.  I didn’t think that I had a very good ear for music soi was very impressed with myself. The song had a very distinctive melody that I knew well which made it easier to learn from sound. I’m looking forward to learning more!

I have also learned a few other miscellaneous parts of iconic songs. I can play bits from the pink panther theme song, Piano man, Tiny dancer, Adele intro.  I have been using youtube a lot to learn different sections of songs. I struggle with reading the notes on a sheet of music so learning from another person and playing along with them was a very helpful learning approach fro me, However, many of the song tutorials did not fully feature the whole song. This was unfortunate because there are some great resources and many of them want you to pay and sign up on their website to unlock the rest of the tutorial. I ran into this fairly frequently which got a little annoying as a lot of the piano tutorials I found were created by bigger youtube channels. In contrast, when I learned to play the ukulele in the past I was able to find and use full tutorials by smaller channels that were completely free.

In the video below I meet all the goals I had set for myself including…

Knowing where the different keys on a piano are (cdefgabc)

Playing the chords G, C, F

Playing the song heart and soul (both the parts)

Video 2019-10-21, 7 42 33 PM

My peers have been my best resources so far! Before class, I usually sit at the piano and I have almost always been able to ask one of my peers to show me how to play something. I have found that I am much better at learning piano when I am showed and someone is there to correct me. I was trying to learn as much as I could from youtube but I was having a better experience being taught in person. As a result, I was being shown bits and pieces of songs and practicing them later on my own.

Furthermore, my roommate has been incredibly helpful as well, he had just recently bought a piano for himself, and our apartment has been full of music. He is a very good piano player and has helped me by teaching me bits of theory and correcting my finger positioning.

I never knew the piano could be such a good stress reliever! Playing is incredibly relaxing and therapeutic and it creates such a good time for me to collect my thoughts while accomplishing something productive.  Since I am learning for music class when I play I feel like I’m getting homework done when I play. So far I have been staying late after almost every music class and coming early and sitting in one of the empty classrooms that have open doors and nobody in them. Since I have been enjoying the piano so much I have often lost track of time and stayed for an hour or more. Although I don’t have a piano at home this has been working very well and I feel like I am getting enough practice time to achieve my learning goals. I have also been frequenting the silent piano at the library. The library is my favorite place to study on campus and I like to go often so now I stary by playing the silent piano for at least half an hour before I start studying to clear my mind and get myself into the right mindset to learn. I feel so much more focused now going into a long study session.

I have never considered myself to be musical at all, and at first, I was terrified to even take a music class. However, as the semester has progressed it has become one of the classes I look forward to the most.  Being able to take my time and learn piano at my own pace has allowed me to eliminate much of the stress and anxiety for me surrounding music. I had a frustrating experience in middle school band and again in high school when I wanted to explore music but had difficulty reading music off a sheet and couldn’t keep up with the other students. I found myself getting lost, left behind and worrying more about fake playing my instrument to keep up oppose to actually learning something. Because of this, I had labeled my self as “not musically inclined” claiming that it would be impossible to learn. In spite of this, I have been having a positive experience picking up piano I am starting to hear myself play stuff that sounds good which is highly motivating as well as satisfying.