Piano

I just had this very strange thought. When I was three my parents wanted me to take piano lessons. I was terrified of strangers, sat in the corner and cried. This occurred every time he came over to teach me. All I wanted to do at that age was dance. I wanted to be a ballerina like every other little girl. I actually couldn't even say piano! I would say pee-plano. No matter what my parents did, I could not grasp the fact that it was piano, it was always pee-plano. Regardless, my teacher would leave the piano books at my keyboard and would come back for my lesson the following week. I never played in front of him and as far as my parents were concerned, I wanted nothing to do with the pee-plano. Every time I thought no one was looking however, I'd sit down and try and learn to play.

It's funny to me to know that for someone who wanted nothing to do with music when I was younger, I am now a music major and it's all I want to do with my life.

My Symphony part II

Just for some background on the last post. It was a paper for my free imrpov class this semester. It was based on The Listening Book by W.A. Mathieu. This class has done so much to change my view of music over the course of this semester and has really helped me emphasize, for myself, what I want to do with my life and music. This book was an excellent read! It gives you the opprotunity to think of music beyond what you've ever thought about it.

My Symphony

The wind whistles through my apartment.

The toilet flushes in the apartment above mine followed by footsteps across their floor.

The sound of my keys typing, but right before each click, you hear the sounds of my fingers, skin, hitting the keys.

It’s raining.

The rain reaches under the porch and hits the concrete.

Voices from upstairs are faint.

My music is playing softly in the background.

The rain hitting the concrete sounds like bubbles popping when little kids try to catch them in their hands.

Chill.

The sound of skin rubbing on the back of the chair.

A car starts up, the motor is running, just as a song comes to an end on my playlist.

Now all you can hear is rain and the car motor with the clicking of my keys.

The rain hits the metal rain gutter outside in clip clops of sound.

The ceiling creaks.

People are walking upstairs again. Step step step step

Trumpet interlude.

Squeak of car tires, the a car is pulling in.

A huge amount of rain just landed on the plant outside and sounded like a mini rushing waterfall.

Thud.

Click.

Hand scratching the top of head.

Rubs eyes, the sound of skin on skin.

“Why is the window door open?!!”

Bag crunching closed, lands on table.

Book bag slides off of back, lands on the floor.

Hoodie comes off and is shaken out a few times getting farther and farther away.

Trumpet fades away.

Footsteps on the hard wood floor. Step step sliiide.

Paper is blown off the table by the wind, it’s like hearing a bird fly on a cool day, but so much closer to your reference of sound.

The rain alternates between hitting the concrete, the plants, and the metal raing pipe.

Clop Clop, wooosh, ting tin, clop, woosh, ting.

Toilet flushes adding to the sound of the rain.

A car drives by in the distance.

Woooossssh

Shuffle shuffle sliiiide.

More papper falls off the tables. A pen clanks to the ground. The rain and wind get harder

Wooosssh, clank clank, clanks,

Papers unfurled.

Phone beeps.

Click.

When you take the time to close your eyes and just listen, all of these new sounds pop out around you that you never would have heard before when you are just going through your everyday routines. This is what The Listening Book by W.A. Mathieu is all about. Stepping out of your everyday life to really hear what’s going on around you. That everything from the creak of a chair to the sounds of the words you are saying becomes music of their own, but when combined together, the sounds and music of the natural world around you become fascinating. After sitting down and writing my symphony of sounds, now, even just sitting here writing the rest of this paper, I’m hearing all these little sound that I might never have picked up before. How they interact and create music.

People almost always think of music in the traditional sense of the terms. Instruments, scores, and an ensemble or solo of some kind, but it’s so much more than that. What sounds are really coming from the instruments. Playing the piano, you can hear your skin and fingers hit the keys before the notes sounds and your fingers lifting of the keys have a unique sound of their own. Your foot pressing on the peddles with the soft clank in the background, especially on older pianos. All of these sounds are part of the music just as much as the strings being plucked inside of the piano to produce sound is.

The book goes on to describe what we feel like music should sound like, especially compared to what actually comes out. “There are no wrong notes” We can’t be limited to what we think music should sound like. If every noise that is created by nature is music, than when we fumble through something or “mess something up” it is still music and is therefore right. Free improve, improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. As musicians we need to think beyond our comfort zone, out of our personal bubble or box, into the world of things that make us squirm and uncomfortable. In retrospect however, you have to be willing to step out of that box and take it on like you are in a new comfort zone.

Every word that people say is music, if you listen closely enough, it’s just a string of sounds together to make what we call a “word”. Well, that word is music and we hear it every day. The book uses the example of saying slowly the word wind. After saying it several times slower and slower you hear every pitch and noise that each letter makes. To most ears, it’s just sounds like we’re saying the word really slowly, but when you listen closely, you hear so much more. The human voice is so intricate and the noises and sounds it can make seem to be endless. Behind even the voice is the body. Every step we take and move we make has some sort of noise associated with it that we don’t even notice. AS the author says, the human body is the first drum. A drum is just skin pulled over a hollowness, our bodies are skins pulled over the hollowness of our bodies and our human existence. Each place you touch, hit, caress, strike, feel, makes a different sound. Your feet beat out the drumming beat of your life as you walk. The air going in and out of your lungs is far from noiseless; you may just not notice it over the sounds of the rest of life. There are different inflections, languages, and sounds that the human body just naturally produces and is very beautiful music.

Music, sound, noise, it’s everywhere.

Occupy Wallstreet

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend

Adolescences Adoring the Abortion of the Admirable
Belligerent of the Blasphemy Bubbling from his Burgundy
Cascading on the Cloverfield Covering Catastrophe
Drawing on the Druids Drowning their Duty in the
Essence of Engulfing Early Education
Fulfilling the Fundamentalist Foundation of the Family
Gambling the Game of Grazing the Growing
Hell Held High in the Hallucination
Intervening the Intelligence Indulging in I.
Judging the Jihad Juxtaposing the Joker in a
Kaleidoscope of Killings Kissing the Kids in
Leviticus Living through the Lions and the Lambs of
Monopoly Maiming the Mothers of Matyrs in the
Nostalgia of Naming the Number of Nightmares in
Opposition of Optimism Ordering Others to a
Peaceful Paradise Pardoning the Pagans in the
Quadrangle of Quadrilaterals a Quantum Quail
Rejoicing Restlessly or Ruthlessly Reprimanding the
Shameless Shallow Siblings Savagely
Thrash in the Theatre of the Toxic Threatening
Utopian of the Unconscious Unintelligent Unity
Vowing for the Vacation of the Vocalization Venting of
Watering the Waste of the West in Wallowing.
Xanthine in Xeranthemums of the Xenocryst a Xiphoid
Yawns to the Yearning Yachtsman Yelling for the
Zitherist to Zigzag the Zayin through this Zoo.

"Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"

A list of things I will probably get laughed at for having in my dorm room.

1) The entire collection of Harry Potter books along with a couple of other books related to the series.

2) The entire collection of Shakespear's Comedies and Tragedies.

3) My wand.

4) My quills, nibs, and ink.

5) Countless poetry books.

6) My hot pink skinny jeans.

7) All of my piano/vocal music.

8) The music stand I stole from SHS.

9) Both of my trombones.

10) The movies I love that I own on DVD (Thumbelina, Anastasia, Forest Gump, Moulin Rouge, and Narnia)

11) The picture of Tom Felton set as my desktop background.


Yep, I'm a nerd. I really hope my roommate can stand living with me. Luckily, she'll only have me for one semester.

Harry Potter

I'm a Harry Potter nerd. Therefore, a post dealing with this topic had to pop up at some point. I suppose it's poping up now due to the fact that the newest movie was just released and I've finished reading through the entire series...again.

First, I'm going to do my rant about the movie. I enjoyed it as a movie itself, but compared to the book...well, it fell short. The title Half Blood Prince. The movie only brings up this three times. The first time is a zoom in of the textbook and the "This book is the property of the Half Blood Prince." Hermione then tells Harry off once for having the book and then all of a sudden at the end Snape just goes "That's right, I'm the Half Blood Prince." So, where is the whole plot leading up to that? I know that it wasn't an important aspect of the book, but putting it in there especially to get a glimpse of the "evil" side of Snape would have been nice. And then, where is the whole plot about the horcruxes? Let's show the memory of Voldemort as child when it really has nothing to do with the plot and you could have at least shown something that would then make sense when the next movies come out! The only mention of horcruxes are in Slughorn's memory. So Harry knows there are seven horcruxes and that there was the diary, locket, and ring...now he has no clue what the others are because Dumbledore is dead. "Horcruxes can be ordinary things like a locket or a diary." NO! To Voldemort they were not ordinary things, they were things that meant something to him and showed his desire for power. The locket belonged to his mother and was a heirloom of Slytherin's. The ring was from the Gaunt family, the last of the purebloods from the Slytherin line. The Diary was Tom Riddle's proof that he was the last heir of Slytherin. Hufflepuffs goblet, something from one of the founders of Hogwarts, like Slytherin, and Hogwarts was the only place where he felt somewhat at "home." The same thing can be said of Ravenclaw's diadem. Nagini became one because yet again, showed his connection to Slytherin, as well as is power of parseltongue. So now Harry is going into the 7th movies without a clue as to what to even start doing. I also got really excited when they went in to the room of requirments to get rid of the potions book...and then Ginny goes and hides it...WTF!?!? I wanted a glimpse at the diadem! Harry is probably going to randomly run into the room of requirements in the 7th movie to escape from something and trip over it. Not at all exciting.

Those were my only two real complaints about the movie. Of course there were some smaller things that bugged me, but leaving out the two major plots...come on!

I feel like this is a good place to stop my Harry Potter rant for now. Don't worry, there will be plenty more of them in the future, I'm sure of it.