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Week Eleven - Almost There!5/12/2024 This week was a good one, and I got some good work done. I started on the end of the piece, and it’s gonna take some time. I know the general idea of what I want to do, and I started on the transition into it this week. As I said before, I’m going to make a key change, and that was the main thing I was working on building up to this week. I reinstated a similar chord progression from the beginning of the piece, however, it changed this time around. Instead of taking a more downward path in general, it goes upward into the new key. I like what I have, I just need to refine it some and finish out the piece. The last part should be pretty easy, as I just have to re-write the same melody as before, but now it’s in a different key. It will sound the same, but it will have a “brighter” sound to it because of the change. Music can sound “bright” or “dark” depending on what the principal voice (instrument(s)), volume, or key of the music is. Generally, music is looking for a generally dark sound within the key, but some keys simply sound brighter than others. It usually works out that when you add a sharp (#) to the key, it becomes brighter, and when you add a flat (♭) to the key, it becomes darker. I think I’m going to add a sharp to the key, which will make it sound generally brighter than before, but it’s okay because that’s what I’m going for. Getting this done will take some grit though because I have two concerts to perform at this week. I think I can get it done, but I will just have to actually do it (something I’ve said many, many times before throughout this project). If this project has taught me anything, it’s that I can have a hard time working on something when I know I have a lot of time to do it. I got twelve weeks for this project, and it’s kind of coming down to the wire.
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Week Ten - Getting back on track5/5/2024 This week was mainly just getting back on track and getting a feel for where I need to be over the coming days and a week or two. I’ve got an idea for how I want to close out the piece, which will get me to my measure goal, and I think it will sound good. I want to restate the first main melody of the piece to close it out, however, there will be a key change right before it, which I think will be the hardest part of closing it out. I have to figure out what I want the key to be, and how I want to lead into it. I want there to be a tension and release moment for the key change, kind of as a way to signal the change as well as the end of the piece as it approaches. I have a wedding to go to next weekend, which will cut down on my time, however, I think I can still do it. After that, I just have to work on the final presentation, and I’ll have to figure out how I want to execute that. I’ll likely end up going back through the process in a general sense, describing the parts of the process, my thoughts through each part, and what I got done and how. I think I can fill the 6-8 minute requirement for the presentation with everything that I have done for this project. The project itself has been fun and has given me a new level of respect for the composers who write the music that is played by bands everywhere. Music can turn into an extremely deep rabbit hole very quickly and can be very difficult to understand. Making music work and sound good is a tedious process, and even just coming up with what you want to write can be a whole thing all by itself. Closing out this project will be fun, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it sounds.
Week Nine - Getting Close to the End4/28/2024 This week I don’t have much to explain why I didn’t work on my project. I had homework to do but I also had time to work on the project if I wanted to. I just didn’t want to. This week I’m a little more motivated, mainly because the deadlines are coming up quickly, but motivated nonetheless. I plan on getting some good work done this week, especially because homework is far more minimal than it has been. AP exams are coming up, so a lot of it is just studying. I don’t really remember where I left off and what my goals were from before, but I know I was pretty close to being done, so I should be able to complete everything by the end of next week at the latest if I work at it consistently. Since I’m getting close to the end, I think it would be a good time to reflect on what I’ve learned throughout the project. About myself, I’ve learned more about something I’ve known for a while - my work ethic could use some improvement. I was doing good at the beginning, but as the project has progressed and the more I’ve had to do, the less motivated I’ve been to get work done. About writing music - it’s hard. I have gained even more respect than ever for people who write music and make it sound good. Especially when it comes to long pieces of music, it takes lots of time and a good imagination to come up with new musical ideas that work together. That also includes a good knowledge of music in general. Chords, melodies, keys, and everything in between work together in one way or another, and you have to find a way that sounds good and garners interest in the music. I’m more optimistic about this week than I have been, and I think I’ll finally get around to working on my project.
Week 8 - Band Trip4/21/2024 This week was another not-good one. The first half of the week was busy, so I didn’t get anything done. For the rest of it, I was in Washington DC, so I still didn’t get anything done. Don’t get me wrong, DC was great. We saw the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, JFK Memorial, MLK Memorial, Holocaust Museum, we went on a tour of the Capitol, and we got to play in an awesome hall for a performance. The performance was actually why we were there. It’s a competition called the Presidents Cup, which is hosted by the President’s Own Marine Band. Only 10 high school bands are invited from anywhere in the country, and if they show up, they show up, and if they don’t, they don’t. Only five bands including us went, two from North Carolina, two from California, and one from Florida. We didn’t win unfortunately, we think we should’ve won over the other group for more than one reason, but that’s beside the point. Doing any work at all was hard in DC because I had maybe one hour every night when we got back to the hotel, but the wifi was bad, I was tired, and we always had an early start the next morning. I knew getting home that I was going to have A LOT of homework stacked up from the back half of last week, but I’ve been able to get a good grasp on it now that I’m back. In the way of this project, I hope to get some work done next week, but I also know it won’t be easy because I also have to worry about the rest of my homework. I still think I can finish the project in time as long as I keep working on it.
Week Seven4/14/2024 This week was tough. I unfortunately didn’t get any work done because my other homework was stacking up and kept me very busy. After spring break, it was hard to find the motivation to get back on there and keep working on it. I didn’t do much over spring break and just used it as a full week of rest after the first half of a long semester. It was nice, and I even went to Carrowinds this weekend with some of my cousins. Spring break was also a by-week for Genius Hour, and I decided to take that time and break from working on anything related to school. Just a nice, fun, and calm week to chill out and get some rest. I enjoyed it a lot, but as I was saying, it made it difficult to come back to this project. I hope to get some more work done next week, but I’m not sure if I will because I’m leaving for a band trip to Washington DC on Wednesday. I won’t be able to work on this project there, which will set me back quite a bit, as we won’t be back home until Sunday afternoon. I hope to be able to get regular homework done while I’m there, but I don’t even know if I will do that much. I’m looking forward to the trip and hanging out with my friends. A reason I didn’t get much work done this week goes back to spring break. I had to spend most of the week re-adjusting to a better sleep schedule, homework, and just getting going again. I ended up doing homework most evenings, which cut into my Genius Hour time. Overall, I’m glad I got last week off, but I will have to get back on track with work and this project if I want to get it done well.
Week Six - Halfway There!3/31/2024 This week I got some good work done, however it wasn’t as much as I would’ve liked. I created the next part of the melody, which includes a flute part! I had to work around some of the website’s limitations because the trombone and tuba parts were somewhat funky with what would work and what wouldn’t. For example, I tried to have one continuous drone of sound from the tuba part, but after a few measures it would just give out and stop playing. I got around this by making the sound re-articulate (restart basically) every few measures so that it was mostly continuous. When I was writing the flute part, I made the melody super spread out, which made it so that I was able to write around 15-20 measures just on that part of the melody. This was nice and helped me feel better about the goal I set, and I hoping to be able to make it past that goal. This coming week, I will likely spend a lot of time refining what I wrote with the flute melody, and possibly start on the next part of the piece. I’m not sure yet if I want to re-institute the same melody that the flute had, or something similar, or if I want to come up with something new. What I think I will probably do is reintroduce the flute melody, but with some differences and with the other parts. I’m looking forward to seeing what I come up with in the coming weeks, and I think I’m on pace to pass the goal I set. I hope to be able to come up with at least on more melody as I come to the end of the piece, and then I will have to figure out how I want to close it out. I think this will be one of the harder parts of the process because I find it a lot easier to just keep the music going, and closing it out will be a challenge. This project is around halfway done and it’s been awesome so far, and I’m excited to see where it goes.
Week Four - Back On Track3/17/2024 After last week’s goals, I think I did a good job accomplishing them for the most part. While I didn’t work on the project four days out of the week, I did for three, and I got what I wanted to do. I worked on the parts some more and even started on the transition into the next section. The first section is done, at least for now, and I like how it sounds. It incorporates six different parts and is ten measures long. It isn’t much, but it also is somewhat slow and slows down more at the very end of it. The second section is a little more upbeat and changes the key. I’m excited to see where this next section goes and how it turns out sounding. I added some tenor saxophone solos/licks in there that I think sound super cool. I’m still learning how to write within the key and when it sounds good to go outside of it, as well as putting the different parts together to sound good. So far, I think that I’ve come up with a pretty cool-sounding piece of music. However, after working on it as much as I have this week, I feel like the 100-measure goal I set for myself may be a bit much, after working on it for the last four weeks, I’ve only gotten 20 measures done and sounding good between all the parts. I’m going to lower the goal to 70 measures and do my absolute best to keep it there. I still think I can incorporate all the parts I want to into it, but 100 measures isn’t something I think I could accomplish. Overall, for the first third of this project, it has been super fun, and I'm glad this is what I chose to do with this opportunity.
Third Week3/10/2024 This week, I unfortunately didn't get to work on my Genius Hour project at all. I had more than plenty of homework every night, and on top of that, had a hockey tournament on Tuesday and Wednesday, and a band concert on Thursday. Of course, I enjoyed all of those things throughout the week, however, it made even just getting the homework I had done, not to mention this project and a devotional I’m working on for my bible study group. Now, not getting much work done on my project this week was an unfortunate setback, but for this next week, I’m setting a goal to work on it at least 4 out of the 5 nights out of the week. Tomorrow (Monday), there isn’t any school either, so I should get some work done on it tomorrow. I’m hoping to establish a main melody for the song this week and implement it along with the chords that I’ve already written. This won’t be easy, because I first have to find a melody that sounds good, and then figure out what parts will play it when, how it goes along with the rest of the music, and how to make it interesting. You can’t just write chords and a melody and slap them on top of each other. You have to weave them into each other in a way that wounds good and how the mood of the song lets it sound. That means I’ll have to add more than just the simple melody because a piece of music isn’t just the melody over and over again. Think about your favorite song, it isn’t just the same main line or two over and over is it? The artist adds other lines and ideas to it to make it interesting. That’s when it becomes more than a melody and a chord progression. That’s when it becomes music. I think I can do it within this week, at least to an extent, and I’m exited to see what I come up with.
First Full True Week of Genius Hour3/3/2024 Quite a bit of change for the project this week! I do want to preface this by saying that I've got quite the course load this semester (which means lots of homework every night), and don't have much time to work on the project during the week. I squeeze in time when I feel like it and when I have it, but there's not usually very much. Anyways, after re-listening to what I had written before, I liked it, but it wasn't what I wanted. This is a product of a downside I'm going to have to work with throughout the project, and that is the way that the instrument sounds are programmed to sound in flat. A person playing an instrument can make it sound all different kinds of ways, but with a program like what I'm using, there is a way that the instrument sounds for each different thing that you can do to a note, and sometimes that's not how I want it to sound. It's unfortunate, but I think it is something I can work with. Back to what I was saying, I re-listened to what I had written after putting it down for a few days, and it wasn't what I wanted, so I started over. However, this time, I took a different approach. I started off by researching a basic chord progression, putting that into flat, and seeing where it went from there, and I actually ended up altering the progression to be longer than it usually is. The plan was to see how the progression sounded, and just find ideas as they floated across my head. I listened to the chords a few times, and an idea began to generate. I had a general outline of what I wanted the idea to sound like, and started putting it into the program. I like what I came up with, but still want to refine it some. This has already been a fun project to work on and we're just barely into the first part of it!
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