#11 (Week of 4/25/11)

I enjoyed playing music this week, despite the fact that to practice for our minor scale tests. I played the scales a lot because of the awkward fingering; i noticed that my fingers had to jump around to produce that nasty sound. I t sounded pretty cool but it took practice. I focused on the G Minor scale the most because i skipped 1 note when coming up and down. Other than practicing scales i played some of the John William in Concert at home. I played the star wars theme, because we had the weird melody which correlated with the trumpets. The notes were mostly flat so i practiced playing those. Over all i focused on the rhyme on the some of the bigger sections, also i counted at the parts where i was confused. Also i practice Palladio because it was a pretty fast piece, and a lot of the melodic parts were from the Clarinet section. I primarily practiced the first section because it was the entrance of the song, and the melody started right away. I got all the notes down, but it was a matter of playing it all with the right tempo. I played slow and first and gradually increased my speed. It took me some time but i think i got a pretty good start to this song. All in all i felt that this week was a fun week to play some interesting music.

#10 (Week of 4/18/11)

This week was tiring for me because we had a lot of quizzes and projects. However I made time for practicing my instrument. I played on Tuesday with one of my cousins who also plays the clarinet, we both are at the same level, but we both learned some new things from each other. I practiced the chromatic scales because we had a playing test on Thursday. Also, i went through the 1st three songs on the assessment sheet for Symphonic Band. I nailed the 1 and 2nd one, but the 3rd one gave me some troubles. Instead of playing a B flat i would play a B. This happened throughout the piece, i was not getting the right notes down. My articulation and rhythm was pretty good. I played with my cousin and i seemed to get a lot of it right. Another big thing i worked on was the songs 4 and 5. Wow, these 8 and 16th notes really were hard to play especially at the tempo that was suggested. I played it slow at first and i got 75% of it down. But as I increased my speed i saw my percentage go down. I tried my best to play at the given tempo, but i decided to take the pieces at 96 on of the test. My cousin helped me out with dynamics and alternate fingerings, so i would have an easier time playing some of the far out notes. For the most part my rhythm was solid; Ii corrected most of my mistakes with that. I think i am ready for this test!

#9 (Week of 4/11/11)

Wow, this week was fun for me! I really enjoyed practicing some music. Even though we had band rehearsal twice this week (you were out on Monday), I felt that i had more time to expose myself to some cool pieces. I had some books from Middle School lying around, and i starting to play some fun songs in there, such as: Star Wars, Cars, Jeopardy Theme, and others. I did this because we didn't really get new sheet music week, in class on Friday we played a cool combination of songs! But at home i focused on playing 'A theme from Cars" and "Star Wars." In Cars, I played Route 66 a lot because I liked the style of it, also i practicing my slurring a lot in this song. In Star Wars, i practiced the main chorus a lot, so I can be out the melody more, when Mr. Shankles asks the Clarinets to play out with good balance. I was able to learn some of the thing Mr. Shankles teaches us in class in some of the pop music. Something I liked about Cars, was the Jazzy feel to it, it had some glissando’s in the piece which i really liked playing. I went through my old books and played some music to get back the feeling of playing pop music; because i have a feeling we are doing some pop music for our Spring Concert!

#8 (Week of 3/28/11)

This week was very productive in terms of practice. I took my instrument home and practiced a lot of scales. We didn't really get music to play at home or practice, but i went through some of the old songs we did to make sure i got the mistakes cleaned up. I played some parts in Chant Rituals, New Moon, and Chorale and Shaker dance. I enjoyed hearing these songs after a long time because of the familiarity i had with them. I could tell that the first time I played it sounded decent, but the second was much better because i remembered what problems we had with the piece. Besides playing those songs, i played through many scales and warm ups from a booklet i got last year. I made sure my tonging was good, so i can better perform the 16 and 8th notes in class. Also i worked on playing fast and accurate, i sometimes struggle to keep up when we are playing a fast part, so i reviewed and made some good improvements. I really think that my playing is getting better, i can't wait to try out for Symphonic Band '11-'12!

#7 (Week of 3/21/11)

I had a good time practicing this week. I really believe that I spent quality time looking over some nice pieces of music. I went through some pop songs as long as play some of our 1st quarter songs. Mainly i worked on the Chorale Book, and producing a good sound. As you mentioned in class, balance is key in having a strong band that was one of our problems at Festival. I practiced my given parts in class and tune a lot at home to get a good sound. I made sure i knew where to put the barrel of my Clarinet when i assembled it so i would not have to play around with it too much when tuning. Also in the chorale book, i played through the first 4 pages, and went through some of the songs i was familiar with. Some were slow, but it made me have control my sound. The farther i got in the piece the more musical it became, it felt weird but i got accustomed to listing to slower pieces as the week progressed.

#6 (Week of 3/14/11)

This week was not the best week for practice, all because we had festival the weekend before. After receiving our scores I was not happy, but i wanted to improve on what the cons we had in our performance. There was not much I could do, but i looked over the music we played and looked at the parts where i think we as a band messed up. It was a team effort so nobody was to blame. But as I heard the recording in class i realized that i we had some tempo problems and a lot of dynamics issues. My practice at home was realizing what i did wrong during the performance. I spotted a couple of errors, but when i got to school i found out a lot more. I played through Chant Rituals, at the parts where I had issues. Worked on some dynamic exercises. Also I listened to the copy of Chat Rituals online to hear the real recording. Overall i thought that this week was tough for practice, but i made some time to realize my mistakes...

# 5 (Week of 3/7/11)

This week in practice was very hard because we had a lot of stuff to improve on and perfect. With Festival around the corner i took my instrument home and practiced 2-3 times. I played through all the song, and focused on the dynamics and put in "humph" in the music. Just like Mr. Birch said to our band. Also I made sure that in the March i play out because i was 2nd part, and i had a lot of counter melodic all parts in it. In the March i practiced the endings a couple of times, just to make sure i end with the band on the correct beat. I counted the rhythms in it so I knew what to do. In Chant Rituals i played the slower parts and tried to stay on beat with the help of my metronome. As Mr. Birch said our dynamics were important in Chant Rituals because it was a intense yet calm piece at times. I counted the beats when we had to sing, and i played the chromatic scale to add in the many accidentals in the piece. Lastly, in Prairie Songs I practice the decrease in notes part in the 2 stanza of the piece. This was very important to Mr. Shankles, so i made sure Sarah and I played out with the right articulation. Another thing on worked on is the slurs and the fast parts, i did this to stay with the band and make sure my teammates do not fall behind or rush. All in all i think our band is ready for Festival this Saturday, the clinicians really did help us!