So many things have happened this past month and a half. I got an on campus job and so I'm now working for Westminster's Performance Management. I'm usually either an usher or stage manager for the concerts/recitals on campus, but other times I will be found working in the box office selling tickets or editing programs. What's great about this job is that it basically revolves around my schedule. I can look at the concert dates and tell my boss which days I can make and which days I can't, which is such a great thing since my availability varies. The first time I started working was actually on Sunday when I was stage managing a faculty recital and I realized how awesome it is to get paid to make faces and dance backstage with the performers waiting to go on. However, I don't think the next time I work will be as much fun. I'm working in the box office on Saturday and Saturday is the day of chaos when the holiday tickets go on sale for WCC/Rider students and since it's only a three-hour event, it's going to be madness.
I know I said in my last blog that I liked the material in my Historiography class. Well, I should've waited a little longer before I told you that because I no longer like it, lol. There's just too much material to remember. Hearing the professor saying, "Ok, you need to study your notes and then reread pages 2-158 for your midterm," isn't exactly the thing that I wanted to hear, especially since the flash cards that I made solely from the notes were a little less than an inch thick when I stacked them up...and the flash cards were made of printing paper, not the thick index cards. Not only that, but I also had to memorize 50 chants and who wrote them (I really hate that because that's information that I shouldn't have to memorize. I can look that up if I really want to...)I studied for at least 12 hours for the midterm and I still struggled on it. As of right now, I don't care what grade I get, as long as it's passing so I can get out of it.
My piano lessons are going really well and my professor is telling me to start picking out some accompaniments to learn starting either the end of this semester or the beginning of next semester. He thinks that I'm ready to start learning how to accompany singers, especially since I will be doing that either in a classroom with a choir or giving private voice lessons to a student. To all of the voice majors, naturally the best book for me to choose for accompaniments would be the 24 Italian Songs and Arias since it's used so often, so I will be learning a couple of pieces from that.
I don't have any education classes this semester (I figured I'd take a break after nearly killing myself over the summer with my Critical Pedagogy class), but I have been going to several Saturday seminars. The one that I particularly loved was the one last week with elementary teacher, Phil Greco. For the past year, I've only heard about Critical Pedagogy from the books that I've read and the lectures about it in class, but this was the very first time I got to see it put into practice. As a student, I was having so much fun that I didn't notice that the seminar was 3 hours long. Instead of simply learning notation or giving a lecture, he gave us a project to do, which was to create our own video game and making a soundtrack using the instruments provided. This allowed us to use what we already know from home to put into use in class and then he gave us ideas to help us along. For the music teachers who learned Critical Pedagogy, he also satisfied all 4 learning styles and as a student, since he took attention towards the way I learn best, I was more than happy to work with him when he was teaching using the other 3 learning styles. It was amazing! Also, for the music teachers, his website is www.portraitsofpractice.com. He has video clips of projects he has done with his students, such as where his students got to pick a song and show the expression through movement. The kid in the video demonstrated expression using a scarf and at the age of 7, picked the overture to Mozart's Magic Flute...yeah I already know he's going to be like me when he's older, which is really scary.
Something really strange happened during my voice lessons last week. I always hum before I start singing, and I had really weird hiccups while I was humming. They didn't hurt and it felt like I could go higher, so I talked to Julian about it and we decided to explore it. When I started singing, I ended up hitting a Gb; the one an octave above the one sitting on the treble staff. That never happened before, and it was a shock to not only me, but to Julian as well. Also, I'm starting to be able to sing my scales much faster and with better agility. He told me today that he almost called in another voice teacher, who's a dramatic coloratura, to observe last week when all of this was happening. I don't know what this means, whether I'm a coloratura or not, but either way, I'm having so much fun singing my scales and warmups really fast...well, except for when I end up going out of control because I get too excited, lol.
I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures this time. I had a video that I wanted to show you of me playing one of my piano pieces, but it won't upload :( Oh well, I'll have plenty of pictures next time.
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