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WEEKLY BLOGS
The journey of a growing multi-instrumentalist and her composing.
Week nine! How exciting!!! I have mixed feelings about this project nearing its end, I'm happy to almost be finally be finished, but it also lets me reflect on the entire project.
This week has been pretty productive! I've managed to write an entire trumpet solo, and I've continued to compose sheet music. Although, like I've said in previous blog posts, I'm unsure if I'll keep the final score. I ran into a few issues this week, one of which was losing my saxophone ligature. Hopefully I can find some time this weekend to stop by Counter-Point Music in downtown Mocksville to grab one. I've also been really good about playing my trombone consistently as well as my saxophone (until I lost my ligature, of course.) I'm super proud to have made so much progress this weekend, I took the entire day yesterday and dedicated it to writing my solo. I also managed to make a few album covers (although, would it even be considered an album? Even if it's only one song? I have no clue...) I managed to link my Instagram and Twitter account to my website as well, and I linked my Weebly website to my Instagram and Twitter too. As far as composing goes, I'm still struggling to incorporate certain instrument's such as my tambourine and alto saxophone, but I'll fit it in somehow.
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Phew, so it's been eight whole weeks already? It's definitely time I buckle down and push through the writing process. It's funny to think that I had an entire step-by-step process at the start of this project and now I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing anymore. But that's what makes this project a blast!
This week I mainly focused on transposing the beginning of the song into a software called Musescore 4. However, I made one huge mistake. I didn't think to jot down the notes I was playing, But with the beginning of the song starting off slow and going into an accelerando, It wasn't too difficult to decipher the notes. I also somewhat learned how to write sheet music for percussion, which was a tad bit confusing, and still is. I'm still on the fence on whether I should continue to write sheet music for the piece, but I'll figure it out as I start to wrap up my writing. This week I really need to work on finding transition points throughout the piece, or possibly add movements. It's really confusing for me because I have two really catchy melodies, but they don't fit hand in hand. So, I think listening to other types of music will help greatly. This week wasn't as productive as I would have liked it to be. However, I still made huge progress. With that being said I've finalized my genre of music (I hope), and I've also figured out which guitar chords ill be using. My English teacher Mr. Barker, gave me the amazing idea to incorporate my girlfriend into my project! I had a few ideas, like letting her play the maracas, or hit the tambourine, but with Rylie (my girlfriend) being a guitarist I thought that would be the most fitting to let her play some chords I picked out.
The chords I chose for my song are A minor, D minor, and E. So, the plan as of right now is to let Rylie play the chords for the song, and ill play the melody on my guitar. Not only has Rylie volunteered to play guitar for my project, but she's also been helping me pick names for the song as well. I feel like I have made decent progress, but I definitely need to pick up the pace. I need to start working with my other instruments as well as composing the final piece. To help with my composing I bought manuscript paper, So if I'm humming a tune that sounds fitting for my piece, ill jot it down. This week I ended up being a few days behind on my blog posts. So, instead of writing my blog post for the week, I was practicing my instruments. As of lately, I've been experimenting with my trombone by using a trumpet mouthpiece. As far as I know, not many people play trombones with a 3c mouthpiece.
I say that because when I started playing trombone I noticed a change in my trumpet playing and I freaked out. So, I put up a Reddit post (I hate Reddit and I only used it as a last resort.) After a few hours, I got a few replies, some of which weren't helpful at all. But there was one that stood out to me, someone recommended an alto trombone mouthpiece. My first thought was "Pft okay, who's paying for that...". But then it occurred to me, why not use a trumpet mouthpiece? And surprisingly it worked, not as you would think, but close enough. So yeah, there's a little background story on my trombone. Along with practicing my brass instruments I've also purchased a tambourine and some maracas! If you were to ask me six weeks ago about buying a tambourine I'd definitely say your out of your mind. I would have never thought that my music would need instruments like tambourines and maracas, but here we are. I had the random idea to get them because for some reason I thought of salsa music when I was composing. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but now I have to use what I have. |
AuthorI'm Hannah Baldwin, I'm a sophomore in highschool and I'm apart of my high-school Symphonic Band and marching band. I play multiple instruments such as trumpet, alto saxophone, trombone and guitar. I love composing music. Archives
April 2023
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