Term 4 Week 7: May 21st-23rd 2013

• Theory Class:

- Tuesday: Today we received our real music sheet for the medley of Janger Bali and Suwe Ora Jamu. The combination of these songs will be assessed for our final assessment, which is performing a song by playing with violin. I think our class is going to perform all together as a small orchestra even for our  assessment because we also have to practice for the grade 12 graduation ceremony which will be held next Friday. I think the combination of these songs are quite easy for me, but then the melody is very nice, and these are not the songs that I usually practice on my violin, so it was more fun for me to play something different from what I usually play with my violin. Also, I enjoyed helping Pinka and Rilya on figuring out how to play the medley because it's the first time for them to actually play a formal song with violin. I think Pinka and Rilya had hard time in understanding and feeling comfortable with violin, but I tried my best to help them improve their skills in playing violin.

- Wednesday: Today we also took our whole session playing violin with the medley of Janger Bali and Suwe Ora Jamu, but in different variations. I think we did a much better job than yesterday because everyone had lesser mistakes, and I think Pinka, Rilya and others who played violin for the first time are also getting the melody of this song, and starting to catch up the original speed of the song. I was so happy that we could actually make a harmony out of playing only with one instrument. Now I also want to try playing other songs with my friends that can make different variations out of one song and one instrument because I feel so proud about everyone of us actually making a good orchestra.

- Thursday: Today we received another music sheet, which is the Indonesia Pusaka song. I was very excited that we got to play another song during the graduation, because if we only repeat one song over and over again, I thought it would be quite boring for the listeners. However I think this song is harder for those who are not violin students because in this song, we also have to use the "D" string in addition to "A" and "E" strings. It was quite hard to explain well to my friends on how we have to play for all the notes and whether the note they have plucked or played is in the right pitch or not. Hopefully we will get better starting from next week, because the assessment date is coming soon, and also the graduation ceremony is right after the assessment, so I think I need to help my friends more on playing this song with violin.

• Instrument Class:

WE DIDN'T HAVE INSTRUMENT CLASS AT ALL FOR THE WHOLE WEEK BECAUSE WE PRACTICED PLAYING VIOLIN FOR OUR ASSESSMENT AND GRADUATION CEREMONY WHENEVER WE HAD MUSIC CLASS. HOWEVER WE ALSO DID MDW IN OUR THEORY CLASS BEFORE OR AFTER WE ARE DONE PRACTICING THE VIOLIN FOR ALMOST TWO SESSIONS.

Term 4 Week 6 Videos

• G major scale three octaves

Since last week's exercise for g major scale three octaves was in two beats, this week I've played the four beats exercise for the scale, because I've already practiced for the right pitch last week. This week, I've not only concentrated on the pitch, but I also concentrated on the speed so that the sound will become perfect. 

• Suwe Ora Jamu

Since our class started practicing violin as an ensemble of a class with the song Suwe Ora Jamu both for violin students and for other students who first tried playing violin, this video is me practicing the song twice, first with pizzicato and second with argo. Since we learned what pizzicato is, I revised what we've learned in class in my video, and when I played in argo, I also considered which note I have to move the bow up and which note I have to move the bow down. 

Term 4 Week 5 Videos

• G major scale three octaves

For today, I went back to the original g major scale in three octaves with two beats for each note, because when I played with four and three beats, the pitch and the speed when I play the song is not even, and sometimes I also play the wrong note because my speed got faster. So I went back to the original beat and concentrated in playing slowly while considering the pitch.

• Concert in g minor - A. Vivaldi.

When I played until the second part for last week, my pitch was quite better, but the speed has increased towards the end of the song, and for one or two notes, I played the wrong note because of the fast speed. I didn't notice the next note because I was concentrating in playing the song faster. So this time I decreased the speed and tried to maintain it, while trying to get the right note for the entire two parts of the song with the right pitch.

Term 4 Week 4 Videos

• G major scale three octaves

As usual, I started practicing my violin by first exercising with g major scale in three octaves. This time, I practiced the exercise by playing three times for each note, because this exercise helps me to feel the rhythm of a song, and it also makes me to concentrate on the pitch for each note. So this time I exercised with three beats and tried to make better pitch.

• Concert in g minor - A. Vivaldi

I practiced this song until the 2nd part again, because when I first recorded in my previous video, the first part of the song was nice, but the second part of the song was very bad. The pitch was often out of tune, and the speed was also changing towards the end of the song. So this time I tried concentrating on the speed with the right pitch. 

Term 4 Week 2 Videos

• G major scale 3 octaves

This video is the first video for the second week of music. I am exercising in the video by playing g major scale in 3 octaves in 4 times for each note. It made me to have a faster speed in exercising so that when I play the song, I can play it faster even though the pitch is not perfect. 

• Concert in g minor - A. Vivaldi

Since I've played the first part of this song since term 3, I continued playing the next part of this song, where the entire harmony is getting faster with more notes together. So before playing this song, I have exercised the g major scale for 4 times for each note because I had to play faster with the next part in this song.

Term 4 Week 1 Videos

• G major scale 3 octaves

This is the fist video of me practicing my violin by first exercising with G major scale 3 octaves, which helps me to relax my fingers and get ready to play a song.

• Concert in G minor - A. Vivaldi

This is the song that I started playing at the end of term 3. Since I'm still interested in this song and I haven't finish playing this song, I chose this song for my second video after exercising with G major scale 3 octaves.

Term 4 Week 6: May 14th-16th 2013

• Theory Class:

- Tuesday: Today Mr. John was absent, so Mr. Herry substituted us. We first evaluated our Jingle composition as a group. First, we evaluated Rilya, Pinka and my jingle by listening to the composition from Finale. We got a lot of positive and negative feedbacks from our classmates, so I wrote them down on my journal and reflected on them for my future composition to get better than this one. When my group were discussing about our composition last week, we thought that our jingle is quite catchy even though the melody is entirely chilling and calming. However the feedbacks from our friends made us realise that not all audiences feel that way. Many of them told us that it is not quite catchy because of the calm melody, but we also got a lot of positive feedbacks, such as that our composition matches with the airline commercial as we wanted and that the simple and calm melody makes the audiences very chill and relaxed. 

- Wednesday: Today Mr. John was still absent, so Mr. Herry substituted us again. Today we continued playing our violin as a group. We tried exercising with our violins by playing 'A' and 'D' strings. Since I'm a violin student, it was a very easy thing for me to just play two different strings, but there were also a lot of my friends who were having first experience playing violin, so Mr. Herry asked the 5 violin students, including me, to assist the other 5 non-violin students by sitting next to them each other and helping them to sort out how to play violin with good posture and making good sound, so it wasn't boring at all to me and it was also very interesting experience because this was the first time for me to teach someone how to play violin.

- Thursday: Today Mr. John came back to our class, so we continued playing violin as a whole group of class. However we played in different variation from tester (but same song), so we got to play with pizzicato, argo and learned the down and up sign. Again, I got the chance to teach my friends next to me, and I hope my advises made them feel easier to play the violin because I was very eager in teaching them because it was so fun to watch them learn new things that I know and leading them to a better way of playing violin. 

• Instrument Class:

- Tuesday: We came back to theory class after lunch, and at first we finalised evaluating other group's jingle composition, and with Mr. Sadrakh, all of us tried playing violin for our final assessment, which is the "playing a song with string instrument". I'm quite excited about this assessment, because since I had an assessment on playing our own instruments in term 1, we didn't have ant other solo assessment on our instruments, so I'm very excited on choosing which song I'm going to play, and how 

i'm going to ply n a nice melody. I'm also very excited for other classmates too, because this time, all students have to have an assessment in playing violin, even though they are nit a violin student, so I'm very looking forward for this assessment.

- Wednesday: After the snack, we came back to our theory class and continued playing violin. We played the first line of "Suwe Ora Jamu" with Violin 1, 2 and Cello, and I think we were quite good, because m friends who were playing violin for the first time were also very good in playing the violin.

- Thursday: We didn't have instrument class today because we continued playing violin as an ensemble until the end of the music class. Also, we received our real MDW booklet today so we filled in our reflection on our essay assessment with today's daily reflection.

Term 4 Week 5: May 7th-9th 2013

• Theory Class:

- Tuesday: Since next week Tuesday is our submission day for the'Jingle Finale' assessment, our group (me, Rilya and Pinka) continued making the Finale Draft for out Jingle. Our entire melody is calm but it's quite catchy for us, so when we were done with our melody, I think it's going to a good song for certain commercials such as the airline or the mattress. However since we haven't converted our composition to Finale, we quickly have to convert the melodies and the chords in finale so that we will not miss the deadline, and we quickly need to get checked by Mr.John before we print it because we don't want to have any more error after printing out our work. 

- Wednesday: Today we didn't have music class at all because we had a seminar at this time with Mr. Peter and Jason B's mum, who is the chairman of the Lorena Transportation. We had to listen to some speeches given by the people working for Lorena Transportation, and we had some discussion about the importance of good roads and good transportations needed in Jakarta. Anyways, therefore we didn't have music class today.

- Thursday: We didn't come to school today, which means we didn't have music class because today was a public holiday in Indonesia. 

• Instrument Class:

- Tuesday: We didn't have "Instrument" class today because we had to gather again in our theory class in order to check our blog and MDW update. Since I haven't done week 1 and 2 for my blog, I will update them today with the 3rd and the 4th week. 

- Wednesday: We didn't have music class today because we had a seminar at this time.

- Thursday: We didn't come to school at all today because today was a public holiday in Indonesia. 

Term 4 Week 4: April 30th-May 2nd 2013

• Theory Class:

- Tuesday: Today was the performance day of our singing assessment. At first, Rilya, Pinka and I panicked a lot because we didn't get to practice together for the whole sessions last week because of the UN try out. At least we got to practice for the first session, and we were the second one to perform on the second sessions, so we still got some time to practice. We got confused at this point because we forgot how the lower pitch went, and we even got confused in he higher note that we used to find easily. Since we didn't have enough time, Pinka decided to sing the lower pitch together with Rilya, because Rilya was afraid if her lower pitch is not matching with the normal pitch. So after the practice during the first session, we had our assessment. At first when we sang, all three of us were not confident with our voices and were afraid of our pitch, so I think we sang really softly. But after the first trail, Mr. John knew our problem and told us not to be afraid of our pitches, and it doesn't matter if out pitches go off for once or twice, and that the most important thing is confidence and loud voice. So for our second and last time performing the song, I think we did much better with more confidence, so I'm quite satisfied with our performance.

- Wednesday: Today, Mr. John taught us about chord progression in C major chord. He taught us many different types of chords from a single scale, and it was very cool to here him playing each one of them for us. I think this would help us in composing our jingle later, because we also have to put various types of chords in our composition for back up music. However I'm still worried about the chords, because even after learning different types of chords, I don't know how to apply them in my composition or any type of composition, because I'm very not used to chords and haven't learned them for a long time.

- Thursday: Today we worked on our jingle composition. Today was the first day that we actually started composing for our final project. I struggled a lot today even after I've learned different variations of chords, because it was first time for me to work on the chords first before compositing by notations. I tried my best to get a good chord, but then I had to give up on them because I thought that it would be only wasting time if I'd been just struggling on chords. Besides, I can still get some help from my teachers and friends with the chords for my composition, so I just started with a melody. But the thing is, melodies aren't as hard as chords for me, but it's also very hard to get a catchy jingle from my own head by bringing out all musical talents I have in me. Eventually, I got only 2 bars for today out of 16 bars of composition, but I'm still grateful with the two bars, because since I've at least started on them, I'll be able to think of many different melodies related to the first 2 bars, so I'm hoping that my final draft will be submitted on time. 

• Instrument Class:

- Tuesday: Today we didn't have our instrument class because we've just started our singing performance (assessment) on our second session.

- Wednesday: Today we didn't have our instrument class again because we had to continue learning the chord progression, and Mr. John wanted us to fully understand to usage of chords in music.

- Thursday: We didn't have instrument class again today because we had to start composing our jingle, and therefore we had to spend both sessions in sitting in front of piano, thinking of our right chords for our jingle, and the catchy melody for our composition.

Term 4 Week 3: April 23rd-25th 2013

WE DIDN'T HAVE OUR MUSIC CLASS AT ALL FOR THIS WEEK BECAUSE WE'VE SPENT THE WHOLE WEEK EXCEPT FOR FRIDAY ON HAVING OUR UN TRY OUTS. EVEN THOUGH I'M NOT JOINING UN, PEOPLE LIKE ME WERE TO BE GATHERED TOGETHER AND BE FORMED AS A CLASS TO HAVE OTHER ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH, SO WE DIDN'T GET TO HAVE ANY NORMAL CLASSES AS IS IN OUR TIMETABLE. 

Term 4 Week 2: April 16-18 2013

• Theory Class:

- Tuesday: Today we didn't have music class because the whole grade 9 had National examination try out called UN. Since I'm not Indonesian, I didn't need to take the try-out, but since there were also other students who are not taking the UN, we had another separated class for students who are not joining UN which is not the normal class we usually have, so we didn't have our music class today. 

- Wednesday: Today Mr. John first explained about one of our projects which is writing an essay about 'how music influence the society'. Also, after the submission of the essay, we are going to have a singing assessment in singing Indonesian traditional song called 'Tanah Air". We tried singing "Tanah Air" after watching a video about the impact of music to education that can give us some inspiration in writing an essay. Luckily, since I'm not an Indonesian, I was not required the memorise the lyrics of the song because it's quite meaningless memorising a song without knowing their meanings. Also, Mr. John and Mr. Harry told us that we should try singing in different voices, so Rilya, Pinka and I practiced singing the song with different voices in a group. In my case, I sang the normal pitch, Pinka got the higher one and Rilya got the lower one. It was quite easy for all three of us to find the higher pitch of the song, but we struggled a lot in finding the lower voice for Rilya, so I think we really need to practice on finding the right voices and practicing with them.

- Thursday: Today we continued practicing on our singing assessment. I was quite relieved that we get to perform in a group this term even though we haven't figured out about the different voices, because if it was a solo performance I would have felt much more nervous. Anyways today we continued trying to figure out the lower voice without help from Mr. Harry. Finally we got to figure out the first line of the song for the lower voice, so for the first time we tried practicing with 3 different voices. It turned out that it sounds very nice with different voices, so with this little hope we got, we tried getting the lower voice for the rest of the entire song. Until now, we have figured out all the lower voices except for the highest note of the song, so we're wishing that we will get the note next week because we didn't much time today to figure out the entire song.

• Instrument Class:

- Tuesday: We didn't have instrument class today because of the UN try out.

- Wednesday: We didn't have instrument class today because we have spent our time in the theory class practicing for our singing assessment, and wrote our reflection for yesterday and oday. Also, we discussed about the a cappella we're going to sing on the song "Tanah Air". 

- Thursday: Today we only had few minutes in our instrument class, because we had no other classes spent on our instruments for this week. However Rilya and I still practiced for the lower note, and I helped her to find the right key because I will be singing the normal pitch. I think she was quite frustrated with the lower note because we spent a lot of time finding the right key, so I'm trying my best to help her find the key and hopefully we'll be able to create a great a cappella. 

Term 4 Week 1: April 9-11 2013

• Theory Class:

- Tuesday: Today was the first day of music for term 4. We received our assessment schedule today and discussed about projects we are going to have for this term. According to the schedule, we are going to have assessments such as singing the Indonesian song assessment,  composing jingle and writing an essay about the impact of music to the society.

- Wednesday: Today mr. John played chords with piano and guitar for us to guess what chord it is. It was very hard for me to get the correct answer because I've never learned chords before. Also, even though I've learned scales, when I try to convert them into triad chords mentally, it is very hard for me to think which chord or notes have natural, sharp or flat notes. Therefore in order to prepare for next chord test or composing my jingle, I think I need to practice more on chords and try to think fast when someone suddenly ask me questions about chords.

- Thursday: Today Mr.John gave us a worksheet about chords and scales that we had to answer. At first I filled in a worksheet where I have to write scales for certain notes and some chords from the same notes. We also discussed about the jingle that we are going to compose in a group of 3. I think I'm going to be grouped with Pinka and Rilya, so I might have to get some help from them with chords.

• Instrument Class:

 - Tuesday: Today was the first day of instrument class for term 4. Since it was the first day of instrument class, our string class did nothing at all. We only talked about our vacations during the holiday, and just talked about what we are going to do for this term. Because we didn't do anything for our instrument class, my friend Rilya and I played piano together, and I also listened her playing guitar.

- Wednesday: Today during the instrument class, I stayed in violin class. However I didn't get to play my violin because Mr.Sadrakh only checked Jason playing a song on Suzuki. Therefore for today I only watched him playing violin, but I really enjoyed today's class because I've ever played the song that Jason has played today.

- Thursday: Today we received a worksheet of this week's MDW reflection paper from Mr. Herry. We received this paper during the instrument class, and we had to submit it today, so I wasn't able to play my violin, but instead I concentrated on finishing the worksheet today, because I didn't want to delay my work anymore. Therefore I only wrote my reflection for this week, and listened to my other friends who played violin and piano.