SUMMARY
Today is our second day on our own. What did we accomplish this time? What new things did we learn? May I introduce you to READING ON?!
LEADERSHIP ACTIVITY
I achieved progress on my personal projects and experimented with what I learned in my labs. I played around to find inspiration for another original composition for the end of the session.
PRACTICE ROOM (INSTRUMENT LESSONS)
Using the sheet music I have so far, I practiced the parts I composed for my personal project to make sure they’re playable and ready to record when everything is complete. I fixed any errors and parts I simply didn’t like as I went through and recorded each part to make sure they sound good as real instruments. Sometimes, MIDI doesn’t really help when it comes to which part sounds good with another in real, physical instruments.
CLASSROOM (THEORY & ANALYSIS)
As I worked on my cover for Eterna City from Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, I figured I should analyze and deduct the piece as I write and compose parts for this song. If anyone hasn’t figured it out already, I plan to alter the instruments used for my cover so it’s not only playable for the instruments I have access to, but so I can be creative and add extra parts to enhance the theme. I did what I usually do when listening and analyzed how each instrument is used. Each instrument has its own role, whether it being a section or a singular instrument by itself.
LAB (THEORY PRACTICED)
I decided to mess around with what interesting chords fit the most with my guitar. I went ahead and did my researched and watched 5 Easy Ways to Use and Write with Diminished Chords. I learned a great number of nifty tips from this video and explored these concepts with my piano and guitar. Here are some notes I made for future reference:
- Diminished chords are great for transitioning chords that are a tone away from each other
- The diminished chord for transitioning should be the chord between the two chords you want to transition from and towards
- The finished chord yields lots of tension which heavily anticipates transitioning towards a satisfactory chord
- Diminished chords can be used with a minor chord to play a harmonic minor scale over the jam [ii(dim) – i] or [i – ii(dim)]
- The minor scale and the pentatonic minor scale could be used as well
- ii(dim) – V – i
- It’s a great way to transition to a key change
OUTSIDE (CREATIVITY & THE BRAIN)
As I took my brain break, I went and listened to my old works and compositions. I’m really proud of what my past self has done and I hope to get some inspiration from my past self to make a new song as my end-of-session goal. As I listen, I thought of how much potential I have where I can think of compositions on the spot. Those times when I made those past compositions, they just hit me and I just couldn’t stop until I finished. That made me wonder, how am I going to unleash that full potential?
CONTROL ROOM (RECORDING & MIXING)
I proceeded to resume my progress with my compositional part in my personal project cover. I discovered that it’s best to work in chunks since putting all parts in at once could be overwhelming. Usually, I’d start with the piano chunk because that part takes the longest to write out of all of the instruments used due to the chords and articulations.
WHAT I LEARNED and PROBLEMS I SOLVED
I learned a lot more about music theory and the usage of diminished chords. I really enjoyed how I was able to grow even more on what I thought I struggle with. Chords were always a thing I understood the least in my past journey with music and now that I’m understanding it more and more encourages me to experiment and be creative.
TODAY’s ACTIVITY EVALUATION
Content (The WHAT)
Rating: OK – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – HIGHLY ENGAGED
Rating: 5
My own exploration and research got me to learn further down the road in music theory.
Process (The HOW)
Rating: OK – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – HIGHLY ENGAGED
Rating: 5
Nearly all of them I enjoyed since I can add variety to my exercise and learning when it comes to music.