I'm still here!

Hi there!
So, I haven't blogged in a while. Five months actually. But don't worry, I'm still here. I've just been busy and sort of forgot about blogging. Since I last blogged on my birthday in October, we've been having a great year for all my music groups. The little group I set up had tons of fun at our remembrance day ceremony back in November. During that month, we also had our first divisional choirs concert of the year, went to choral fest with divisional choir, school choir and jazz choir and every performance was lots of fun! We performed with the WSO for their annual Prairie families Christmas concert and the jazz choir performed at the first annual jazz concert for the school and at our student recognition ceremony. There was also the annual winter concert featuring all of our concert bands, our wind ensemble, percussion ensemble and the choir! That was one busy month and so much fun.

Then, in December, we had our annual candlelight concert with the divisional choirs and it was splendid as usual. There was, of course, performances of Shrek: the musical and Legally Blonde at Sturgeon and Westwood respectively. The school choir warmed hearts when we sang at the school's senior Christmas dinner and I loved seeing many of my friends perform in their school's Christmas concerts. One amazing and very busy month!

January may not have been filled to the brim with concerts but it was certainly busy, preparing for exams and festivals with as much practice as we could possibly fit as well as performing standard solos for each other in jazz choir.

Moving on to February, I was kept very busy with events such as my Brother's wedding, the school open house and a performance at music celebration. February was also a particularly busy month for our school's bands with each one having a performance at the provincial optimist festival. It was my first festival in about three years and I had so much fun with both bands despite having a concussion from a few days earlier and I would not trade that experience for anything.

March has been just as busy and I'm not expecting it to slow down anytime soon. This month, I took third place in a French speaking competition, just behind one of my best friends and performed at Winnipeg Music festival twice, each time with amazing groups of singers I could not imagine having spent the year without. We took three gold medals between the two performances and were even invited to the annual choral excellency concert for some of the top choirs at the festival. I could not be more proud. Just last week, the jazz choir sang at a clinic with Jeremy Fox and we had so much fun singing and laughing together. We're growing every day and I'm really grateful for the chance to have this year with these guys. It's one of the most amazing groups of friends I have been fortunate enough to find and I have to stop once in a while and recognize that. Everyone helps each other, we laugh together, we make mistakes together and three or four times a week, we grow together.

Choir and band really are some of the most amazing experiences of my life and they're not going to stop. In the next three months of school, our performances will include a special coffeehouse night just for jazz choir that features each singer in a solo of their own with a professional rhythm section. The same week, all of the jazz bands will be performing at our big band dance, a time to laugh and dance and let loose with our friends while listening to amazing, live music performed by people we see every day. The day after the big band dance, we have Cabaret! a night featuring each of our three divisional choirs and a few soloists and small groups mostly singing show tunes and a few pop songs done by the choir. It's an amazing night every year and one of the best concerts I can remember performing at. In may, we've got four concerts, all worth getting excited about! The divisional choirs will have their final concert for the year which promises to be an amazing and emotional event as we say goodbye to our seniors with the traditions that never fail to make just about half of our senior choir and many parents cry as we wish everyone a good rest of their year and listen to the seniors sing some beautiful solos. In the same month, we say goodbye to some more seniors at our school's band final concert and in the final choirs' concert, both wonderful events one day after another with some of the most beautiful music and some selections that are always so much fun to learn. The one other concert that we already know about, is a new one. The jazz choir has been invited to sing at a Young Humanitarians event for the Manitoba Teacher Society. We're not totally sure what's going on yet but we're definitely excited for it!

So that's basically my entire year in music. Seems busy, doesn't it? As busy as it is, it keeps me going and It's how I've made some of the best friends I've got who are always there for me, no matter what's happening.
So, that's all for now.

Have  good week!

January

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had wonderful holidays and i wish you all the best in the coming year.

So I haven't been posting a lot recently. I've been really busy but it's been a lot of fun in choirs and musical and everything I do.
I'm going to be posting a few things this week and then I won't post for another few weeks because exams are coming up and I need to study.
I'm going to put up the prologue for my novel and the introduction for my collaboration project. I also want to post the lyrics for a few of the songs I've written recently.

Have a good weekend!

Listening Log #2 2013/2014

A Tisket A Tasket by Nikki Yanofsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAjz-I9AN7c
October 27-29
1. When there are held notes (not very often), she has a little bit of vibrato but she doesn't really use very much.
2. She has a very bright and quite focused tone for this song and it certainly fits!
3. This performance has a very fun attitude and she was definitely into it and dancing around the stage just really enjoying herself.
4. She did a lot of stylizing and it's difficult to pick specific places. She spoke a few parts and tried to give herself a rough tone in a few places. There were some well-placed melodic leaps and even a little bit of melisma. I could keep going for a while but I think that those are the prominent techniques she used in this particular performance.
5. This song is naturally fast-paced and Nikki's version was no different. It's a very fast and enjoyable swing tune.
6. There was definitely interaction. She was talking to the band at one point and when she wound sing something, they would have an answer ready that fit with it. As much as she stuck to the idea of the melody, she seemed to be improvising the whole time and played off of the band.
7. Nikki definitely has a very creative interpretation of this melody. I love this song and I've listened to it many times but I have never heard two singers sing it the same way. I've heard people try to copy others but it's never the same. She is very creative and I loved the way she changed it to make it her own and to fit with that particular band.
8. This is just very fun text that explains itself. She had a letter in a basket for her mom but she lost the basket and some girl picked it up and naturally, she wanted to get her basket back.
9. In this performance, there is not only the piano, drums and bass but also saxaphones and flutes and a few trumpets.
10. I did believe her in this performance and I think that was because she was having so much fun. You can't be having that much fun onstage if you don't believe what you're singing.
11. I have to say, I love this song and this singer and this is definitely one of my favourite versions, if not my absolute favorite version of a well-known song.

Listening Log #1 2013/2014

For my first listening log, I listened to "One Fine Thing" performed by Harry Connick Jr.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdaGMxrtYfM
I wrote this response yesterday (Monday, October 28th)
1. He doesn't use a lot of vibrato in this piece but it is present at the end of the phrases, especially very subtly at the end of some of the longer notes.
2. Harry Connick's tone is very difficult to describe. The best way I can think is to say that it is Warm and rough.It has the warm qualities to it but there's a certain "scratchiness" for lack of a better word that gives it a beautifully rough sound.
3. I think that this song has a certain mood of awe and apprehension. With the sound he gives, even before I looked at the lyrics, I could tell that it was about him falling in love just from the way he sang it. He seems to be in awe of someone and it's amazing how muich of a message he can convey with just his voice.
4.  He uses a lot of inflection, especially when there are repeated notes. Of course he also uses subtle vibrato at the end of his phrases but there isn't very much else.
5. One Fine Thing definitely has a strong swing groove and it's a fairly slow tune. It's not super slow but it's definitely a bit slower.
6. From what I could tell on the recording, he doesn't seem to be interacting with the rhythm section very much. The rhythm section follows him quite well but they don't really interact at all.
7. He sings the song as written with a little bit of vibrato to finish phrases but I would expect this because it's one of his tunes that he didn't just learn, he wrote it and was the first to sing it.

8. The text of this song can be found at http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/harryconnickjr/onefinething.html and is all about how much he loves this woman and he wants to marry her. He says how much he thinks about her and how wonderful she is. In the last part, the lyrics are "I'm thinking the single line is overrated So I'll loiter and I'll linger And I'll try to get a ring around your finger" He is just saying how much he wants to marry her.

9. The accompaniment in this song starts with the drums (on one of the toms) and throughout the piece you can hear a piano and a bass.
10. I think this performance sounds very honest and he seems to really mean it. I'm not sure what more I can say at this point.
11. Personally, I love this song and his voice. I will definitely continue to listen to more things by Harry Connick Jr. 

Listening Log

Another year, another listening log.
Hi again! So, just like last year, I am typing this singlehandedly so please ecxuse any spelling mistakes I don't catch. This time, I was almost in a car accident about 4 hours ago and may have hyper-extended my shoulder once again plus I have a sprained wrist. Anyways, as always I am enjoying choir(s) and all my other music so once again, I will be writing listening logs for jazz choir.
Here is this year's form:
Name of Tune:
Date: (I guess when I wrote the report. That will probably be a different day than when I post it because I'm not usually at home and on my blog when I'm doing this.)
Artist/ Group:
1. Did the singer use much vibrato?
2. Describe the singer's vocal tone:
3. What was the overall modd/emotion/attitude of the performance?
4. Did the singer stylize much, and if so, in what ways?
5.What was the tempo and rhythmic groover of the song?
6. Did there seem to be much interaction between the singer and the players?
7. Did it seem that the singer had a creative interpretation of the melody of did they primarily sing it as written?
8. Explain what the text is about.
9. What was the instrumentation of the accompaniment?
10. Did you "believ" the singer? Did it sound honest?
11. Personal comment about the song/ performance. What did you think of it?

Sick.

Hi again everyone! How are you all doing?
I'll start. So, I love my classes and they seem like a lot of fun but I think I would enjoy them more if I could keep up. No, it's not that they're hard classes, for the most part it's concepts that I understand, pretty easy to grasp. The problem is; I can't see. You're probably wondering how I can finish writing this whole thing if I can't see but I just can't read very well up close. Everything goes blurry and just doesn't work. So yeah, to write this post, I have the font sent to largest. I'll set it back before I post it though. Anyways, I've got that issue plus I missed three days of school because I had choir camp which, by the way, was absolutely awesome! I always love choir camp but this really was the best year ever!
So yeah. School is great and I'm sure it will get even better once I go to the eye doctor's on Tuesday and hopefully end up getting glasses. Otherwise, I don't know what to do. Either way, it's going to mean a LOT of catching up.
Another small issue: It's allergy season. I have a lot of allergies and right now, I also have a really bad cold because some people came to choir camp with colds and it spread. There is actually a fair group of us who are sneezing now. So, not the greatest September in history but, I'll live.
Either way, I'm still managing to have some fun in my very tight schedule of doing what I love.
I hope you're all having a great school year!

School

Hi again everyone!
So, school starts for me tomorrow. I'm actually pretty excited and everyone else I've been talking to is too! After an entire summer with my friends, at camps and on and off crutches, I'm still on crutches and I can't wait to go back to school. I've got friends, great teachers, fun classes and great choirs. I wish everyone could be this happy with their life. I may still be on crutches and wearing a wrist brace but this is going to be a great year either way.
Have a great September everyone!