Please see a counselor or a staffer for suggestions on how to get the most out of your blog writing. Quality blogging accelerates your learning. Sharing your discoveries, insights and questions helps others reflect on what’s possible, and gives credence to their discoveries! Your blog needs to include facts (what’s happening?), feelings (yeah; about those facts), and the future (what’s upcoming up next?). Include things you’ve learned, and things you really want to learn.
Highlights of our camp life yesterday and this morning:
TUESDAY EVENING:
- Adventures in music theory (two levels)
- Quality time to practice, blog and research
- Eating together (pulled pork sandwiches!),
WEDNESDAY:
- Warmups w/ Ms. Gordon: I LOVE TO SING: Singing is a whole body experience!
- Introduced to Jason Mraz’s I WON’T GIVE UP. We’re dedicating this to our hero, Ms. Hubbard! It took about 37 minutes to introduce all six steps of this piece. Lots of success already.
- Tackled lots of loose words, phrases, rhythms and pitches on I SING YOU SING and THE LOOK OF LOVE. Good work, but more is needed…
- Rehearsal with our rhythm section began and ended with improvs – all campers soloed. Very cool, very musical conversations.
- Got off-book on a portion of BLUE SKIES, so we could get on-mic. It’s easy to forget about keeping two fingers between our lips and the mic’s bale.
- Soloists have to move in 1/4″ (a bar early) for a good EQ and to give the Audio Engineer time to make our mic hot.
- When we’re not the soloist (i.e. accompanying), we move our lips away from the mic 1/4″ (a little early) or we’ll bury the soloists. Burying the soloists is not a good thing.
- We rehearsed all but two of our pieces w/ the band!
- We did some multitrack recording with Mr. Lee Cheng!
After we blog today, we’ll:
- Continue vocal techniques with Ms. Gordon and Dr. B
- Tackle SATIN DOLL and WHEN I FALL IN LOVE in our breakout (chamber) choirs
- Wrap up our day w/ a rehearsal in Schrott with our rhythm section.
- Commuters will dismiss, dorm folks will go to dinner and evening activities.
So far, we’ve…
- applied Dr. B’s Six Steps to most of our music (1. Text, 2. Rhythms, 3. Text in Rhythm, 4. Pitches, 5. Text in Rhythm w/ Pitches, 6. Memorize)
- experimented with many jazz styles (Blue Skies, I Sing You Sing, The Look of Love, I Won’t Give Up, 12 bar latin, circle singing,
- learned about the roles of the rhythm section instruments: the bass (the rhythmic and harmonic foundation of the jazz band), the drums (sets the style), and the piano (supports all of the other instruments, can also solo)…
Soon, we’ll explore more of the history of vocal jazz. Perhaps we’ll learn enough to introduce our own charts at Friday’s 5 pm gig.
Life is good when we Work hard and Play Hard.
The best part of Wed is when Dr. B explains the lyrics of “I won’t give up”. It reminds me of a short interview of Jason Mraz about why he wrote this song.
“‘I Won’t Give Up’ was written selfishly. As many of my songs are, I write for the purpose of understanding what’s going on in my life, my position in the world, processing that lesson and that miracle that I’m learning. Seeing it on the page, proving to myself that I understand the lesson, that I’m applying it to my life, and that I can move on. Ultimately it was about, you know, regardless of what happens in this relationship, I don’t have to give up on loving this person, or loving myself, or give up on whatever my dreams are. Even though its written through the filter of relationships, it’s not necessarily specific for relationships. For me, the true meaning exists in the bridge saying ‘I don’t want to be someone who walks away so easily, I’m here to stay and make a difference.’ That is for all of us. We all have something that we’re fighting for or that we’re striving for. Whether we want to coach our soccer team to victory or lose five pounds in a month, whatever it is, there’s nothing too small worth fighting for and there’s nothing too big worth going after.”
“I won’t give up” is NOT only about romantic love. It can be about your relationship with your family. It can be about your dreams. Put your own message into the song while you rehearse and perform it. It will elevate your performance and the sacred time on stage. =)
http://www.billboard.com/articles/review/1067020/jason-mraz-love-is-a-four-letter-word-video-track-by-track
I almost forgot…
#TeamAlto foreva!! You rocked it today, altos! Making me proud. 🙂
I am so inspired by reading all of your blogs. I don’t know if that statement can even hold the amount of emotion that I feel when I think about all of the wonderful things that have already happened in this camp. Some things on my mind…
-The COOLEST, most magical moments are those that are unplanned.
-Watching everyone improvise today…multiple times, was absolutely inspiring.
-The best thing to hear as a teacher is news that something you said to someone helped them grow.
-Though the performance on Friday will be fabulous, DON’T FORGET all of the cool experiences that we have had so far!! The journey is definitely more important than the destination, and that is what will stay with you forever. 🙂
And finally,
I am inspired by each and everyone of you. Seeing everyone try new things and grow makes it all worth it. I would do it again in a heartbeat!!
And to Judy….here is your shout out. We miss you more than you know, but we carry your lessons with us this week to pass on to the campers! I hope to see you soon!
I should have known Mrs. Judy Hubbard would be reading our blogs! Can’t wait to see you again!
I’m glad everyone is learning how to handle themselves with a microphone and use it to really bring out their solos (and back off when need be!) It can be scary the first time trying a piece on mic and hearing yourself in the monitor.
I’m loving the beginner improv session and everyone is so much more confident improvising! Improv can really be the highlight of jazz and makes you a better musician!
We’ve barely even looked at “I Won’t Give Up” and it already sounds amazing! (We’ll let the mic nervousness wear off to see it really shine!) This testament to Judy Hubbard is going to sound wonderful.
Check the day you’re commenting on before you post your blog!