blahh.

keh so i practiced last night and i was planning on blogging about it tonight but im slowly dying of sleep deprivation and we have band tomorrow, so im gonna go to sleep blog about it tomorrow imstead when i can actually put my full effort into it and can think haha
Sorry!

Blogging assignment #1

For this assignment i chose to do Greg Patillo, the world renound beatboxing flautist. Greg is a professional flautist hailing from Brooklyn New York and is recognized as "the best in the world at what he does."

He went to school at the cleveland institute of music earning both his bacelors and masters degree there. He was taught his superior technique by one of the very best, Joshua Smith, the lead flautist in the cleveland Orchestra. after perfecting his playing technique through extensive schooling he moved to san fransisco, for a period, and was one of the founding members of the collaborative arts insurgency, a place where they have open mic once a week for upand coming artists or groups to perform in front of an audiance and start a fan base for themselves as well as get performing experiance. They opened in May of 2006 and have been successful and growing ever since. Currently Greg lives as a freelancing soloist as well as beng the lead flautist in groups such as PROJECT and the lalo quintet. Quite often Patillo is also a featured performer at The Box in NYC.

Since graduating school, Patillo has had a steadily growing fanbase both on and off of the nternet. His performance videos on youtube all have over 20 million hits and his myspace page has had a steadily growing number of friend requests from fans all eager to hear him perform. He has also been recognized for his amazing talents eing asked to appear in shows such as iCarly, on nickelodian and Lilly Alen and friends on BBC three in the UK. Last year he was one of 21 winners to recieve the the metropolitan transit authority's "Music Under New York" program which in essecnce gives him a permit to play in the subway and continue to extend his fan base all over NYC.

The piece i chose to look at by Greg Patillo is actually his rendition of the super mario brothers theme aka the ground theme. This theme is legendary and has been used in video games since the very beginning of super mario brothers over 2 decades ago all over the world. Prsonally i love super mario brothers and it is one of my favourite themes to a video game which i why i chose it. Greg Patillo takes the theme and places his own twist on it. First off, the piece is simple enough with a fairly simplistic melody but patillo adds in melodic scoops and riffs to make the melody more coomplex and intriguing. On top of this he adds in the beatboxing which blows my mind. He plays the piece in a manner where there is a consistent balance of the beatboxing and melody so that both are able to be heard equally and creates a texture to the piece that isnt heard in the original; more "rough", so to speak. That being said the essence of the game still comes across even with the beatboxing. I really like his use of accents throughout the piece to ephasize certain notes, as well as his use of dynamics throughout the different sections. Someties his tone suffered slightly and sounded slightly airy, however im sure that this is due to the beatboxing which would take a ridiculous amount of air on top of the aount already needed. I would really like to know how he trained his lungs to be able to hold such an amount of air, and be able to phrase so nicely with the beatboxing. His videos are thoroughly entertaining and as a flute player, his skill blows my mind.

Heres the link, enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crfrKqFp0Zg

Practice Blog #17

So after kiwanis last night i came home and did a bit of parcticing.
I started off doing some of the scale tudies from the purple book. I worked on the chorales in minor key signatures and then did some work on the chromatic scale at the back of the book and ran through the chromatic scale study on page 9.
then i moved on to teh red book and did some of the studies from there starting with 4.2 and working up from there, looking specificlly at studies with more difficult rhythms working on my sightreading skills.
after that i moved on to the blue book working through some of the songs at the back of the book as well as revisiting the rhythm study at the back. I found that this was somewhat difficult at frst because i hadn't done it in a while and had to think through the timing of some of the bars first.
After that i ran though the light eternal and rumble on the high plains in preparation for wednesdays challenge class. I didn't really feel like running the holst since we just played it haha, i thought that we deserved at least a silver in A class since i thought we played the suite better than Beal did but thats okay. I was also expecting medway to get a gold but...
anyway thats about it, prcticed for a total of about 40mins.

Pactice schudule 16

So tonight i started out by running through the chromatic scales as a warm up, i can now comftroably play almost the whole page; just a few minor problem places here and there but its much better than the beginning of the semester.
after that i ran thorugh some of the chorales from the purple book, some from class some not as well as some of the studies from the red book we have specifically looking at study number 4 from class and its accompanyment.
Then i ran through the holst suite for the test tomorrow.
i as planning on playing section 2 ofthe first movement as my difficult 8 bars but praciced them and can now play thme fine since i was only having trouble with the high Aflat, however im stull not wuite getting the articluation pattern with the slurs, so i can still do some work there and ran through the set of good 8 bars a couple times. Then i played the whole suite with the recording. I enjoyed this as a nice challenge because they have a quicker tempo and it forces me to really focus on the articluation paterns as well as work on quick finger movements which will help when we take it at a bit of a slower tempo with band.
Following that i ran through the other band rep before band tomorrow morning just as a refresher and something fun to do. I find that all of the trouble spots i had at the beginning of the semester with light eternal and rumble are gone now and that i am quite comftorable playing the whole thing.
I finished off the night running through my chamber choir rep. for tomorrow, going through the memory work etc. and that was it for my practicing:)

smart me(Y)

I appologize for my lack of practice last week, i had a huge amount of tests and assignments to do in lieu of midterms plus i worked late twice so my practicing schudule suffered a lot.

That being said i was a very intelligent person and forgot to bring home my instrument Thursday night after choir thinking i could grab it Friday, forgetting that we had no school, so the practicing that u was planning on completing for the weekend didn't happen either.
However I am going to practice extra hard this week to make up for it..

Practice Schudule 14. 15

So this is the report from the practice schudule on the weekend

Saturday i practiced for about 20minutes, mainly doing some of the scale and rhythm studies since i was somewhat played out of the band rep. As always, i began with the chromatic scale study on page 9 and worked through what was farmiliar but also went forward onto lines 5, 6 and 7. I found that these were surprisingly easy because i had been working on 5 for some time, however 6 and 7 are just beginning on one note higher so they came fairly easy to me, which i was quite happy with. I am finding that my ability to read sharps is now almost as comftorable as my ability to read flats which is good.
After that i went through the yellow book and picked some of the rhythm studies which we haven't done in class and worked through them. My ability to sightread rhythms has always been fairly strong howvere there were a few rhythm studies with 16th notes in thejm that were somewhat difficult. I found that at times i couldn't keep the tempo consistent, i would rush the 8th notes that followed them, so that is something for me to work on.
After that i ran through some of our class pieces, mainly pirates and bohemian and that was it.

Sunday I took to practicing the band pieces, since festival is right around the corner. I did a quick warm up with Bflat concert scale using different rhythm combos and then began rehersing the holst. Starting with the first movement, i played it through once and then lookes at the nit picky things such as where there is stacatto vs. sluring in the melody. Then i worked, once again, on the section after H. I am finding that it is becoming increasingly more comftorable for me to play aside from the high A flat which I always play as a high A natural since the fingering is more of a natural movement; i worked on the riffs with the high A flat for a while playing them slow at first and i had them down pat until i played the entire section and went back to playing them as A naturals. Im going to continue to work on that. After that i ran through the second and fourth movement which are very comftorable to play and then just for fun i played the third movement along with the recording. Its somewhat awkward but a lot of fun to play.

Practice Blog 13

Just got home, from variety is; i thought it went well!:)
im super happy with chamber's perroremance tonight,

I practiced yesterday after i got home from choir/chamber rehersal for about 20minutes.
I started out by running through the chorale that we have to play in our groups for our test later this week, then i ran through chromatic scales and looked at some of theminor scales that wwe haven't covered yet.
After that i ran through the band pieces, and the pieces that we are doing in class as well.
I breifly looked at some problem spots but mostly just ran them through working on flow and transitions etc for the band pieces, and then some sight reading for the class ones; though we have played them in grade 9.
It was a short practice session but i accomplished what i wanted to do, and am planning to practice at least once again later this week.