26th February 2010

Today we didn't have class since it was a holiday.

23rd February 2010

Today some of our 12 bar blues were played. Mine was surprisingly among those that were played. I was very shocked, albeit happy, that I got a ten out of ten for it. I never thought I would get a mark like that, and was very pleased with the result. After we heard the high-scoring blues being played, we watched Ian sing and dance to "Sway" to make up for the assessment he missed God-knows-how-long-ago. Then, some more progresses of "All of Me" were checked. Among those in guitar, there was Emir and Aryo, I think. The assessment to play "All of Me" is due next week. Another interesting thing that happened today was that PLN turned off our power for a while, and it was dark. It was actually quite a new environment and it would have been very interesting to try to study in that condition. Too bad Binus has a generator, the darkness was eliminated in a matter of seconds. However, in the darkness there was one sole light that was still working, and when it shone down on Mr. Herry he looked like the cover of Queen's album, Queen 2.

19th February 2010

Today Mr. Herry checked several of our progresses in playing "All of Me". From guitar there was James and Budi. Everyone seemed to be doing pretty well, I think they'll all play great during the assessment. While I was hearing the performance, I was also tabbing my 12 bar blues for easier reference at the same time. Afterwards, Mr. Herry told us to do the reflection on our 12 bar blues composition, but not the performance itself.

16th February 2010

Today Mr. Herry asked us to submit our 12 bar blues. As it turns out, he sent us reminders to finish it last night, very late at around 12, so many people didn't finish the blues. I think he also reminded us the class before, but I forgot about it. Although I already finished my first draft, I still wanted to work on it and improve it, but since there was very little time, I didn't change it much. Instead, I gave Mr. Herry my blues (which he ironically found on his desk) and asked for his feedback. He told me which parts I did wrong (downbeat should be from chord, upbeat can be from scale), and fixed the last chord. After that, I fixed those mistakes and submitted the blues to him. At first I called it "Pingas Blues" but since it was too vulgar, I changed it to "Autistic Blues" instead. I stayed back in recess. After the recess, Mr. Herry checked our blogs and got really angry, ballistic even, at those who didn't heed his warning to update the blogs. We also learnt about the "walking bass" and the evolution of music, how blues is the ancestor of modern genres such as Rock, R&B, etc. Next time we are asked to play "All of Me" for yet another checking of progress.

12th February 2010

Today, Mr. Herry played to us most of our 12 bar blues compositions. There were many compositions that I really liked, and I wondered how people can just compose melodies like that in their heads without an instrument on hand, and notate every single note, complete with the rhythms. However, my own composition was lost, even though I already submitted it to Mr. Herry, so I didn't hear the song. I didn't really hear the melody in my head since I'm still new to music. Moreover, I thought that the 12 bar blues was, in fact, the song and not the improvisation, but it turns out to be the improvisation so I'll have to amend it sometime. Then, some of us from the guitar group (Mark, Bayu, and me) were asked to play the melody of "All of Me" in front. Since I didn't practice the song that much yet, I only played the first few notes of the song, and played the chords (which I have already learnt from the presentation and also from Mr. John) for the most part. I felt quite ashamed when playing the song since I couldn't do the whole song. I'm not so sure when, (I'll have to check the academic calendar later) but somewhere in the next sessions we'll have an assessment of playing "All of Me". It's a good thing that in instrument class we were taught how to play the melody.

9th February 2010

Today is the due date of our music individual booklets (containing most of the information in our group slide presentations, including one favorite musician from that era). Since my group did Swing Jazz, I picked Duke Ellington as my favorite musician. Thus, my report is about the Swing Jazz era and Duke Ellington. Since I had the Catholic-Buddhist Retreat in the weekend, I didn't have much time to do the work, so it's mainly last minute work. I was quite stressed when I tried to do the 15 page report in one night, but luckily I finished it. Since my printer was broken yet again, I had to submit the report in the second music session, right after the recess in which I printed and bound the report. Since I forgot to put in page numbers, I quickly scribbled them to at least have page numbers. One of the pictures was printed wrongly, but it's not really a major mistake. Mr Herry also checked our music blogs in front of the class, and those who didn't finish updating their blogs felt ashamed. After the split session, Mr Herry told us that we need to perform "All of Me" on our instruments several weeks after today. He then picked several representatives from each instrument group, along with the instrument teachers, to do a short performance of the song itself, so we can get an idea of how the song sounds like. Then, in the instrument class, we all practiced the song. In the guitar class, we learned the chords first. Since I already performed this song alongside the Swing Jazz group members, I didn't have much trouble with the chords. Mr Herry reminded us to upload all our blog entries as soon as possible to avoid loss of marks.

5th February 2010

Today wasn't a school day, it was PTC. Moreover, it was also the Catholic-Buddhist Retreat.

2nd February 2010

Today we learnt about the 12 bar blues. We heard the performances of the instrument teachers, they did on-the-spot improvisation and it was amazing. Then, we were checked on our 12 bar blues homework. We had a split session, so there was a recess afterwards. After the recess, we saw the presentation of Fusion Jazz group (they also performed the song "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz, it was pretty good). We also saw Bayu's part of the Ragtime presentation, since he was absent when the Ragtime group did their presentation. We all had fun watching the presentations. Since this friday is the PTC and the Catholic-Buddhist retreat, the individual reports and the 12 bar blues homework are pushed back to next week Tuesday.