Category: EDCI306A (Page 1 of 2)

FPPL and lesson reflection

December 6, 2019 / kirbyjarvis / 0 Comments

In our music lesson teaching our class about the basics of the West African drum the djembe we brought the first peoples’ principle (FPPL) Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story into the classroom. We used this principle because of the goal of our class is a social studies lesson as well as a musical one. Throughout the entirety of the intro to the lesson, we gave the children an in-depth historical lecture about the origins of the drum and what the drum was meant for back when it was first brought into West African culture. We also talked about how each drum was unique to the owner as the wooden portion of the drum represents its connection to the family. The wood would be telling the family tree story of the owner connecting the youth (fruit and leaves) and the ancestors (the roots underground). From this incorporation of the FPPL our goal was to not only introduce some new and interesting information to our class but to also show them how important it is to remember that musical instruments are so different all around the world and that it is important that before we chose to want to experiment and play with them, we must respect the historical content of the instruments.

The process of creating this music plan was pretty seamless. We begun by choosing the subject we wished to interrogate into our lesson which Sam and I just picked the social sciences more specifically social studies, we chose this subject because we didn’t want to double up on any subjects. From there it was Maddy who thought of the great idea of drumming and found the video that would be the base of our assignment. We split the work up by looking at all the music lesson plan sections and splitting them off according to how much work each required. I got to make up the physical lesson plan and teaching cues; which I was more than happy to do because it makes me comfortable knowing exactly what is going on. The actual lesson I thought was quite successful, again we all just split up the parts of the lesson and made sure everyone would get a chance to talk and we decided that if anyone had any extra opportunities or felt that someone else needed assistance in their portion we would just chip in with comments. It was my job to teach the warm-up lesson, which went smooth after watching the video, I felt that I had a great voice and teaching cues which the class all listened to me, the class was also engaged and non-disruptive throughout all my teaching. I hope that the class enjoyed the lesson as much as it seemed like in person and I hope they all felt that they got to not only have fun but also learn something they didn’t know before.

Final Evaluation Video

November 26, 2019 / kirbyjarvis / 5 Comments

Music Blog #6 (legitimate)

November 25, 2019 / kirbyjarvis / 0 Comments

It is now the eve before I have to hand in my final musical growth video for music and I am not going to lie I am nervous. It took me over 2 weeks to memorize how to play the beginning picking of Fast Car and I am still not happy with my pace or with my transitions from chord to chord. I realized that I took far too much time and effort working on the beginning intro part of the song and now my usual easy strumming abilities are being compromised throughout the rest of the song. The resources that are assisting me throughout this process have been “play with me” youtube tutorials and writing down cheat notes for strumming patterns and for my picking patters. As noted in my last blogs I wanted to attempt to understand how the picking pattern diagrams work, however, after many attempts of googling and referring back and forth from my ukulele to the online pattern diagrams, I realized that is for my best interest that I should just memorize how the YouTuber plays and then just forget about learning to read these diagrams for the time being. It is not all bad news though, although my picking and my strumming are not to my expectations my singing hasn’t failed me. Fast Car is my all-time favorite song and it is my goal to be dancing my first dance at my wedding to this very song (preferably with Tracy Champman live singing) so the lyrics come easy to me and I find myself naturally singing alone to my playing. Because Fast Car is one of my most favorite songs I think that this is part of the reason why I am feeling so discouraged about my process of learning to play this song. I wish to play this song to the best of my abilities and do give this song the justice it deserves.

Even though this is my final blog required for EDCI 306 this does not mean that I am stopping my ukulele playing or giving up on Fast Car. It is important to me that I can bring music into my future classroom as a teacher and I can just imagine how cute it would be learning new songs for my students every week as we sit for carpet time. We will see how tomorrow goes for filming and hopefully I will feel more confident by the time of my last practice session tonight.

Music Blog #5 (legitimate)

November 15, 2019 / kirbyjarvis / 0 Comments

It is now the 2 weeks of learning to play “Fast Car” on the ukulele and my fluidity in playing the intro to the song hasn’t changed much. It is still difficult for me to progress smoothly through the picking pattern and to match my tempo to the tempo of the actual song. One of the most annoying things I am finding it how I can play the strumming pattern and the chords at a tempo I am happy with, however, I cannot change tempo just when the song starts getting easy so I am finding myself having to play the strumming annoyingly slow to match my introduction. Another issue that has been a longterm one throughout all my ukulele playing is I seem to have a hard time controlling my fingers and getting them to go where I want them to. I believe this is partly due to lack of mobility of my fingers as they are quite small and lack the ability to stretch, but also, I find myself looking gat them trying to move them and they simply refuse. This may be an issue of beginning the ukulele or could be a legit mobility problem (needless to say I searched this problem on the web and couldn’t find an answer that made me happy). At this point in my learning, I only have a week left until I have to submit my video, this concerns me slightly because I feel like compared to my progress on “Riptide” my progress on “Fast Car” is kind of pathetic. I know that I am still just beginning to learn the ukulele and that picking is extremely difficult especially when adding in singing and strumming later on. Yet, I have 10 days to improve and try my best to reach this goal so there is no giving up now. I am starting a new plan of action by practicing each picking sequence and change on its own until I am happy with the tempo and consistency, and then after strumming them all together. I hope this will help me feel more confident and agile in the picking patterns and will also lead to the strumming sounding a lot more fluid. I will post my final reflection blog the night before the final evaluation to see how these next few days go, hopefully, I will see the progression I want.

Music Blog #4 (legitimate)

November 1, 2019 / kirbyjarvis / 2 Comments

My goal (according to my growth plan) for the next learning evaluation is to be able to play the intro to “Fast Car” by Tracy Champman. My ultimate goal for this aspiration is to be able to pick (this is a group of hand and finger techniques a string musician uses to set strings in motion to produce audible single notes) the intro to “Fast car” in a fluid, audible way and then to play and sing the rest of the song with the simple strumming chords and pattern. Today was one of our personal growth days where we were allowed to go off on our own to practice for our final evaluation. I decided that my ending goal for the day was going to be to very scarcely learn the chords and the picking pattern for the introduction. Today was also the day that I learned what picking even was! I had no idea that it required both chords being played and individual fingers both plucking by themselves and all together at the same time. I also was forced to learn how to read what a picking pattern sheet music looks like, however, I ended up still getting very confused by the numbering of the sheet music and usually ended up listening to my online youtube tutorials more instead of trying to read the music. I find that the video tutorials are the easiest way for me to learn how to play these songs, and the video I chose to use to learn Fast Car was a YouTuber who went by the channel name “Ukulele Cheats” https://youtu.be/EEJQjs76qf8This YouTuber I found to be very helpful because they showed the tutorial firstly playing the entire song, then they introduced the chords breaking them down and then intro picking section and then playing them over and over again, and finally they ended with demonstrating the beginning and explaining how to pick each line. By the end of the free-play session (about 1 hour), I was able to play the intro to Fast Car while picking. The picking was in no way fluid and might have very much been only audible to me, however, it was a huge accomplishment in my ukulele playing and gave me confidence that I will not have a problem playing this in a little over a week in front of a screen. I feel this confidence because after I pick the intro to the song I am going to play the rest of the song just strumming the chords and singing, I chose this because It gives me the opportunity to match my voice to the instrument and to worry about my singing more. For the next few weeks, I hope to become more fluid in this intro bit and to get the confidence to play without looking at my notes.

Midterm Evaluation Video

October 21, 2019 / kirbyjarvis / 0 Comments

Music Blog #3 (legitimate)

October 21, 2019 / kirbyjarvis / 0 Comments

It has now been a month since I started the ukulele and this marks my midterm evaluation. Since my last update on my ukulele playing, I have surpassed my initial goals that were seen on my musical growth plan and have memorized two more songs these being “You’re Beautiful” and “Hallelujah”. As noted in my musical growth plan I also chose to attempt my extension goal of being able to sing the song lyrics as I play the ukulele. The only song I have attempted for this so far is “Riptide” and I can honestly say it has now become easier for me to sing and play then for me to do each alone. When learning to sing while strumming you cannot attempt to match the strums to certain lyrics, now I know most ukulele videos attempt to teach this way however it makes it easier for the musician to instead adjust the tune of the lyrics to the pace of the strumming. My singing now comes across as more spoken poetry and it is pretty much impossible to match my pauses and starts with anyone who wants to sing along BUT to me, it is beautiful and makes my voice sound unique.

Along with completing my extension goal and learning two more songs I have also become proficient at holding a steady almost mistake-less strumming pattern throughout a song. This accomplishment has given me fluidity in playing and has also allowed me to worry more about my singing and proper chord techniques versus just trying to keep in rhythm. The technique is another point I should make about my musical journey. Upon our first-in-class practice session, I became aware that I have been playing the ukulele wrong this whole time, playing it too low on my body and with my left hand (chord hand) wrapped the wrong way around the neck of the ukulele. This was a shock to me and has honestly put a huge damper on my confidence and practicing since now including with just learning songs I now have to re-learn to hold the instrument. I have perplexing thoughts about relearning how to hold my instrument since I have practiced the way I have for so long and don’t feel any wish to hold it any other way. However, there is no use being stubborn about it and now I have had to add to my musical growth plan “relearning to hold the ukulele properly”.

Music Blog #2 (legitimate)

October 7, 2019 / kirbyjarvis / 0 Comments

The ukulele is not an easy instrument to play. I have realized why it has taken me so long to immerse myself in a string instrument (versus my usual piano and saxophone) it is because there is no medium ground for strumming and chord playing, you either know the chord, can play the chord, have long enough fingers to reach the chords, know the strumming pattern, and can consistently play the strumming pattern as you play your chords OR you don’t. Some if not all of these listed problems have been brought up over the past 2 weeks however, what has assisted me is friends who know the ukulele and YouTube. Up to this date, I have learned and memorize the six chords I wished to know, and these chords have led me to learn the songs I wanted as well. I realized pretty fast that I preferred picking a song then learning the chords needed, then learning the chords and then seeing which songs can be found needing those chords. The chords, however, were chosen because of the original songs I chose in my musical growth plan and these chords have of course helped me learn to play each song. Something that I didn’t realize even existed before starting the ukulele is that there is such thing as individual strumming patterns for each song, and if you don’t use these certain strumming patters the song does not end up sounding anywhere near to the original. This was honestly mind-blowing to me and made me realize just how difficult this process was. The first song I have memorized is “Riptide” by Vance Joy I chose this song as my starter song because it consists of only 3 main chords: A major, G and C. These three chords repeat throughout the whole song until the chorus where an F chord is brought in. It has taken me a while to even begin to have fluidity switching from chords to chords especially from the G chord to C, as my fingers cannot communicate well with my brain. Once I had the chords down I turned to learn the strumming patter and this is where “The Ukulele Teacher” came into my life (https://www.youtube.com/user/TheUkuleleTeacher). This man offers free ukulele lessons on the web and it the man who taught me the “Riptide” strumming pattern down, down, up-down-up” whereas you play the pattern once for A major and G and then twice for C. t was pretty chaotic combining both the chords and the strumming pattern but after a few dozens of minutes my accomplishments could be easily seen. For fun, I thought it would help me by singing the lyrics as well while playing but that ended in the most awkward experience ever and I have decided to perfect this first milestone before I move on.

Vlog #3

October 2, 2019 / kirbyjarvis / 0 Comments

Today marked 3 weeks of my ukulele journey and also a huge milestone for me as I FINALLY finessed how to sing and strum at the same time! This is a huge goal for me because this was an extension of my musical growth project that I wasn’t expecting myself to complete until way later in my ukelele-ing journey. Another goal that has been reached in this video is my almost perfect strumming patterns, it took me a while to be able to strum a continuous set while also playing chords and now to add to all that singing. This video I will admit does show slight inconsistency with my correct strumming but this is a result of stage fright and stiffness in fingers as it is exhausting and hurts after hours of playing. From here onwards to the 22nd I hope my strumming continues to be without error and that soon my chord switching continues to develope more fluidity.

Music Blog #1 (legitimate)

September 30, 2019 / kirbyjarvis / 0 Comments

My musical journey began the day I went into MacLaurin to retrieve my first ever ukulele. When I picked up my initial ukulele she was a dark brown one who when I attempted my first strum literally sounded like a cat dying, I took her to my teacher who then informed me that the instrument had very little hope and would most likely never be able to keep a tune. After learning about this I decided to go back to chose a new one, she was light brown and her name was Leila, she is now the one I see sitting on my bed next to me.

My goals for this project, in my opinion, consisted of the perfect amount of difficulty without expecting too much of myself. The three main goals are:

Learn the basic universal ukulele chords that can be applied in almost every song. These chords are A major, G, C, D, E major and F
Learn and memorize a simple song. I chose either “You’re Beautiful,” “Riptide,” or “Let it Be”
Have correct strumming patterns, and fluidity while playing

These goals I have chosen will have to be achieved by October 22nd, as this is our mid-semester check-in date. At this time if I have not met these goals I will know that I am behind in my learning and may have to rethink my further growth plans for the end of the year. To achieve my goals and to stay on track I will have to make myself practice guidelines that take into apart my busy lifestyle of school, work, and volunteering and mental health, and I will have to also aim for lower then the expectations of my practicing time as life tends to throw curveballs every which way. I hope to accomplish my goals and to be able to be proud of my efforts by the time of our final evaluation, as this musical journey is generated more to the beneficial feelings I will receive by learning the ukulele vs. the mark I receive.