Thoughts From A Music Major

Burning Down · 03-25-2011, 08:38 AM

And finally, some lesser-known Sousa marches:

Saber and Spurs March

Liberty Bell March (actually some of you might know this one from Monty Python's Flying Circus)

Colonel Bogey March

Seventy-Six Trombones

Burning Down · 12-04-2011, 03:16 PM

Wow. My last post in here was in March. Sorry guys!

Okay, I made a couple of new videos of my flute playing, and I'd like to share them with you. I thought my journal would be the best place to post these, since I don't think we have a section for this type of thing. Praise or critique is certainly welcome, just don't be too mean about it

First video: Georg Philipp Telemann, Fantasia #6 in d minor, First Movement (Dolce).

Fantasia 6 is actually in fugue form, thought at the time to be impossible on the flute (or any instrument other than the harpsichord or the pipe organ). Although there is only one line of music, the different parts to the fugue (i.e., the subject and countersubjects) are embedded within the single part.

Second video: Koji Kondo, Theme from Super Mario Bros.

Thought that one would be fun to play. And it is

That's all for now!

Burning Down · 06-25-2012, 04:31 PM

So it's obvious that I'm not in the habit of keeping up this journal. I started this thread so you guys could get a better idea of what I like to listen to (and perhaps what I don't like to listen to!) I think that my taste in music is still a little enigmatic - despite being on a music forum, I sure don't mention anything about what I listen to as often as I should.

I don't expect anybody to actively read or follow this journal, but I certainly welcome it. It's really just a place for me to dump my thoughts on different kinds of music.

So what do I listen to? You guys know that I am a music student in university (as if the title of this journal didn't already give that away). I've had to listen to all kinds of stuff (even if I didn't like it) for various assignments in different classes. The constant genres for a music student, though, are generally classical and jazz, from every decade and century.

I thoroughly enjoy both classical and jazz - I am BIG on those genres. But of course I listen to other stuff as well, mainly rock (this also incorporates Indie and Alternative, which I listen to a lot), and most things that get played on the radio. Yes, I know that people on this forum sometimes get berated for listening to or even ENJOYING "atrocious music" that is straight off the Billboard Hot 100, but I don't care. I like a lot of it.

I'm going to post more later since it's almost dinner time here. When I come back I'll share some thoughts on what I've been listening to lately. So hang tight!

Trollheart · 06-25-2012, 06:17 PM

I've always been a believer that you should listen to what you enjoy, not what other people think you should. And certainly you should not NOT listen to something, for fear of being branded "populist" or whatever. I actively avoid the charts, but hey, I've been known to spin a Madonna or Kylie record from time to time, and I recently reviewed The Script's album. Some of it IS okay; it's just the general music that masquerades as r&b these days (because they can't find any other handy category to shoehorn it into --- I'd say crap generic, but that's just me) that annoys me, along with the "stars" that come out of the likes of the X Factor.

Being on the radio or in the charts doesn't necessarily make your music worthless; it's what you do before/after that which I think makes or breaks a musician, band or artiste. If you fold after one big hit single (and I mean really fold, not just go on to make many more albums but be viewed by the general public as a failure and a "one-hit-wonder") then that says more about your music than any amount of record sales.

Listen to what you want to: jazz, classical, funk, rock, metal, punk, samoan nose flute melodies... as the old Kit Kat ad used to say: just enjoy it!

And sod those who don't or won't understand.
That's what I do, anyway...

Neapolitan · 06-26-2012, 12:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burning Down

I don't expect anybodyto actively read or follow this journal, but I certainly welcome it. It's really just a place for me to dump my thoughts on different kinds of music.

I'd subscribed to it... but that was many moons ago.

Burning Down · 06-26-2012, 07:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neapolitan

I'd subscribed to it... but that was many moons ago.

I guess this is sort of a do-over then, lol. I dropped the ball on this thread, for sure.

Neapolitan · 06-28-2012, 12:39 AM

There are things that I relate to in your journal, like I tried to learn a Joplin rag on gutiar and one of my favorite tunes to play on classical guitar was short piece by Telemann. I'm glad it's back.

Burning Down · 12-16-2012, 09:08 PM

After having abandoned this journal for quite a while, I've decided to make a post. I left it for several reasons:

1) I was working 40 hours a week steadily over my summer holidays, from May through August. Yes, I was visiting Music Banter throughout the day but only to make short posts. Then I would get home and be too exhausted to think of any possible journal entries.

2) I started school again in September and this year, I am busier and spending more time doing school work than I ever have before, in my entire academic career.

3) I was still unsure of whether people would read it regularly. I didn't want to commit the time and effort into something that may not have been read by other people. I didn't think people would be interested in what I had to say, or that everything might be "TL; DR" to them.

4) I have a real life with important things going on.

But now, I'm done with my first term final exam (I only had one this time around – the other classes I had continue into next term, along with a couple of new courses), and I have officially been on Christmas holiday break since December 13th (although the last full day of class for me was November 29th, so I've had plenty of time off of school. I've just been working). I don't go back to school again until January 7th, and my last full day of work is tomorrow. So I will have some time to come back and write a bit, hopefully.

Lately I have been thinking about music that represents or maybe reflects my life at the moment. I'll share one of those thoughts with you now:

"You're My Best Friend" by Queen is a good representation of my relationship at the moment. It's absolutely cheesy, I think, but it's so true. Danijel is my very best friend and I think he even knows me better than I know myself.

Speaking of Dan - since I have known him, he has introduced me to some crazy Serbian music that he likes to listen to sometimes. I'll talk about some of it another time, though.

I've also been really getting into musicals over the last year, ever since I was a pit band member for the school show choir, playing bass guitar. Show tunes encompass all kinds of emotions – joy, happiness, sadness, despair, anger, love, lust… For every possible human emotion, there is a Broadway song to represent it. I'll talk about some of those songs next time as well.

I think that's all I will write for now. I just wanted to breathe some life back into my own thread.

Trollheart · 12-17-2012, 06:06 AM

Good to see you writing again BD. It's true that often you wonder if anyone is reading your journal, but I think generally people tend (I do anyway) to click on anything that's bolded, which shows there are new entries. This is probably due to the fact that few journals are updated that regularly (I'd say mine and Unknown Soldier's would be the two you could rely on to be) and so anything new is checked out.

Everyone understands people can be far too busy with their real lives to worry about their journals. Even I, with my essentially work-free day can still feel occasionally pressured and too busy to bother updating today, though I always get back to it. The most important thing, as I've said in my "Guide to starting your own journal" and elsewhere too, is that you do it because you enjoy it, not because you feel you have to. I learned that lesson, after having tried to update every single day with two or three entries, and realised at one point it was more like something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do.

No-one is forcing you to write, no-one tells you this has to be in by that date: there are no deadlines, and you decide yourself when to update, and when not to. There are plenty of journals here that haven't been opened in months or longer. At some point, I hope they will, but real life does have a habit of intruding and this is, after all, just a pastime for us all. It's not anything important or urgent. So update when you can, it's always welcome and as I say, nice to see your journal title in bold after so long...

(Also, I'll be interested in that Serbian music, for an upcoming journal section next year...)

Burning Down · 04-01-2013, 01:36 PM

My Musical Journey, Part I

I got real busy with school since my last update. It's my last year and it's been filled with endless papers, other homework assignments, and practise hours. And work - lots of it. But I have a little bit of time to myself right now that I need to waste away. So here we go.

I thought I would start to tell you how I got started on my musical journey. When I was a kid, I never played any sports or took piano lessons like many of my friends did. I did do tap dancing though, but I lost interest in it when I was about 12 or 13 years old. However, I was interested in the flute. When I was about 9, I convinced my parents to rent one for me and sign me up for a block of lessons. It was very expensive for them to do that and I had to promise them that I would stick with the lessons they paid for and work hard at learning the basics of the flute. If I did well and was still interested in continuing, they would purchase a flute for me and invest in lessons for the long term. Of course, I was absolutely interested, and my parents went out and bought my first flute for a mere $600. I was ecstatic.

About a year or so later, I started middle school, and they had a band class there. I took that class in place of private lessons for the next two years so I could play music with my friends and learn about other band instruments.

At that point, I became really interested in other aspects of music. How it was made, what it meant (and what it meant to me), why people enjoyed it, and why they enjoyed some types of music but not others. I continued with the flute throughout high school, taking music class and learning theory, harmony, and history. I was still part of the school band, and our music class was a smaller band, and both groups put on a performance at the end of each semester.

During this time, however, I discontinued with private lessons in flute. I realize now that I was not learning proper playing technique for playing flute at an advanced level, nor was I being provided with solo music that would challenge me and force me to become a better player. Instead, I was in a band setting, learning flute from music teachers who did not play it themselves, and playing mediocre band transcriptions of movie themes and popular songs and classical repertoire.

06-25-2012, 06:17 PM	#24 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,992	I've always been a believer that you should listen to what you enjoy, not what other people think you should. And certainly you should not NOT listen to something, for fear of being branded "populist" or whatever. I actively avoid the charts, but hey, I've been known to spin a Madonna or Kylie record from time to time, and I recently reviewed The Script's album. Some of it IS okay; it's just the general music that masquerades as r&b these days (because they can't find any other handy category to shoehorn it into --- I'd say crap generic, but that's just me) that annoys me, along with the "stars" that come out of the likes of the X Factor. Being on the radio or in the charts doesn't necessarily make your music worthless; it's what you do before/after that which I think makes or breaks a musician, band or artiste. If you fold after one big hit single (and I mean really fold, not just go on to make many more albums but be viewed by the general public as a failure and a "one-hit-wonder") then that says more about your music than any amount of record sales. Listen to what you want to: jazz, classical, funk, rock, metal, punk, samoan nose flute melodies... as the old Kit Kat ad used to say: just enjoy it! And sod those who don't or won't understand. That's what I do, anyway... __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

12-17-2012, 06:06 AM	#29 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,992	Good to see you writing again BD. It's true that often you wonder if anyone is reading your journal, but I think generally people tend (I do anyway) to click on anything that's bolded, which shows there are new entries. This is probably due to the fact that few journals are updated that regularly (I'd say mine and Unknown Soldier's would be the two you could rely on to be) and so anything new is checked out. Everyone understands people can be far too busy with their real lives to worry about their journals. Even I, with my essentially work-free day can still feel occasionally pressured and too busy to bother updating today, though I always get back to it. The most important thing, as I've said in my "Guide to starting your own journal" and elsewhere too, is that you do it because you enjoy it, not because you feel you have to. I learned that lesson, after having tried to update every single day with two or three entries, and realised at one point it was more like something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do. No-one is forcing you to write, no-one tells you this has to be in by that date: there are no deadlines, and you decide yourself when to update, and when not to. There are plenty of journals here that haven't been opened in months or longer. At some point, I hope they will, but real life does have a habit of intruding and this is, after all, just a pastime for us all. It's not anything important or urgent. So update when you can, it's always welcome and as I say, nice to see your journal title in bold after so long... (Also, I'll be interested in that Serbian music, for an upcoming journal section next year...) __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

03-25-2011, 08:38 AM	#21 (permalink)
Burning Down The Music Guru. Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Beyond the Wall Posts: 4,858	And finally, some lesser-known Sousa marches: Saber and Spurs March Liberty Bell March (actually some of you might know this one from Monty Python's Flying Circus) Colonel Bogey March Seventy-Six Trombones

12-04-2011, 03:16 PM	#22 (permalink)
Burning Down The Music Guru. Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Beyond the Wall Posts: 4,858	Wow. My last post in here was in March. Sorry guys! Okay, I made a couple of new videos of my flute playing, and I'd like to share them with you. I thought my journal would be the best place to post these, since I don't think we have a section for this type of thing. Praise or critique is certainly welcome, just don't be too mean about it First video: Georg Philipp Telemann, Fantasia #6 in d minor, First Movement (Dolce). Fantasia 6 is actually in fugue form, thought at the time to be impossible on the flute (or any instrument other than the harpsichord or the pipe organ). Although there is only one line of music, the different parts to the fugue (i.e., the subject and countersubjects) are embedded within the single part. Second video: Koji Kondo, Theme from Super Mario Bros. Thought that one would be fun to play. And it is That's all for now!

06-25-2012, 04:31 PM	#23 (permalink)
Burning Down The Music Guru. Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Beyond the Wall Posts: 4,858	So it's obvious that I'm not in the habit of keeping up this journal. I started this thread so you guys could get a better idea of what I like to listen to (and perhaps what I don't like to listen to!) I think that my taste in music is still a little enigmatic - despite being on a music forum, I sure don't mention anything about what I listen to as often as I should. I don't expect anybody to actively read or follow this journal, but I certainly welcome it. It's really just a place for me to dump my thoughts on different kinds of music. So what do I listen to? You guys know that I am a music student in university (as if the title of this journal didn't already give that away). I've had to listen to all kinds of stuff (even if I didn't like it) for various assignments in different classes. The constant genres for a music student, though, are generally classical and jazz, from every decade and century. I thoroughly enjoy both classical and jazz - I am BIG on those genres. But of course I listen to other stuff as well, mainly rock (this also incorporates Indie and Alternative, which I listen to a lot), and most things that get played on the radio. Yes, I know that people on this forum sometimes get berated for listening to or even ENJOYING "atrocious music" that is straight off the Billboard Hot 100, but I don't care. I like a lot of it. I'm going to post more later since it's almost dinner time here. When I come back I'll share some thoughts on what I've been listening to lately. So hang tight!

12-16-2012, 09:08 PM	#28 (permalink)
Burning Down The Music Guru. Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Beyond the Wall Posts: 4,858	After having abandoned this journal for quite a while, I've decided to make a post. I left it for several reasons: 1) I was working 40 hours a week steadily over my summer holidays, from May through August. Yes, I was visiting Music Banter throughout the day but only to make short posts. Then I would get home and be too exhausted to think of any possible journal entries. 2) I started school again in September and this year, I am busier and spending more time doing school work than I ever have before, in my entire academic career. 3) I was still unsure of whether people would read it regularly. I didn't want to commit the time and effort into something that may not have been read by other people. I didn't think people would be interested in what I had to say, or that everything might be "TL; DR" to them. 4) I have a real life with important things going on. But now, I'm done with my first term final exam (I only had one this time around – the other classes I had continue into next term, along with a couple of new courses), and I have officially been on Christmas holiday break since December 13th (although the last full day of class for me was November 29th, so I've had plenty of time off of school. I've just been working). I don't go back to school again until January 7th, and my last full day of work is tomorrow. So I will have some time to come back and write a bit, hopefully. Lately I have been thinking about music that represents or maybe reflects my life at the moment. I'll share one of those thoughts with you now: "You're My Best Friend" by Queen is a good representation of my relationship at the moment. It's absolutely cheesy, I think, but it's so true. Danijel is my very best friend and I think he even knows me better than I know myself. Speaking of Dan - since I have known him, he has introduced me to some crazy Serbian music that he likes to listen to sometimes. I'll talk about some of it another time, though. I've also been really getting into musicals over the last year, ever since I was a pit band member for the school show choir, playing bass guitar. Show tunes encompass all kinds of emotions – joy, happiness, sadness, despair, anger, love, lust… For every possible human emotion, there is a Broadway song to represent it. I'll talk about some of those songs next time as well. I think that's all I will write for now. I just wanted to breathe some life back into my own thread.

04-01-2013, 01:36 PM	#30 (permalink)
Burning Down The Music Guru. Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Beyond the Wall Posts: 4,858	My Musical Journey, Part I I got real busy with school since my last update. It's my last year and it's been filled with endless papers, other homework assignments, and practise hours. And work - lots of it. But I have a little bit of time to myself right now that I need to waste away. So here we go. I thought I would start to tell you how I got started on my musical journey. When I was a kid, I never played any sports or took piano lessons like many of my friends did. I did do tap dancing though, but I lost interest in it when I was about 12 or 13 years old. However, I was interested in the flute. When I was about 9, I convinced my parents to rent one for me and sign me up for a block of lessons. It was very expensive for them to do that and I had to promise them that I would stick with the lessons they paid for and work hard at learning the basics of the flute. If I did well and was still interested in continuing, they would purchase a flute for me and invest in lessons for the long term. Of course, I was absolutely interested, and my parents went out and bought my first flute for a mere $600. I was ecstatic. About a year or so later, I started middle school, and they had a band class there. I took that class in place of private lessons for the next two years so I could play music with my friends and learn about other band instruments. At that point, I became really interested in other aspects of music. How it was made, what it meant (and what it meant to me), why people enjoyed it, and why they enjoyed some types of music but not others. I continued with the flute throughout high school, taking music class and learning theory, harmony, and history. I was still part of the school band, and our music class was a smaller band, and both groups put on a performance at the end of each semester. During this time, however, I discontinued with private lessons in flute. I realize now that I was not learning proper playing technique for playing flute at an advanced level, nor was I being provided with solo music that would challenge me and force me to become a better player. Instead, I was in a band setting, learning flute from music teachers who did not play it themselves, and playing mediocre band transcriptions of movie themes and popular songs and classical repertoire.