Mayalife

During our music classes, we had a discussion on the Koto piece called “Rokudan”. This piece is played by the three main Japanese instruments, the Shakuhachi, the Shamisen and of course the Koto. As a assignment for the unit, we had to write a paragraph on what makes “Rokudan” sound Japanese. If you have never heard of “Rokudan”, this is the piece. 

I think that the sound itself was very Japanese because there was a vibration every time a note was played. This vibration could only be made on both Japanese instruments and Chinese instruments. But what makes it different from the Chinese instruments is the tuning. One of the most common tuning in the Koto pieces we talked about was the “Hirajyoshi”. This “Hirajyoshi” tuning has a original taste in it and would be pretty much rare in the Western music industry. Another point I realised was the “Ato-oshi”. This technique matches the tuning and notes of the Koto and would probably not be used in the Western instruments too.

Don’t know what is Ato-oshi ? Have a look at this one!

In the start of the unit, we made a wordle describing our values in English class. Then, at the end of the unit, we made another wordle. Although the picture isn’t good, it stills shows the words clearly about my values.

My first wordle

My Older Wordle

As you can see, there were quite a few differences in the two wordles. One of the main word in my first wordle was “Reliable”. But in my second one, it said “Positive”. This shows that I started to become trust worthly than the start of the semester. Another point I realised was that the word “Loyal” became bigger than before.

Our values change because of small incidents and conflict we have with each other everyday. For example, you found out that your friend told your secrets to others. Then, you might feel that “Trust” is more important than loyal. As we go through different experiences in our lives, it shapes our personality in some way. This is why everybody is different and unique in a way.

Last thursday,we had a special music performance by three different musicians to introduce our ne w unit. Our new unit is about different sounds and tones representing different cultures and countries. The unit question is ”What makes music sound like it belongs to a particular part of the world?”. The three musicians, played the koto, shamisen and the shakuhachi. 

Which of the instruments did you like the best? Why? Did something surprise you?

I liked the shakuhachi the best. This is because I was pretty touched by the beautiful sounds and tunes played by the shakuhachi. Thus, I didn’t expect people long ago in Japan to play the shakuhachi. Another thing I was amazed by how it was made of bamboo. I didn’t know that with bamboo, you can make such nice sounds.

Which piece of music did you like the best? How did it make you feel? What did you like about it? What made the music sound “Japanese?” 

I liked the piece called “Deep Forest” written by the shakuhachi player. This was played with a koto and shakuhachi duet. It really reminded me of the forest. Especially. the melody was very clean and easy to understand so it was a very memorable performance to the grade. Another thing I really liked was the loud and soft in the piece. It really matched the song and the audience’s feeling and it felt really Japanese.

In PE class our new unit was Dance. We tried different just dances during the class and also made up a dinner dance originated from youtube. As our assignment, we had to make a dinner dance in a group of six and make a changed gundam style dance in pairs.

For my dinner dance, I contributed about 35-40% of my dance moves. During class, I cotinued to try different dance moves that were simple, easy and matched the song. Although my group members thought my dance moves were sily, some agreed to do them. Some examples of moves I contributed was the running move, the slide away from the table and the last cat hand. I think I did a good job choosing the right moves that matches the rhythm and music even though it was sometimes a little too showy. I personally thought that my group could have done better if we had more enthusiasm. A few of my group members, Tomoka and Mihela were really great dancers but if they had been more enthusiastic, I believe they could be hundred times better. Anna was sometimes distractive but she showed interest in the steps while we experimented them. Arunansu was really helpful as he edited the music and took a video of us dancing. Thus, he continuously focused on the dinner dance and was a respective leader for our group. I think Kate was really cheerful and always manage to get everybody together when ever distracted. She also created strait forward steps and described them clearly so everyone understands. Without her cheerful and strait forward character, my group would have been a disaster.

In my creative Gundam Style dance, I think I contributed 50% of the moves. My partner Kate and I were equally creative and managed to form a unique dance using the arms and legs. One of my most favourite dance move is the robotic hand movement. I created this move by watching a Japanese idol group called “Perfume”. These three girls sing and dance like they are androids or robots which I find very unique and facinating. Altogether I think we did a pretty good job working together. We both tried our best in practices and did extra practices online too.

In conclusion, my top three qualities of a good performance is:

1. Sycnronization
2. Organisation
3. Expressions

• Sycnronization

• Expressions

Even if you are really skilled at dancing and if you don’t have any expressions at all, your dance wouldn’t be as entertaining as you’ll think it would be. Especially if you dance on a big stage, everyone would focus on your face. Most dancers are good at feeling the theme of the dances, that’s why their faces and body matches the theme. As a group member, I tried to keep everyone smiling during the dance but it didn’t turn out well. The other members looked like stone during the dance and seemed like the dance was so boring and they didn’t want to do it. If I was going to do this again, I would tell everyone directly so that everyone would smile and the dance would look a little more professional.

During my Drama class, we are learning about giving speeches. We did small activities to improve our projection skills. For our assignment, we had to do two small speeches. One on our favourite  item or color and a topic either best day of my life, fashion,holidays or celebrities for the other. As my topic for my first speech, I chose blue because it was a simple but general topic that had many descriptions. For my other speech, I chose Fashion as my topic. Since I thought fashion was too general, I decided to talk about Korean Fashion in my speech. For this second speech, we had to talk about one to two minutes in total. If you haven’t seen my first speech, have a look at this:

7A Drama: 1 Min Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

In this speech, I was able to start in a interesting start and managed to catch the audience’s attention but it wasn’t for long. I was really nervous when I did this speech so it wasn’t the best I could do. I stammered a lot and had some problems with my que cards. On the other hand, I think I did well in my projection of my voice. I was able to speak loud so the audience could hear, my pace was understandable and I think I did have some emphasis.Actually I was glad that I used a little hand gesture and looked at the different audiences.If I was going todo this assignments again, I would improve more on my pitch. My voice was at the same tone throughout the speech so I really need to work on that. Another thing I need to improve on is my emphasis. I had some but it wasn’t enough to catch a real life audience’s attention. Although I have a lot of problems with my speech this time, I will try even harder on my speech the next time.

Now, this is my second speech on Korean Fashion.

7A Drama: Given Topic Speech from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

In this speech I think I did better. I was able to show more confidence in my voice and  projection. If I was to do this again, I would try harder to remember my scipt better because most of the time I was looking at my que cards.

To me, freedom is something that can never be too much. It is also something extremely important to us, children. I think freedom means to be able to do anything you want to do. As a ordinary girl, I have freedom to go anywhere I want, read any information I want  and say anything I want to. If I was going to say all the things that I call freedom, I might say more than a two hundred different words. But among all of them, I find these three the most important.

1. Emotion
2. Belief
3. Life

The reason why I chose “Emotion” is because I think that we should have the ability to smile, frown and cry to show our emotions to our surroundings. For my second choice, I chose “Belief”. This is because I think that we should have the right to believe in our beliefs and we shouldn’t criticize each others’. For example, some people believe in heaven. For my final choice, I chose “Life” no matter what, I want to have the freedom to live. Everyone should get the chance to live all they want until their very last day.

Reading Kate’s point of freedom was quite intersting. From her view, she thought freedom was being able to choose who to be with. I agree with her view very much. Being able to hang around with those you like is one freedom. A similarity with our ideas was reading. The freedom to read was quite important between us. I am very happy that someone else feels the same.

Reading Zerric’s point of freedom was also quite interesting too. He had about four main ideas of freedom. They were relationship, equality and acception. He had very good reasons for his ideas. Although we didn’t have any similarities, I found his ideas understandable especially the equality. We should be treated equally and also treat others equally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8U6gKOmrN4

During our music class, we learned how to play the song Taka with the koto. This is me playing one part from the song.

Although I made a lot of mistakes, I think I did rather good. For part B, I practiced many times but I still had some small careless mistakes especially playing the wrong note but I still think that I tried my best to play the song. I would still continue to practice this part until I have no mistakes at all. For part D and E, I think I did better then the first part. this is because I didn’t make as much mistakes and I tried to use the dynamics.

In conclusion, I think I did a pretty good job but I would need to improve more. If I am going to do this again, I would work more on my dynamics because there wasn’t much of them in the piece I played. Another thing I can improve on is the sound. My sound was not very clear. I hope I can improve more before the next lesson.

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During class, we learned about colonization, For our summative task, we had to choose two countries and talk about the colonization. It was a very exciting task. For this project, I chose England colonizing Singapore. For this assignment, I think I did pretty well but not as well as I expected to. I liked how my slides were simple and attractive. I’m not really proud of my work. If I could do it again, I would do more research and spend more time on it to make it easier to understand and include more information. I think my planning wasn’t that great so I will make my plan more detailed next time.