Episode VIII: The Sound of Progress

Week 8 - 4.11.09 - 5.11.09

This week has been an exciting week for me. I have been asked to create another Rock School for Kinloss Primary School. This involves me creating lesson plans and teaching children from ages 7 through to 10 how to play musical instruments. The last time i did this, the response from the kids and the staff was amazing. This will give me much needed experience in the field of teaching.

Wednesday at college saw our Beatles band getting our songs tighter with the welcome arrival of our new lecturer. This week also saw myself singing vocals on some of the tracks. I am slowly discovering my voice which is inspiring to me, as i wish to continue singing in my musical career. In First study, we worked on some classical 6th progressions and scales, which i actually found quite interesting. I know, the first blog where i haven't ranted about first study!!! In our composition class, we looked over the next two Beatles albums and then got to create a 'psychedelic' Beatles song. We turned off the lights and i used my ipod as a slide! It was really good fun! We also got the chance to see another group from another class. There song was brilliant! They had the lights off and the dude had a lighter and read from a book. Awesome.

Today i also had a jam with John Greensmith. We went over my song, 'Liquid' and its sounding really good! I love singing that song and i hope to be recording it soon!

On Thursday, we got our results back for Music Theory Outcome I. I passed with 62%! Although happy that i passed, i feel that i could have done a lot better! I will be testing myself in the up coming weeks to keep on top of it all. In Graded Unit, we had a talk from Lorenz Cairns. It really was an awesome talk. With use of good humour, he told us of his rise to fame, and all the steps along that way. This made me see Lorenz in a totally different light. It also made me think about my own career. What he stressed is that you need good communication skills and personality to really succeed. I thoroughly enjoyed his talk. Session skills is making me realize that being a session musician is not the life for me. I find it quite repetitive and not enough creativity to keep me interested and inspired. DAW got cancelled for some unknown reason, so yet another early finish!

To the Edinburgh Fireworks!!!