Reflection 1: Creative Composition

Reflection 2: Body Mapping Journal

This week, I have been focusing on the aspect of balance regarding Body Mapping. At the beginning of the week, I performed at the Western Fair. During this performance, I played the piano and sang, and I made sure that my posture was correct before I started playing. My back was straight and my arms relaxed with my arms stretched out resting and hands on the keys with my arms bent and my elbows aligned with my hands. My feet were placed apart on the ground and my body weight was evenly distributed between them. This week, when I practiced the piano, I continued to use this proper piano posture to ensure that it continues to become a habit.

Another thing that I practiced this week pertaining to balance is unlocking my knees when I am standing and singing. I am a piano major so the ensemble I am in is a choir. I know that the best way to stand when singing is which your back straight and your shoulders relaxed with your arms to your side, and your feet placed apart with your body weight evenly distributed between them with your knees unlocked. It is basically the same posture used when playing piano only standing instead of sitting with your arms in different positions. I have been trying to be more aware to incorporate these different posture techniques, but I have been focusing more on unlocking my knees when I sing because I have had a bad habit in the past of keeping them locked.

Reflection 3: Class Activity Pitch

For my group assignment, I would like to focus on being comfortable in a group setting with people you don’t necessarily know. Since music is a very team-oriented craft, I believe that it is very important to be comfortable with the people you are working and performing with and feel free to share your ideas with your team. In order to make everyone feel free and comfortable to be their creative selves, my idea for a group activity is make a “class rhythm.” The way we will do this is by starting off with all of us standing in a circle. One person will start off the activity by making up their own rhythm. For example, they can start by simply clapping to a beat in a certain tempo. The next person in the circle will add to the rhythm by creating their own rhythm that still sounds good with the previous person’s rhythm. This rhythm cannot copy the previous person’s rhythm, meaning the new person is not allowed to clap but must make a rhythm using another part of their body or an element in the room. This will go around the whole circle until everyone has their own rhythm, which will eventually create a “class rhythm.” Each person can come up with a rhythm as easy or complicated as they want as long as it complements the whole “class rhythm.” The point of this activity is to bring out each individual’s creativity while still keeping in mind the success of the team as a whole.

Reflection 4: Body Percussion

Reflections 5 and 6: Indigenous Artist and Song

The song that I chose is called “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone” by Buffy St. Marie which was featured on Buffy’s first album released in 1964 called It’s My Way. Buffy St. Marie is an Indigenous woman who writes about Indigenous issues and Indigenous people’s rights in her songs to raise awareness, and also as a call to action to solve these issues. In this song in particular, she talks about great amounts of land and reservations belonging to the Indigenous people that were and are still being taken and used by the European settlers for their own purposes.

This song can be categorized as folk music that is very easy going, mellow, and easy to sway along to. The chord progression and accompaniment in this song is very simple, along with the instrumentation consisting of guitar, bass, a little bit of percussion, and vocals, making it easier for the meaning of the song to shine instead of the music. Buffy is not afraid to sing the truth about what is happening to Indigenous lands in this song, even though it is not a light or pleasant topic to talk about. The title of this song (“Now that the Buffalo’s Gone”) is used as a metaphor in this song. It compares the almost extinction of the American bison to the way the land belonging to the Indigenous people has almost been fully been stolen from them.

Buffy sings about how many people talk about the struggles the Indigenous people went through without realizing that they themselves play a part in the matters and issues that Indigenous people face. By living in this land, whether we realize it or not, us and our government are inhabiting, and therefore stealing, so much land that belongs to Indigenous people. Many of us think that this only happened in the past, but Buffy sings in her song that it is still going on today. She uses the example of when our people won the war against Germany, they (the losers) were given back all of their land and dignity. She contrasts this to the way we have taken the land of native citizens of our own country without caring about their own dignity.

This song is a tool that Buffy St. Marie uses to raise awareness about the terrible act of taking away land from the Indigenous people that so many citizens of this country have no idea they are even doing. It is a way to tell people that this is not an issue of the past, but that Indigenous people still face it today. It is a call to action for the citizens of this country to remove their blinders, unite with the Indigenous people and face this issue together, and find a way to solve it.

Reflection 7: Frustrating Performance Description

As a musician, there are several times when you are not satisfied with your progress of learning a piece or the result of a performance, as musicians tend to be very hard on themselves and their own abilities. One instance of this same frustration in my own life is after one of my university auditions. I was getting ready for my audition for one of the three universities I applied to and I was pretty nervous. I had memorized all of the pieces I needed to have ready and played them all well prior to the audition – I was pretty well-prepared. An hour before the audition, I went to a practice room and played all of my pieces multiple times, and I even played all of the pieces perfectly during one run-through, without any mistakes and with all the right phrasing and emotion that they entailed. At this point, I thought that I was finally ready for my audition, that is, until I walked into the audition room and the nerves started coming back once again.

The professor auditioning me let me start with a piece of my choice, so I chose the one that I was most comfortable with. I sat down to play and began pretty confidently, but then I had a memory blank. This had not happened an hour ago when I was practicing, so I got very flustered and could not remember where I was in the piece and how to continue. I then started to become embarrassed and very frustrated with myself and eventually skipped a whole section of the piece (after I had tried to restart from a section that I remembered a couple of times) and fumbled my way through rest of the piece. I was very disappointed about this because this was my favourite piece and the one that I thought showed off my skills and musicality the most and I was very upset with myself. Since I was already very discouraged at this point, when I started playing my next piece, I blanked on the memorization again, and the professor was very kind to let me look at the music. This whole experience was very frustrating, discouraging and upsetting to me as I had just played all of the pieces perfectly in the practice room a little while before my audition but was not able to replicate in the actual audition. I was eventually accepted into this university, so I presume that the audition was not actually as bad as I thought it was in my mind and my musicality did thankfully shine through all of the memory blanks and mistakes. Though the end result of being accepted into the university was positive, I do not think that I will ever be happy or even satisfied with my performance in my audition that day.

Reflection 8: Target Practice Approach

Intention: Getting a strike while bowling.
Do: Launching the bowling ball down the lane to knock all of the pins down.
Assess or Locate where you are in relationship to the bull's eye: I was not able get a strike on my first try.
- Clarify: My goal is to get a strike by launching the bowling ball down the lane and knocking all of the pins down. The best way to do this is by hitting the pin in the middle of the formation, usually causing all of the pins to fall along with it.

I did not come close to my target the last time as I did not even get near the center of the pin formation.

4. Keep my detailed intention in mind when bowling on my following turns and eventually achieve my goal of getting a strike.

A physical activity that comes to mind that I have used the target practice approach to complete is getting a strike while bowling. When I go up to bowl, my set intention is always to get a strike. In order to do this, I launch the bowling ball down the lane to knock all of the pins down. The first few tries, the bowling ball either ends up going down the gutter, or it only knocks down a few pins. While I wait for my next turn to bowl, I reiterate my intention in my mind in greater detail. My intention is to get a strike: to launch the bowling ball down the lane and knock down all of the pins. One way that usually works to get all of the pins to fall down is to aim the bowling ball to hit the pin in the middle of the pin formation. When this pin is hit, the impact on this pin will cause the rest of the pins to fall, as well. This becomes my goal for my next turn, and if I do not reach this goal on my next turn, each of my following turns will be focused on aiming the bowling ball to hit the pin in the middle of the formation. Eventually, I reach my goal and knock the middle pin down, followed by the rest of the pins, and finally attain my strike.

Reflection 9: Experimental Rehearsals

1. Today in choir rehearsal, I am going to experiment with focusing on the way that I breathe in order to sing longer phrases without taking a breath midway through the phrase, as breath control is something that I have struggled with. A way in which I did this was by simply thinking ahead of time about certain phrases and seeing where I could take a bigger breath so I would not lose my breath partway through a phrase. I read the lyrics and saw where breaths would make sense and sang in phrases, opposed to just breathing when I needed to. Another thing I did to experiment with my breath control was when taking a breath at the beginning of a phrase, I pushed myself through to the end of the phrase and sustained the breath when I would usually give up and take another breath. More often than not, I realized that I was actually able to hold my breath longer than I thought I could was able to single through spots where I had taken unnecessary breaths in the past.

2. Today in the practice room, I am going to experiment with playing the melody line of a piece that I have been having some trouble with along with a recording of the piece. The reason I decided to do this was because I was having difficulty replicating the same rhythm and shaping that was intended in this piece, so I wanted to experiment with playing along with the recording as a point of reference. As I played along with the recording, it was pretty frustrating at first as I was not able to play the piece as it was played in the recording. When this happened, I stopped the recording and played what I had heard a few times through by myself. After doing this, I played the recording again and as I played along with it, I saw some improvement in the rhythms and phrasing that I had been struggling with before as I had a better idea of how the piece was intended to be played. I think that playing along with the recording was more beneficial than just simply listening to it as it forced me to become physically involved with what I was hearing.

3. Today in my lesson, my teacher showed me a technique to experiment with learning my pieces that I found quite fascinating and very beneficial. She told me to take a bar in my piece and just play one beat that I was struggling with. Once I had played it, she said to add another beat. This continued until I had played the whole bar. She then said to try and play it from memory, and after a couple of tries, I was able to. She then told me to follow the same process with the previous bar, and eventually this led to me playing both bars from memory while also working on a section of the piece I was struggling with. Though it took a lot of patience, it was very beneficial to me as helped me address something I am struggling with and use a practical technique to improve it.

Reflection 10: Goal Awareness Article Reflection

These two articles were very eye-opening about some very beneficial ways to complete any task. Most of the time when completing a task, we are focused on the end result and how much we would like to achieve it. We see our beginning state, and look far ahead to the end result, but more often than not, we skip the whole process that it takes to achieve that goal. We forget that each step of the process is a specific task in and of itself. So, there is never a time where we are inactive and not completing a task, but each step is an action taken to reach the final goal.

The first article about this concept relating to the notion of posture really interested me. Many times, we think to ourselves that we should have “good posture”, which in our minds looks like sitting up straight and tall, without a slouch. The article talked about how the effort it takes for us to sit up straight and “fix our posture” in that moment is actually wasted in the long run. The reason for this is because we are not dealing with the real problem regarding why we are slouching in the first place. Our posture is a part of us and reflects how we are truly feeling, so if we would like to fix our posture, we must work on the real root of the problem and take small steps to reach our goal of “good posture”.

The second article about reaching a goal by simply thinking about that goal and not coming up with a plan of how to achieve it was quite intriguing, as well. It talked a lot about experimenting by keeping different points of focus in mind, such as seeing your goal as out in the distance, or seeing it as a fixed point and looking towards it, as ways to achieve it. In the example in the article, the lady was able to achieve her goal by using this technique. Using variations of this technique are creative ways to reach your goal without being stressed out or worried about coming up with a plan to achieve it. Both of these articles gave me some interesting, creative, and fun ways to go about doing tasks in the future, especially ones that I usually have a hard time achieving.

Reflection 11: Reflecting On My Goals

A goal that I had at the beginning of the semester, which I also shared in our first class, was to experience the sense of family in the music faculty at Western. At that time, I did not really know anyone very well yet and I was not sure what the sense of family felt like or even what to expect; I had only heard that it existed. As I look back on the semester now, I can say that I have definitely experienced the sense of family and community in the music faculty. In only a few weeks, I made a lot of friends (many first years, but many upper year students, as well) and everyone was very friendly and welcoming. As time has passed, we have all gotten a lot closer and I have truly had a really great experience so far. Since this was such a great experience for me, I was encouraged to continue meeting new people throughout the year and I was able to invite them into the music family, as well, so I think that I was able to expand my goal.

A challenge that I faced this semester is balancing all of my classes and managing my time and workload. When entering this program, I felt pretty overwhelmed with all of the courses that I was required to do, the many assignments, and practicing and learning repertoire, as well, and I found it very difficult to balance all of those things. Throughout this semester, I have realized the importance of making checklists to help me manage my time, as that was not something I was used to doing when I came to Western. Though it is still quite a struggle, making checklists lately has started to help me feel more organized and able to complete all of my tasks.

As I go into this next semester, something that I would like to remind myself is not to look down on myself. I have a natural tendency to find fault in almost everything that I do and to think that I am not doing my work well enough or am not playing my instrument well, which overall causes me not to do my best. Near the end of this semester, I have realized that I am a good musician and student; if I was not, I would not be at Western. I have been reminded that when I do the absolute best job that I am capable of, that is all that matters. This also means to be honest with myself to see if I actually am doing my best, and if not, then that means that I need to work harder to get to that point. Yes, my grades are important, but a grade does not define who I truly am.

A statement that I think is a good reminder of my goal to not look down on myself is:

“The way you truly see yourself will ultimately affect how you perform. Focus on and appreciate who you truly are, and you will be satisfied with the outcome of your actions.”

Reflection 12: Response to "Daring Classrooms" Video by Bréne Brown

I really enjoyed the video by Brené Brown about encouraging a “daring classroom” environment as a teacher. The focus of her talk was the importance for students to have a courageous attitude in the classroom. This courageous attitude can only be accomplished by being vulnerable. In order to be fully satisfied, filled with true joy, and to accomplish what is sincerely desired, a real state of vulnerability must first be reached. This is true for students who must be vulnerable and honest about where they are at their own levels of learning in order to set themselves up for success in further learning. It is easy, however, for students to be against the idea of vulnerability because of the risk of getting hurt in the process. When someone is vulnerable and true to themselves, they are wide open to the judgment that unfortunately comes from our society. Due to these potential bashes upon students’ vulnerability, teachers should be some of the most influential people in encouraging and nurturing the vulnerability of their students through their learning processes. Bréne talked about various instances where teachers have been the ones judging their own students’ vulnerability, and this judgment did some serious damage to the way the students looked at themselves as learners. A teacher’s role is to encourage this vulnerability that leads to courage in order for their students to reach their full potential in education and as learners.