Week 4 Blog:My Reflection

Spring phase, in my opinion, is when you take a whole month of reflection. You’ve taken your core classes already and all that is left is this one project. This one project, in my case, was The Keyboard Orchestra. During the class, there are many things we went over, with each step of lessons raising the level of difficulty. The first week was the slowest, as we went over things I have known for years, the basics. We went over note names, how to place your fingers on the piano, and other basic necessities of that nature. However, going through that first week wasn’t a challenge for me.

I had two challenges that I faced over the course of the month in this class. The first challenge I had was trying to keep my interest in some of the pieces. Most of the pieces were pretty easy, and when I’d learn them I’d always end up with so much freetime. I wished we got a few more harder pieces to learn, as I would’ve been far more intrigued. The second challenge I faced was working on my patience. I would get a little irritated when some people messed up on their simple piece after an hour of practice. I wouldn’t get ticked with the people that tried to learn their part and still mess up, I would get irritated with the people who wasted the total hour by doing something different and trying to learn their part in the last three minutes of the hour.

Whenever there’s bad, chances are there’s probably a good as well. This project had upsides to it that made me enjoy this class more than I disliked it. I enjoyed playing the more complex pieces we had, I loved learning new songs on my own. I enjoyed the full experience of traveling by public transportation for a trip, and the laughs that came along with it. I love the jokes shared with Kusi, Jonathan, and Precious. I loved sharing ideas and going back and forth with Jonathan on the keyboard, with him playing and teaching me a little about chords, and me playing and teaching him a little about sheet music. I feel as if I learned a little more from my peers than I did from the lessons of the class. But isn’t that what learning is about? You can learn from any and everything. The upsides of this class are what made me excited to come back everyday.

With all the skills I learned, I hope to be able to practice more and become better as a pianist and a musician in general. In the future, I want to be a music producer and recording engineer, and classes like this one are the steps needed to become better and reach that goal. The class forces you to work together and form a chemistry, which is the same chemistry needed when you’re in the studio trying to record a track. I am thankful for my month spent in this class, and when I read this reflection years from now, hopefully I could say I am successful at what I do and I love doing it.