Ruoming's+Music+DW

Ruoming's Developmental Workbook UNIT 1 This week on Monday, we started with trying to create a website on Weebly that would serve its purpose as a online developmental workbook. However, we switched to using Wikispaces the next day because it would be easier than to make a website on Weebly. The next day, Mr. Tompkins told me about a drama/act that I had to play in for the class. So, I was introduced to "The Tragedy" an act that we had to play out in front of the class. My group had already started last week, the goal was to make up a story by listening to a piece of music that Mr. Tompkins had played for us. I was put in a group with Jeeyeoun, Michael, and Jake. We acted the scene of Michael (a businessman) in a hurry to get to work, on the way to work he receives a call on his cell phone. He gets distracted while driving and doesn't see Jake (elderly man) trying to cross the road, when he finally notices, he tries to stop but it's too late. Jake is struck by the car and playing a passing police woman, I try to save Jake but in vain, and he dies. I arrest Michael and bring him to court, we argue with Jeeyeoun (judge). A ghost of Jake draped in white and red scarves "floats" around the courtroom, in the end the judge decides that Michael is guilty. Our freezing pose is with me pointing at Michael who is holding his head in his hands.
 * Week 1: Was Absent for First Week of School **
 * Week 2: **



In this class, we are focusing on mainly two ATLs, Collaboration and Transfer. In our group we were all very collaborative and were very cooperative with each other. I think that we worked extremely well with each other when we had problems, we were helpful when anyone needed help and were able to compromise on everything. Our other ATL, Transfer, fits into this unit because we transferred what we would usually do in drama to what we are doing in music, such as acting. Acting is really fun and I hope we will do something related to this again.

I think one of our imperfections/weaknesses were that in the act, our act wasn't always very clear with what was happening in the story. Such as one section when Michael was "driving" and hit Jake, some of our classmates mistook it for Michael sitting on a bench and Jake having a heart attack.

There were two other acts before and after us called "The Lost Scarf" and "Conflict in School". "The Lost Scarf" tells the story of how Amber steals Bradley's scarf on a cold day because she is cold and doesn't have anything to keep her warm. At first when she tries to steal it, they start fighting but Amber pushes Bradley on the ground. Bradley has no scarf and feels very cold, Ye Jin, and kind passerby comes to his aid and tries to retrieve the lost scarf. She tries and fights with Amber but in the end Bradley doesn't get his scarf back. Their freeze is of all of them in a corner of the "stage" in the middle of a fight.

"Conflict in School", depicts Jaehee as a "thief" in school. David (student1) comes to class one day with his tablet, he puts it with bag and leaves. Jaehee (student2) sees and sneaks the tablet away with him, when David comes back, only to find that his tablet is gone, he goes and sees "Principal Ellen". She investigates and interrogates Jaehee and finds out that he is the thief and phones his "mother" (Jiwoo) to come to school. Jaehee's mom comes to school and the three talk with the Principal, in the end, David is very forgiving and gives an "OK" sign with his hand.

I think the "The Lost Scarf" would've worked better with a happier ending, because in the end, Bradley doesn't get his scarf back and it ends in a fight. The "Conflict in School" however wasn't could've given Jiwoo a clearer role because I really didn't know what or who she was play ing in the act.

I found some pictures on the internet that I composed music out of. There was a night scene with purple flowers and glowing things flying in the air. I decided to name it fantasy because it looked like a picture that I would find out of a child's storybook.
 * Over the weekend: **

The class is trying to find songs that we would be likely to use in our xylophone unit. We will find songs and song sheets and use them to "figure out" how we would play the song on the xylophones. Today we were introduced to "Popcorn" and "Dragonfly" both are for playing on the xylophone. Popcorn i'm guessing is about..popcorn, it has a lively and cheerful beat that reminds me of popping popcorn. Dragonfly however, is a slower song that has a visible pattern in the notes. It changes constantly from up to down and the notes raise and fall. There are three parts to Dragonfly, a bass part, soprano part and glockenspiel part. I think I did best on the alto xylophone part, I was able to play in time with the bass xylophone and I kept in time with the rhythm. The song "Dragonfly" sort of reminds me of the flight of a dragonfly flitting around from here to there, and from up to down. I think one of the challenges for everyone was trying to get the hang of David's part. His part features many hand movements that are supposed to very fast and it switches a lot and wanders around on many different notes.
 * Week 3: **

Having not written in my developmental workbook in one week, I should have a lot of things to write about. I actually don't have anything to really write about. We worked on our xylophone pieces the whole week. We worked mainly on piecing "Popcorn" together and I think we really worked hard and well because the "Popcorn" piece sounds really good right now. The only part we are missing is a proper ending, the ending we have right now is just a sudden stop which doesn't paint an image of "Popcorn" in your head. When we pop popcorn, the pops fade out slowly and gradually at the end instead of stopping suddenly. We didn't do a lot of work on "Dragonfly"...actually we didn't do anything on "Dragonfly" at all. We've added a lot of new parts to "Popcorn" we have 6 instruments in the song now which includes the keyboard, alto xylophone, soprano xylophone, alto glockenspiel, soprano glockenspiel and Garageband. We've arranged an array of electrical synth and drum, sounds on Garageband to go along with our "electrical theme". We have 2 weeks worth of music class left and we would really like to finish "Popcorn" by then. So the only thing we really need to work on with "Popcorn" is composing and finishing a coda that we will be able to add to the song.
 * Week 4: **

This week because our week was cut short and we only had classes until Wednesday, we worked hard and finally made up a coda for our song "Popcorn". I think it sounds really good, in the end the coda slowly gets softer and fades out with both "D's" in the end. We also developed our form, we actually just changed the whole form. We start with Jeeyeoun playing her part on the alto xylophone and Amber and I playing a duet with the melody after we play twice, everyone else joins in we play until we finish the high "A" part. Then we let David play a short solo on the guitar with At first we had some difficulty with remembering the whole piece because it's really long and it has a lot of parts to it. Apart from our coda, we also added a solo part for David on the electrical guitar and a trio on the glockenspiels played by Bradley, Jake, and Jiwoo.
 * Week 5: **

This is some of the work I've done on Garageband..the first I named it "Guitar and drums", I think it sounds pretty good, there are a variety of different instruments in the song but one problem is that I feel it repeats too much. media type="file" key="Guitar and drums1.m4a" width="300" height="50"

Below is another piece that I composed on Garageband. It consists of Electrical Bass sounds and other electrical instruments. This song seems really long because of the different patterns and how it constantly changes from this to that. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">media type="file" key="My Bass Song 1.m4a" width="308" height="22"

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">I think that my song, Synth1 is the best of the three I composed. It has an array of synth sounds and electrical sounds. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">media type="file" key="Synth1.m4a" width="300" height="50"

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Last Week: <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This is the last week of our Art, Music, and Technology rotation. We worked on creating another drama to a piece of music, we were put in different groups this time for our assignment. The piece of music we listened to was really slow, emotional, tragic, and sad. Honestly when we listened to it at first, it made my whole group feel really drowsy like we wanted to sleep right there in class. We had some trouble at first coming up with a proper story for the music. The only thing we could think of is letting someone die...again. We had a heated discussion over who would have to die, but in the end Jake said himself: "I think I should die." It really felt a little funny letting someone die because the last time we made a drama Jake was the one to die too. After brainstorming, we decided to go with the story of Jake dying in a <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; line-height: 23px;">restaurant <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> because he tried to swallow a fish whole. Our first scene is of Jake and I entering a restaurant, Bradley, our waiter leads us to a table to sit at. We sit down a order our food, while waiting we talk with each other. After a while our "food" comes and we start eating, while eating, Jake tries to swallow a fish whole and chokes on it. He collapses at the table and green stuff comes out of his head. It was supposed to be Jake <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 23px;">vomiting, I start to panic and stand up yelling for the waiter. The waiter who "just happens" to know what to do in an emergency situation like this pulls out a syringe and injects it into Jake. He performs "surgery" on Jake, pulled red scarves out of his stomach..but in the end Jake dies. The last shot is of me and Bradley standing over Jake who lies at the feet of a gravestone. We mourn and shed a tear, in the end when we freeze, that is the signal for us to stop recording. I think one of our strengths were that we were fast working and we were able to come up with a lot of creative ideas for the act. We used a lot of props for our play including scarves, Amber's syringe pencil, egg shakers, wooden fish, and some tambourines. One of our only weaknesses in the play was that it was really hard for us to keep our mouths straight and not laugh. I think that is one thing that we can work on, which is to work harder when acting to make the play more realistic. Also we are planning to take on film making for technology, we will be working with cameras and props. I feel excited if we are really going to make a film. It will connect with our ATL of transfer because we are using technology and music concepts transferred into drama class.

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 23px;">Whole Unit: <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 23px;">Over this period of time, we have learned a lot of new things. We learned new music on the xylophones and we learned things about drama and acting.

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">UNIT 2 <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Our new unit this rotation is about Themes and Variation. For this first week, we have been talking about the different ways we could change "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". We didn't come up with a lot of ideas, only to have a dubstep and rock n' roll version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Week 1: **

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 25.350000381469727px;">Week 6- Final Reflection In the past six weeks of music we have done a lot of work on xylophones. Our unit is about Themes and Variation and so at the beginning of the unit we were.......introduced to TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR... The whole class was a little taken aback at first since Twinkle Twinkle was more of a nursery rhyme so we thought it would be a little boring. All until Mr. Tompkins told us to gather on the carpet and flashed through a series of pictures of van Gogh paintings (Wheat Fields), we were really puzzled, had our music class suddenly turned into an impromptu art class? It took us a minute or so to understand why we were being shown these pictures but we soon noticed they were all different based on tone, color, and temperature. Once we noticed we began to see the connection between the pictures and Themes and Variations. The second example that Mr. Tompkins showed was a piece of music that none of us could recognize, we all thought they were seperate songs completely, but it turned out to be different variations of Happy Birthday. We were really surprised since they changed the songs so much.

It took us all some time to get used to all the different pieces we had to learn but after a lot of practice it was quite easy. In the past weeks we’ve been doing a lot of fine-tuning and brainstorming to make sure our Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (a.k.a. Star Wars) skit would be perfect. I was able to bring in lightsabers to go along with the idea of Star Wars. We’ve started working on our costumes such as Stormtrooper masks, robes, capes, and a Yoda mask. We go some assistance from Susan and she gave us a head start on the costumes by making a sample mask for us, we tested it out and it worked very well. I think we made a good effort this unit and we all worked very hard. I was able to learn the parts quite quickly, and I think we did really good as a class when gathering different ideas for the Summer Show. We were open-minded and willing to accept each other’s ideas and we also discussed many ways Themes and Variations could be transferred to different subjects.