Mastery? Psh. Good Luck With That [Week 6]

Where do I even begin with week 6? Let’s just say it was the most hectic crazy, yet fun of all the weeks. I created, practiced, fooled around, and gained a crap(because swearing is inappropriate)ton of confidence.

Let’s begin with my practice! Since I was busy also preparing for the TED Talk, I decided to shrink my practice time down to one hour a day. During those hours, I continuously played through Swan Lake again, and again, and again. It wasn’t the most boring thing I ever did, but let’s just say playing a piece the same exact way over twenty times a day was not a fun activity for me.  However, the end result was worth it. It’s not perfect (or anywhere close to that, that is), but it definitely shows the amount of progress I made:

Now. Here’s the fun/crazy/difficult part of this week. Planning the TED Talk. Before doing anything with the presentation, visuals, or even the script, I needed to come up with a theme. This resulted in Sunday night being spent on youtube, listening to a bunch of TED Talks. While listening, I looked for something that a lot of the good TED Talks had in common. I found one: a catchphrase or quote. Through the catchphras or quote, the speakers would make a theme. This set me into thinking, what quote would be good for my TED Talk? After thinking (and procrastinating) for a solid two hours, something my tennis coach said all the time came into my mind: competence makes confidence. However, this quote went against my experience in gaining confidence throughout this project. So how do I make a theme from this? Simple. ((not really.)) Make my theme opposing this quote. This is how I came up with my theme of “competence is not the only way to confidence.”

From there, I went on to making my script on Monday. Making the script was...simply put...a struggle. I was lost as to how to set up my TED Talk. Even though I watched countless videos, I just couldn’t get how they put it all together. So I began with just writing. I just wrote out whatever I thought would be good for snippets of the script. From there, I gathered the good/important ideas and expand upon them. Finally, I found a way to connect the ideas and being my original idea (which is the theme) back to the end of the script to bring my TED Talk full circle.

After completing the script on Monday, I spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday practicing the script. I completely memorized the script by Wednesday...when I realized that my process was nowhere found in my script. I had to go back and fix my script...which was already memorized. It was very difficult memorizing the script again, for I had the original script ingrained in my mind. After putting around four hours in it on Wednesday and another four on Thursday, my script was completely memorized and ready-to-go. The last thing needed was my presentation.

This was probably the simplest part of preparing for my TED Talk. For the presentation, I had a slide per main idea, in which I ended up having approximately seven slides. They contained of mostly pictures, but words did come along with it. After saving it on a flashdrive, I was finished and ready!

Now that the TED Talk planning was finished, all that there was left to do was to present. With a hopeful heart and a confident mind, I began my presentation.

((reflections on my TED Talk here: CLICK))

The Typical High School Presentation? [TED Talk Reflection]

This project has officially come to an end! *cries* Throughout the past six weeks, I have been so deeply focused and involved in the project that since it is now finished, there is a somewhat empty feeling rumbling inside of my stomach.

On March 20, 2015, I presented my TED Talk for this whole project! If you want to see the process of making and planning my TED Talk, click here: CLICK

My brain was a pile of goo when I first stepped onto the stage. Sure, my TED Talk was about confidence, but the at-that-moment-oh-you-could-mess-up-your-script-so-bad feeling still did linger despite my Talk's theme.  However, as soon as I was given the sign to begin, the fear and anxiety all washed away. I was soley focused on portraying my message to the audience.

One thing that I felt that was particularly successful about my TED Talk was that I did not hesitate or stutter. This was one of my greatest fears when on stage. I was afraid that my tongue would get tied, resulting in messing up what I planned to say or an awkward silence.  Which is why I am so glad that this was not the case. I also felt that my voice was relatively loud when presenting as well. I tend to come off as a reserved, quieter person at first, and I used to never be able to speak up...much less speak loudly. Right before going up on stage, I told myself that being louder gets rid of nervousness. Of anxiety. Of the fear of messing up. That speaking loudly rather gains confidence. And, interestingly enough, it worked! I am so glad to see such a wonderful end result.

However, with good things, there are always the bad. One of the most skeptical things that I felt about my presentation was that it was just...a presentation. Not a TED Talk, but a good old fashioned, typical high school presentation. Was my speech to mechanical? Was I adding too much information about my process to get my underlying message across? Did I look anywhere close to a person that does TED Talks? I was confused and worried about all of these things. In fact, I am still confused and worried about this. I did divide the types of content in my script into the proportions I wanted them to be in, but even so, I still was slightly worried that maybe, just maybe, I added 10 seconds too much of my process.

But in the end, I learned that even though I may have presented this TED Talk like a typical high school presentation, thie project is definitely not “typical.” I genuinely enjoyed practicing what I love to do during this project and I hope that I will be able to continue on to an even better violin player (I’ll aim for the intermediate level in two years).

Objects In Mirror May Seem Bigger Than They Appear [Week 5]

Well....darn it.
How, how, how?! How could I have possibly forgotten to hit the publish button?! Apologies to all, but here is what I did during the duration of the fifth week of learning the violin!

This was the week where I needed to practice as much as I can. I upped my practice time to three hours a week, continuously working on the piece "Swan Lake." However, I also needed to work on my TED Talk so I decided to shorten the last few practice times to one hour and spend the majority of my time working on the TED Talk. Here is a specific breakdown of what I focused on each day of the week:

Sunday: Intonation of the notes (making sure that my violin playing is in tune)
Monday: Vibrato practice (using simpler pieces from Suzuki Book 2)
Tuesday: Fluid bow movement practice

Hold.
Up.
Because the greatest news has arrived!
Our TED Talk presentation dates have been moved!
And that means one thing....more time to practice and prepare!
Hearing this news on Tuesday definitely got me excited.  I changed my "game plan" and decided to have the rest of the week as three hour practices and begin my TED Talk planning next week. So, here's for the rest of the week:

Wednesday: Even tone throughout (done by playing with staccato and playing slowly)
Thursday: Vibrato practice (with Swan Lake)
Friday: Fixing posture (little details like a slight wrist adjustment and position of the violin on the shoulder)
Saturday: Dynamics and expression

Now, throughout this week, I was thinking about what I should do to make my piece bigger, better, and sound like a professional.  But thinking about it more and more made me realize that playing the violin like a professional won't do any benefit for my project.  Doing gestures and things that professionals do during performances is something that I should not be doing until I reach that level. It may seem like a big deal to look good, but in the end, the progress is what will shine through. Whether it be perfection or a tree, some things definitely may seem bigger than they appear.

A Vlog?! No Way. [Week 4]

Hey guys!  This week I will present everyone with a video blog, also known as a blog. I apologize that it is not on vimeo, for the past four attempts had something with the connection going wrong, so I gave up and went to upload this to youtube.  I shall try vimeo again and if it begins working again, I will re-update this post with the vimeo. The link below is a link to one of my favorite violin pieces of all time:

Bach - Concerto for Two Violins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4LFjuWvwzw

Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle [Week 3]

What's the first thing you think of when you think of the three words above? Most probably run their imaginations towards Jason Derulo, but after this week, "wiggle" was given a totally different definition. Why, might you ask? All because of a concept when playing the violin called "vibrato." 


Vibrato is the vibrating sound created by wiggling one's finger on a string on the violin. It is used in musical pieces on longer notes. This concept is used by all intermediate to advanced playing violinists and is said to be one of the more difficult techniques to master. 


I invested thirty minutes out of the two hours that I practiced each day to work on vibrato.  Youtube was my go-to website once again when looking for a guide to teach me how to do so.  I ended up referencing to "Howcast," the youtube channel.  The video I used is shown below:

Using this video, I practiced, and practiced, and practiced.  Vibrato was a lot more difficult than I thought it was.  However, due to consistent practicing, I came up with somewhat decent results (because let's be real here, it's only been a week since I practiced vibrato).

I immediately realized a problem on the last day of the week (Saturday).  I only learned how to do vibrato; there was never an application to vibrato towards music.  Having realized this the last day of the week, I spent the whole of two hours practicing a piece (Swan Lake) with vibrato.  The results were not my favorite, however, it made myself recognize how different and hard it is to take vibrato and apply it to a piece.

The end result was not a result that I particularly expected, for vibrato was a much difficult technique to accomplish than I thought it was. Taking from what I learned this third week, I am going to keep the original schedule as is, except I will add 30 minutes to each practice (lengthening practice time to 2 hours 30 minutes), and will use those thirty extra minutes to continue learning vibrato. The third week was a difficult one; I'm curious as to what the fourth week will bring me!