week 5 - ted talk reflection

Well, it seems that the Genius Hour project has come to an end. I have to say, it's been a wild ride. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to play guitar in front of everyone without messing up or passing out, but I did. I'm actually really proud of myself, because I wasn't sure that I would be able to get up there, but I actually did a pretty good job with the performance. I mean yeah, I did mess up once but I don't think anyone really noticed?? Or maybe they did, I don't know. My whole TED Talk is kind of a blur. It went by so fast, and I was so nervous.

I know I could have done better, but honestly, I think I did pretty well. As I said in my talk, I pushed myself so far out of my comfort zone, I can't help but be proud of myself for doing it and conquering my fears and all that. I worked really hard on my presentation and practiced a lot over the weekend, so I think that paid off. I'm also so glad I presented on Monday. That way, I got it over with and didn't have to worry for the rest of the week (except for the Les Mis CD project...). My TED Talk helped me to see that going out of your comfort zone is really worth it. I preached that all throughout my talk, yet I still wasn't sure if I could pull off the performance part. Once I did that, and people congratulated me and told me I did well, I knew it was worth it.

And I felt really good about myself. There is nothing better than the feeling of relief after presenting and knowing that you did a pretty good job. The build-up before the presentation was probably worse than the actual presentation for me. I had never played my guitar in front of such a large audience before, but now that I've done it, I see that it's not that bad. At the place I take lessons at, they have performance things sometimes, and I always opted out of those because I had never done anything like that before. Now that I have, maybe I could perform. You never know.

Anyway, I think my TED Talk went well overall. It wasn't perfect, and it wasn't memorized, but I hopefully didn't look at my notecards too much. My playing of The A Team was probably the biggest plot twist of all time (if you've been keeping up with my blog, you know I'd been learning mostly Taylor Swift songs), so that was hopefully interesting. I don't know. I hope people liked it.

Well, this is my last blog post, so bye!! It's been real. I'm gonna go watch The Office now. Thank you so much if you read this blog or commented or anything; that was super cool of you to do.

- Hannah :~)

Comments:

Sarah
Abby
Madi

week 4 - ted talk monday (dksjfh)

So, I'd like to say that I'm completely prepared for my TED Talk, because that would be great, but I'm not prepared. I've written a script, but I'm still working on memorization (I'm not too sure if I'll ever get there...) and I'm completely unsure about what I should do about performing.

I could perform something, but I'm terrified of messing up and being in front of people. Also, if I performed I absolutely WOULD NOT sing. That's not a thing that is possible for me to do. I realize that I should be pushing myself and that is a huge goal for me with this project, but I think that just getting up there with a guitar and making it not sound terrible would be a feat. Also, I posted a video where I sing so that is all you are getting. That is enough pushing myself and venturing outside of my comfort zone, thank you very much.

There is also just the option of me filming a video of me playing something. Sure, watching it would make me want to die, but it's probably better than performing. But then again, I really want to push myself with this. I've never performed in front of a live audience before, so it would probably be good for me. I'm so conflicted, I feel like Jean Valjean when he was debating whether or not to confess that he was Jean Valjean.

There is also the matter of what to perform. I've learned a bunch of songs over the course of the project, so I could really do any of them. I've learned some harder songs, but I think that for performing live, playing an easier song would be best. I also don't want to perform something that I've already posted a video or an audio clip of, because I don't want to be repetitive. I was thinking that the song Never Grow Up by Taylor Swift might be good, because it's pretty simple and no one has heard me play it before. Also, whatever I play has to last less than a minute, so I won't be doing any full songs.

On another note, I actually am pretty happy with the theme of my TED Talk. I wasn't sure mine was going to be meaningful or have something that people took away, but I think that it actually does. Writing the script wasn't hard at all - it's going to be the performance and the speaking-in-front-of-people part that is hardest for me. I don't want to spoil my TED Talk, so I'm not going to talk too much about it. I'm a mix of excited and terrified, but I'm happy that I'm going on Monday. That way I can get it out of the way and not have to worry about it anymore.

Sorry for the short post, but I have to stop writing this and work on my TED Talk for multiple hours. Pretty fun Saturday plans, right? :~) Wish me luck, I'll probably need it.

- Hannah

Comments:
Jason
Laura
Sarah

week 3 - vlog!!

Hello!

After multiple hours of filming/editing and some awkward jump cuts, I have come up with my vlog, where I talk about what I've been doing for this project so far and where I'm heading. Having to hear my voice and look at my face while editing was torturous. I don't know how YouTubers do it; it's enough to drive a person to madness. It made me aware of all the weird faces I make while talking, and also my awful voice - both singing and speaking. Plus, iMovie and PhotoBooth are not the best programs for filming and editing, so the quality is not outstanding. Anyway, I don't think it turned out too terrible, so I present to you... my video blog.

Password: hannahsvlog



Genius Hour Vlog from Hannah Elizabeth on Vimeo.

P.S. The song I'm playing at the end is Treacherous by Taylor Swift. I also apologize for the not-so-great sound quality - my high E string is broken somehow and sounds rattly :~)

Comments:
Margo
Ellie
Abby

week 2 - wonderland

Finding enough time to practice is hard. And so is figuring out strumming patterns. And so is going to a new guitar teacher. These are all things I've had to face throughout the week. Learning Wonderland didn't seem like it would be that hard. It only has four chords throughout the entire song, and they're not very difficult to switch between. The difficulty lay in the strumming.

Since Wonderland is a kind of electronic song with dubstep instead of guitars, a strumming pattern was not immediately obvious to me. Normally I just kind of play around until I find something that sounds okay, but this time, nothing sounded quite right. Some of the patterns I tried out for the post-chorus sounded alright, but they just didn't seem loud and chaotic enough. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I didn't want to just use a simple pattern that didn't sound exactly right. I had already gotten the chords for the song here, so I figured I had to find a YouTube tutorial where someone showed me a good strumming pattern.

I ended up watching this video...

... and kind of skipping around to find strumming patterns. I paused the screen at certain points to see what he had written because, let's face it, I don't have enough time or patience to watch this entire video. It looked like a bunch of complicated stuff that I didn't really feel like learning, since I thought I could make the song sound alright with just average strumming. So, I just kind of listened to how he was doing it but it was so hard to get down the pattern. He was going too fast for me to interpret exactly what he was playing. So I looked to where he had written some strumming patterns on the side and I tried one of them (D-DDU UD-DUDU). It sounded pretty good to me so I was like, "Okay, cool, got the pattern down for the post-chorus," except no, it didn't sound exactly like how the guy was playing it. So I messed around some more. And then maybe I found the pattern that he was using or maybe it's not even the same one, but it sounds better than the other one so I decided I'm gonna use D DDU DU DDDU. And, giving it second thought I don't think it's the same one he's using but I don't really care because I like it and I'm tired of trying to find a pattern.

My struggles as I tried to puzzle through which strumming pattern sounded the best.

Another thing that happened this week: I had a guitar lesson on Thursday with a new teacher. I didn't really like him that much. He's making me play Count on Me by Bruno Mars, which is really simple and not a good song. I don't think that he gets I'm not that much of a beginner. So I might go back to my old teacher, Ben, because I think he had a lesson opening. He was much more chill and let me pick the songs I wanted to work on. He also liked Taylor Swift, and I got the feeling that the new teacher, Luke, doesn't like Taylor Swift that much, since when I mentioned I liked her he kind of ignored it. So let's hope I can just go back to my old teacher.

Anyway, here's Wonderland. I sang this time. That's a thing I did... Sorry my voice is really weak, and please ignore all the mistakes I made.

Comments This Week:

Kat

Sarah

Helen

week 1 - i know places

Hello everyone!

So, I've been doing this project for a week, and I think I've been making some good progress. My goals are to practice for at least a half hour every day. I know this doesn't seem like a lot, but it's more than I've done in the past (I'm not exactly the most diligent person), so I've been giving it a try. I've been kinda successful so far. Once I get really into it, I usually play for a while; it's the picking-up-the-guitar part that's hard.

My goal for this week was to learn I Know Places by Taylor Swift on the guitar. Using these chords on ultimate-guitar.com, I was able to pretty much figure it all out. Because barre chords are really hard for me, and I prefer to avoid them at all costs, I modified the F chord to an easier voicing (my old guitar teacher showed it to me, and while it doesn't sound quite as good, it still works). There are many different versions of chords you can use, but I decided on the ones I used because I know how to form all of them and I think it sounds pretty accurate to the song.

Something that Ultimate Guitar doesn't provide is a strumming pattern, so I had to pretty much just figure one out and go with what I thought sounded right, especially because I Know Places doesn't even have any guitar in it. I decided on a palm muting technique for the verses, since those are more subdued and wouldn't sound good with loud, full strumming. Palm muting is basically where, when you're strumming, you rest the side of your hand lightly on the strings. It mutes the sound a little bit without getting rid of it completely, and I think it sounds nice with the verses. For the chorus, I decided to go with a D DDU (down down down up) strumming pattern. It's one of the simplest strumming patterns there is, but I think that a more complicated rhythm wouldn't fit the song. The one I decided on works really well with the lyrics and tempo, and sometimes less is more.

Something I've noticed is that I pick up quickly on learning new songs. It was rough at first, because I had to figure out the chords and find how to string them together so it sounded like the actual song, but once I got the hang of it, I learned the song in no time. I thought that maybe I should learn more than one song a week, because I can learn a song in two days, sometimes less. But then I realized that I have to memorize too, and that takes a little bit longer. Also, if I have a particularly hard song, I may need the full week. So, I decided that I'm going to be sticking to my schedule, but if I get bored with a song, I'm going to probably try to learn another song that may not necessarily be Taylor Swift and play around with that.

In my last blog post, I said that I was thinking about getting guitar lessons, and I did! I'm trying them out with a new teacher this Thursday, so I'll probably be posting about that. I hope that this teacher lets me pick what songs I want to learn, because my last teacher always let me pick the song and I preferred that method of teaching. I'm mainly going to be doing the guitar lessons so I can improve on my technique and things like that, so hopefully they prove to be valuable.

Anyway, you can listen to this audio of me playing I Know Places if you so desire. I only did the first verse and chorus because it gets repetitive without lyrics. Also, please ignore all the mistakes I made. I would sing along, but whenever I hear my singing voice recorded I want to die, so I'm gonna stay away from that and not subject you to it.



Maybe I'll eventually post videos or sing along or something but I have to start slow. I'm really uncomfortable performing for people or even just posting a video of me performing, so yeah. We'll see. Also, ignore the fact that the background of the audio is a really old picture of Taylor Swift; I'm using my SoundCloud account from 7th grade.

Comments:
Sarah
Madi
Zoe

getting started

Hello! I'm Hannah, and on this blog, I will be documenting the seven-week process in which I improve my guitar skills for the genius hour project. So get on board and buckle up, cause my ride's gonna be a big one. And if you get motion sickness, you know, put your head between your knees, 'cause Hannah's stopping for no one. (Yes, I did just quote Parks and Recreation).

I decided to work on playing the guitar for my genius project. This decision was not hard for me to arrive at, because I really enjoy playing my guitar. About a year and a half ago, I got a guitar for my birthday, and started lessons. I took them on and off, but ever since this school year started, I've hardly picked up my guitar. Since it's something I enjoy, I figured that the genius project would be a great way to get me back into practicing. There are also many songs that I would love to learn how to play, and with this project, I will be motivated to learn as much as I can.

Over the next seven weeks, I am planning on teaching myself six different Taylor Swift songs that I can then put into a medley for the final product. Every week, I will learn and perfect a new song so that I will know all six songs by the time my final product is due. The songs I am planning on playing are I Know Places, Wonderland, Shake It Off, Never Grow Up, Stay Stay Stay, and Treacherous, all by Taylor Swift. I am going to use either Ultimate-guitar.com or my Taylor Swift songbooks (depending on which is better for a given song) to get the chords for each song. I may also use YouTube tutorials if they are available for the song I want to learn. I've used all of these resources before for learning songs, and they have all been extremely helpful. I may also start my guitar lessons again once a week, but I'm not sure yet.

My overall goals for this project are to learn six Taylor Swift songs and then compile them all into a medley of sorts. Through this process, I also hope to learn new chords and make my transitions between chords smoother. In the past, this is something that has been difficult for me, so I hope this project will allow me to improve in that aspect. Another thing that I have struggled with in the past is the sound quality of my chords. It is hard for me to push down hard enough on the strings to make it sound perfect, so I plan on improving this. I already know a decent amount of chords, but the hardest for me are barre chords (well, they're the hardest for everyone) where one finger has to push down on multiple strings. I expect that I will be learning a lot of songs with barre chords throughout my life, so I hope I can get them to sound the way they should.

This week, I am going to start learning I Know Places, so maybe in my next blog post I'll talk about that and maybe even include a video (???). I'm kinda scared to post videos of me playing, but I guess stage fright is something I'm going to have to get over for this project.

Comments This Week:
Sarah Wolbach
Jason Smith
Laura Roth