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:

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