Reflection on Band Repertory

Rafaela de Figueiredo
Mr. Tomassi
MYP High School Band
Internacional School of Caracas
February 2012

Approaches To Learning:
My approaches to learning are; keeping a correct embouchure, knowing my fingerings, keeping the correct posture, finding time to practice daily, organizing my time, following the dynamics, maintain the same airflow, be alert for tone quality, be aware of the articulation, practice slow, repeat segments when needed and then increasing the speed.


Scales: Chromatic Lots of Fun Warm-Up Blues and Minor Scales.
When I practice the chromatic scales I always have to remind myself of keeping my mouth position intact and not changing the airflow because it is constantly changing and it is important to have to the same airflow when playing chromatic pieces. That is were I have to change the most. On the minor scales, my problem is that I always get distracted and sometimes miss the fingerings that need to be there when I play. Another thing is with increasing the speed. I have to remind myself to first practice slowly and then get faster, sometimes I also lose tempo/beat. These warm-ups will help me practice to see were I need to get better to play the songs. After practicing the warm-ups I can see where I have problems and improve it to make the songs have a better sound.


Songs: Four Season, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Shrek
While I practice four seasons, I notice that I need to improve significantly on articulation. This is a piece that needs lots of clear sound. If we accidentally play this song without looking at the way we articulate and paying attention to dynamics, the song would lose all of its magic. I did significant improvements on the way I sound on this song. The first improvement was, keeping the correct posture and I am increase the way I maintain the same airflow when playing this song. Perhaps the warm-ups did help me achieve this. The last song is the one that needs more practice than the other on. On the Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets, my mayor problem is on changing the tempos. This song reminds me a lot of the Pirates of the Carribean. The tempo of this songs changes a lot and so does its dynamics and sharps and flats also goes back and forth. I need to concentrate more when playing this song. Another issue is playing the triads at the end of the song. On the piece called Shrek I need to improve on my airflow and the way I position my mouth. At the begging of the song the saxophone players have a very interesting solo that I need to practice for sure. This is the easiest song for me of our repertory. But in general I feel more comfortable with playing these songs properly.

Dj mix - Rafa's party

Well, I really liked this project. I think that it is really cool to change something we love and enjoy so much. Being a DJ was very fun for me. I liked it because I was able to get my favorite songs and transform it and make it better in the way I thought it was better. What I did was that I took my favorite songs that are the ones I chose to do and putted in my CD.What did I do to each one of them?
Baby: I simply got the song and recorded it in a high pitch. Justin Bieber's voice is already very high so, it sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Firework: I got another remix from another song called push it push it and added it to the song of Katy Perry firework. Then It sounded really cool. It sounded like the remix was from the original song.
I gotta a feeling: I did the same thing that I did in my firework remix. I took another remix from another song and I putted it together and I recorded it as if it was one song.
I really enjoyed been a DJ and I think I will continue doing it. Its fun to see how songs can be different when you make a single change.

Reflection on band concert

I think that the concert of SAMUN was very good. I think that it was great that we played those songs because SAMUN is such an important event that makes every body really stressed out and its important to relax at the beginning so they would concentrate. I think that its good to play this music so people will know how beautiful it sounds so we don't lose that part of our history of classical music. The music we choose to play were American exalt. it is a song hard for me because of its fast speed and the scales on it. but I think that the time i had to prepare myself for these concert was enough so I practiced a lot this song. The second song we played was A Fifth of Beethoven. I thought that I did fine with that song because in class and in all the Wednesday rehearsals and sectionals we practiced it so, I think I did fine in that song and that the band in general did a good job playing this song. Then, we played pirates of the Caribbean. This is one of my favorite song because of its fast and then low speed. I love this song because it is not a classic but its a song from a very well-known movie. I really enjoy playing it. After that, we would play another song but time was almost over and they were waiting too long for us to finish the concert so we decided to move to Abba. Which is an easy song for me the only thing is that, because music changes, every thing change. Sharps and flats, tempos.... everything changes and we have to pay attention so it would sound good. I think this was the best song at that day. It is really nice listening to it and I think that they loved it. I think that the only bad thing that happened was that it started to rain and that we didn't play every song that we prepared for that day.

Reflection on the Warm ups

1. In the Remington exercise everything is super easy. We have being playing this since 6th grade and even memorized the exercise. So this is one of the easiest warm ups in band but, it is still good so we don’t forget the basics fingerings and etc.


2. The second warm up that we do is the Winds concert warm up. We have being doing this since 7th grade and some of us have still problems with that. The first exercises for me are not too hard but not too easy. It concentrates on our breath. Because most part of it is sixteenth notes and eighteenth notes so I have to know when to breathe and how to make my sound persistent. But the rest of it is easy for me. The parts that I have difficulties are the exercises number 5 and 6 because they change a lot but with practice this can be fixed.


3. In the chromatic scales exercises I had trouble with the "going down" scales. They ones that start up and go down. It is hard for me because they are all flats and I have to concentrate on playing them right so they sound good. I also have a little difficulty when counting the rests. But I think that exercise is an awesome one to practice almost all of all fingerings because of the scales.

What we did in class

we did several things in class on Thursday 12. We reviewed about things that we learned in 6th grade and in 7th grade, we reviewed about the clefs: base clef also called as the f clef and treble clef also called as g clef. We reviewed the scales of the treble clef: A major scale, A Flat (Ab) Major Scale, A Sharp (A#) Major Scale, B Major Scale, B Flat (Bb) Major Scale, C Major Scale, C Sharp (C#) Major Scale, D Major Scale, D Flat (Db) Major Scale, D Sharp (D Major Scale, E Major Scale, E Flat (Eb) Major Scale, F Major Scale, F Sharp (F#) Major Scale, G Major Scale, G Flat (Gb) Major Scale and G Sharp (G#) Major Scale. We did exercises about the different notes and if we understudied them. After that, we did review the scales by looking at them and marking if the scales were right by whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. That is the distance of the two notes. We looked at the piano keyboard to indentify the distance of those notes and at the end of the class we were asked to do for homework all the scales in a special sheet of paper that Mr.Tomassi gave us that is due for Monday 16.

What we did in class

The first day of school, Mr. Tomassi gave us papers of responsibility about our instruments, about band and we read them in class.