Musical Notation Analysis

I now realise that the Arts, including music, creates opportunities to engage, inspire and enrich our lives. Music making and responding can challenge, provoke responses and enrich our knowledge and understanding of ourselves, our communities and the world.

MacNamara, Holmes and Collins (2006) state that there are numerous similarities between performances in music and sport. Expert musicians and sports performers are more able to adapt to setbacks than lesser skilled performers, as well as experts having higher levels of dedication and motivation and can communicate more emotion through the pieces being played. Similarly to Chaffin et al. (2003) this communication of emotion may be related to the artistic image with both requiring focus and decision-making.

My life would be incomplete without performing music. I’ve spent time, in concert bands, in bell choirs, in school and church choirs, and singing, playing in music festivals, and in pit bands trying not to laugh my head off at the actors’ improvisations. But the art that truly speaks to my soul does not lie in creating music, it lies in dancing to it.

“It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.”(page 50) Lastly, music has already helped me grow and find myself as an individual and I can’t wait to see what the rest of my life has in store for

I saw a ridiculous amount of talent exhibited by young musicians that afternoon, but I noticed one thing all the pianists had in common: their faces remained blank throughout their performances. “How are they sitting so still while they play? My piano teacher has to stop me from swaying like a boat when I play the Arabesque,” I thought to myself. By the end of the recital, I realized that my earlier failure was not fruitless. That day of defeat was the day that my passion for music became clearer than ever. Though I was not the best pianist in state by any means, I loved my music. I played because I chose to, not because my parents forced me to practice for hours and hours to perfection. I understood for the first time that if I have passion for what I do, I cannot

Author Courtney Crappell writes the article, “Making Music Lessons Attractive Again”. She begins by asking her readers if they are interested in discovering ways to make music a better-known aspect of people’s everyday lives. She then moves on to explain what it is music teachers do. Music teachers are people who give individuals who seek musical knowledge, the tools to experience the world of music. At some point in his or her lives, Crappell states every person desires to learn how to play an instrument.

"Is Music the Key to Success?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2016. Joanne Lipman argues that music and success have a tight connection, and that any individual can increase their ability to work well by playing an instrument. Lipman points out various famous and successful people whom are even mildly skilled at an instrument, and argues how the skills they learned while playing an instrument carried over into their professional life. Lipman proves her argument through personal interviews with all of the people she mentions in her paper. From actors to statisticians, Lipman finds a way to incorporate all of their experiences into a single coherent argument. The article shows how, aside from financial help, music can provide useful skills anyone can employ in their professional

Since age 5, I have played piano and engaged in multiple competitions throughout the years. As I grew in age, my music obsession exponentially grew with it. Piano is my stress outlet; When irritated, I press my anger into the keys through Schumann’s “Knight Ruppert”. When sentimental, I let my emotions

Music can be a powerful emotional tool. The sweet, sober sounds of Adele’s “Someone Like You” can bring chills or even tears to listeners. In the 18th century, the emotional allure of music was no different: The quiet, reverberating notes in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 can still evoke loneliness and despair. There are few things more satisfying than yell-singing along to Nirvana when you’re angry, or skipping around the house to a Taylor Swift song after a particularly good day.

Emotions run deep within music. Music has the ability to change our moods within minutes, or even seconds. The simplest of arrangements can move us in ways that words cannot. You can see this in every period of time. Through happiness and through strife, we grow attached to the music that touches us the most. When I feel sorrowful, I listen to the music that helps repair the damage to my heart. When I feel joyous, I listen to the music that energizes my already energetic mood. No matter what I’m feeling, my emotions can be seen in the music I write and the music I listen to. Music has been and will always be a major part of life,

Commonly throughout my everyday life, I find myself to become overwhelmed with schoolwork and responsibilities. However, I use my piano lessons as an escape from this. Music allows me to have an artistic and creative release from these pressures. Like so, I often sit down to play the piano and find that just simply practicing distracts my mind and brings me at ease. The concept of creating beautiful music for others as well as relaxing my own thoughts has a deep impact on my life that no other activity has shown itself to provide.

When addressing Reimer and Elliott’s on why we teach music both reference the topic of “self-growth”. This quality is influenced through being aware of ones actions and the critical thinking that allows us to diagnose why we do things a certain way or why we think a certain way. Music allows this

Ever since I was a child, the piano had captured my interest. I had taken classes, but, being so young, I had neither the attention span nor hand-eye-coordination for a successful piano-playing career. Even through my years taking piano at BASIS and improving tremendously, I hadn’t considered myself a piano player, or pianist, per say. There was a specific event, however, that changed this perception of myself. Buying a new, professional digital keyboard led me to accepting my identity as a pianist.

My father was a career musician, so naturally, I outwardly rejected music from an early age. Throughout my young life, he had a habit of sitting at the piano and playing a small excerpt of a classical etude and leaving the room shortly thereafter. I would then come in when I thought he wasn’t listening and recreate by ear what he had just played. These accrued aural skills proved useful as I began composing my first musical work. My musical preferences at that point in my life included themes from video games and cartoons, and so my inaugural effort at an original composition was a video game “final boss” theme. The project took me several

My emotions and thoughts could fill my hands with such passion and viscosity when I played, but it was the fact that I did not appreciate such excessive amounts of classical music which distorted my sight on the path of reassurance. I began playing the piano once again, but I stayed away from any form of classical pieces. I attempted several Pop songs, such as Justin Bieber's “Baby” and Bruno Mars’s “Talking To The Moon”. As I read the music and sight read the notes onto the piano keys, I began to fathom something that unraveled right between my eyes. Unlike classical music, Pop or Blues did not require perfection; I could put my faults out in the open and not be concerned with skill, but instead being concerned with raw emotion and creativity. Improvisation and mash-ups became riveting to me, and I spent my free time engrossed in the boundless combinations between modern songs and the interminable melodies linked to the verses of the songs. I loved to show the experimental covers I casually compiled to the people who surrounded me. These modern songs fueled my determination to explore new ends. They kept my curiosity and ingenuity vigorous as I constantly searched for fresh songs to invent my own ambitious transcriptions that stayed true to the originals. I desired to please my friends with the piano. I desired to impress to my parents once again. I desired to connect the missing link between my brother and me. I desired to unveil