Kalayla's Blog

Hello~

Welcome to my final project for In-Depth this year (thanks for stopping by)!

 

For the past 5 months, I’ve been working to learn the bass guitar. With the help of my mentor, I learned how to pluck strings, play scales and arpeggios, and play along to songs. I came to understand how the bass plays its part in music with it’s repetitive low sounding notes keeping time and melody from the background. I’ve had a blast learning and have gotten even more excited about the instrument as time went on.

Thanks to my mentor, Tito Paul, as well! He was always so enthusiastic about the bass guitar and willing to answer any questions I had. Your excitement was contagious!

 

Now we get to the project itself.

To celebrate my learning over the course of In-Depth, I decided to learn 4 of some of my favourite songs. I practiced and memorized the fingering, and finally, filmed them all. Throughout this entire process, I challenged my skills in not only string plucking or fingering, but also reading bass sheet music, keeping time with the song and performing/playing in front of a camera. They’re nowhere near perfect, of course, but I’m happy with how each turned out. Now, they can all be accessed through the links below for your viewing pleasure! Feel free to pick and choose what songs pique your interest. (It might be useful as well to right click on the links below and click open in new tab)

 

If you need somewhere to start, Prom Queen and Space Girl  are probably my top 2 favourites

Prom Queen by Beach Bunny

Space Girl by Frances Forever

Kyoto by Phoebe Bridgers

Sophia by Clairo

 

As a closing note, despite Covid getting in the way and putting restrictions on almost everything. everyone involved with In-Depth this year did amazing! Whether you participated, mentored, organized or simply encouraged, thankyou for seeing it through until the end. Congrats!

 

Happy In-Depth-ing (:

Progress Report

Hello! Over the course of the spring break and time between my last blog post, I made a lot of progress on my In-Depth. I had a meeting with my mentor over spring break since we weren’t available to have one the weekend getting back to school. I’d say the skill I worked on the most over the break was song-playing. I had a lot of free time during the last week of the break and spent around thirty minutes every day playing around on the bass. There were a few little ways that I changed how I played as I practiced. For one, I changed the way I plucked the strings. Originally, I had been playing the strings with my thumb, which was an easier way to begin playing. As I watched more videos of others playing the bass, I noticed how instead of having their arm over the body and using their thumb to pluck the strings, they had their arm resting on top of the body and their hand hanging over the strings to pluck.  

“‘Are you using your pick or your fingers?’  ‘Oh I’m just using my thumb.’ ‘Oh yeah that’s how I used to play using my thumb, and then I switched to using my fingers. But I actually like using the pick better.’” 

 When I experimented with this method, I found that it was much faster to pluck one string after the other (like how using multiple fingers to hold strings on the fretboard made it easier to switch between notes). One of the other new ‘skills’ that I worked on this break was the song playing. At first, during the meeting with my mentor, we started with the song Watermelon Sugar by Harry Styles.  

“‘You know that song that I asked you to listen to?’  ‘Yeah, that Harry Styles one?’  ‘You know that song right?’  ‘Yeah I remember it was on the radio a lot.’ ‘It’s a really easy song, it’s only four chords.’”  

We talked about how this song was easy to play because it was the same 4 notes replaying throughout the song.  

“‘So after every bar after every four beats, you change notes, so it’s (2,3,4)~ and then start again, that’s the whole song!”  

After this meeting, I was excited at the fact that I was able to play songs, so I had looked up a few tutorials for the song on youtube. After watching a few bass tutorials for Watermelon Sugar, I was able to play a slightly more complicated version. (What I was practicing with my mentor was a much simpler version  

“‘These are like the bass notes.’  ‘Like if you were to play the chords, they would be the bass notes?’  ‘Yeah we’re just going to be hitting the notes. He does a bunch of other fancy things but for now we’ll use it as our practice song.’”  

) After learning the Harry Styles song, I was opened to the possibility of youtube bass tutorials! Later I tried a Phoebe Bridgers song (Motion Sickness) and a Lou Reed Song (Walk on the Wild Side). In the process of learning these songs on youtube, I had to learn how to read bass sheet music. While this might not seem interesting, I found it to be one of the coolest ‘discoveries’ I made during the project. Because I have the experience of being able to read piano sheet music, I was able to pick up bass sheet music pretty quickly. There were many small differences between the two, like numbers instead of note values and 4 (string) lines instead of 5 staff lines. These and many other smaller details made bass music so interesting to me. One other big part of learning any sheet music for an instrument means you can play any song if you have the music for it, which is super exciting to me. Other than all the sheet music and songs, I ‘ve also been working on my scales this week. I did more research on the other scales and have been practicing all the other normal exercises (semitone scales, arpeggios etc.) 

 Video

This is a video that was taken during the last week of spring break when I learned how to play Watermelon Sugar on the bass. I hadn’t felt comfortable enough to play with my other fingers at the time, so I used my thumb to pick the strings instead.

Video #4

How to Have a Beautiful Mind 

This year for In-Depth, we’re using the book “How to Have a Beautiful Mind” by Edward De Bono to guide us through the project. The book talks about how to have a beautiful mind (as the title explains) and how to have beautiful conversation with others. Over the course of a few weeks, we’ll learn about the skills talked about in the book and apply them to our In-Depth project. This week we read chapters nine and ten.

Chapter Nine

In Chapter 9 of De Bono’s How to Have a Beautiful Mind, he talks about concepts. Concepts is a word that I throw around a lot or use as a synonym for other words, but De Bono talks about it in a way where it holds a lot of importance. Concepts are described as ‘parent’ or big ideas to smaller more specific ones. For example, the books uses the example of a parking meter. The ‘concept’ of a parking meter is to gain money from the need of car parks, but the actual parking meter itself is a specific way that the concept is carried out. The big takeaway from this chapter was that as we learn a new skill, there will be many big concepts that will require you to navigate and figure out. For example, there were a lot of new concepts introduced to me as I learned the bass. Concepts like ‘getting a sound out of the strings’ and  ‘getting many different (note) sounds out of bass’ were some of the beginning ideas that I was introduced to. Recently, the concepts that I’ve been trying to wrap my head around are ones such as ‘playing bass along with a song’, ‘getting the right sounds/sound effects out of the bass’ and ‘getting faster and more accurate when playing bass’.  

 Chapter Ten

In How to Have a Beautiful Mind Chapter 10, De Bono talks about what alternatives are and how important they are to learning/living. As the word suggests, alternatives are extra/optional choices or ways of doing tasks. They give you flexibility and room to do your own yet still getting you to the planned destination. One of the important parts to alternatives is that none of them will be the ‘best’ way perse. Most of the time, the ‘best’ way is determined on what kind of person you yourself are and not the alternatives themselves. My mindset going into this project was very much based on my knowledge of learning an instrument classically, mainly because it was one of the predominant ways I had ever learned and instrument. My mentor, having learned the bass by himself, offered the alternative of a much more free and flexible way of learning. For example, when learning scales, we didn’t look at the structure of the scales or specific notes in the scale, but instead we learned the sounds of the scale and how close to do re mi scale it would sound like. I found this way of learning to be much more refreshing and free because it didn’t have a set structure to how you learned. If I were to look back to the other options I had for mentors, I can somewhat predict the alternatives to learning they would’ve offered. One of my possible mentors was a teacher, and I think the alternative they would’ve offered would be somewhere in between a classical and freeform approach. I feel like that also would’ve been interesting to experience. It wouldn’t have strayed too far from my original approach, but given enough room for freedom still.  

 Final Project

For my final project, I’m planning to do a prerecorded online concert of some sort. I plan to choose 2-4 songs that I want to play/preform and practice my way up to a point where I feel comfortable playing them. In that specific part of the project, I plan to focus more on the playing songs/finger picking aspect of my learning rather than the scales/arpeggio and more theory/practical based parts. I also was thinking about the interactive and learning part of my final project. I want to put the online concert in a presentation where I can show and teach some of the theory/practical parts of my learning. I hope that when people see my presentation, they can see the different ways in which you can learn an instrument and what parts of learning an instrument can be exciting and worthwhile. 

Concerning Quotes

This week, I didn’t include as many quotes because most of the topics discussed in this post were about personal learning that quotes from a call wouldn’t back up/support.

Progress Report 

This week, I learned a lot and improved on what I could do on the bass. Last week, I was focused a lot on using multiple fingers instead of just my one to play scales or arpeggios. I had improved a lot that week, and even more so this week with that goal in mind. This week(s) during my meeting with my mentor, I also learned the major scale! I thought that this was a really big thing as one of my goals was to learn the ‘bass scales’ Tito Paul taught me a lot about the finger pattern for the major scale and how you can change your hand position up down and back and forth over the fret board to get different major scales. I figured out that depending on where you start on the fretboard (the frets move up and down by chromatic/half steps) you get the major scale starting on the note.  This gave me a lot of freedom to experiment with starting on different frets to see and hear what sounds right and what I have to adjust to the finger position if I start a string lower or a fret higher etc. So this week I had spent a lot of time playing around with arpeggios and the major scales seeing how I could improve with using multiple fingers and how I could change keys. I practiced way more then I usually do this week! Most mornings when I had extra time, I would be in the little music corner practicing bass before I had to leave. I think maybe it also had to do with the fact that I had more material to actually practice. Using the material that I got from my meeting with my mentor, I experimented with playing the same arpeggios in different frets (same key, same root note) 

 Video

In this weeks video, I play (in order) Chromatic (half step) scale, A, D and other random arpeggios , and 3 major scales.

Video #3

How to Have a Beautiful Mind 

This year for In-Depth, we’re using the book “How to Have a Beautiful Mind” by Edward De Bono to guide us through the project. The book talks about how to have a beautiful mind (as the title explains) and how to have beautiful conversation with others. Over the course of a few weeks, we’ll learn about the skills talked about in the book and apply them to our In-Depth project. This week we read about argumentative thinking vs. parallel thinking. De Bono explains argumentative thinking as a way of the statement “I am right, and you are wrong”. He then goes onto say that parallel thinking was what the basis of “the Six Hats” method of thinking was based on. The Six Hats method of thinking can be summarized as such: 

White Hat – information or facts. They can also be what is called ‘soft facts’ which includes information like rumors.  

Yellow Hat – values or positives. Yellow Hat information points out why an idea might work or the good parts of it 

Green Hat – creative thinking. This hat ‘asks’ for ideas and encourages creative thinking 

Black Hat – critical thinking or judgement. This information is usually described as the voice that helps you act safely 

Blue Hat – This hat is typically used to define the purpose of a conversation, and in turn guiding what hats should be used. 

Red Hat – emotions or feelings. Red Hat information doesn’t always have to be backed up by facts as it can sometimes be based on intuition 

These hats are put on and off (metaphorically of course) when discussing ideas with someone. They help make it so that everyone is looking at the issue/idea from the same point of view and at the same time. 

 

Conversation with Mentor + Coloured Hats 

Conversation (I don’t have my mentor’s permission to put a recording of him in my blog)

M – Mentor, Tito Paul

K – Me, Kalayla

~Somewhere in the beginning of the meeting~ 

M – Well okay, you know what, remember we said we were going to try the do re mi. 

K – Yep 

M – Like *plays major scale* 

M – Okay so we’ll do that um so I have the extra string on my bass, can you see, so let’s start with your lowest string, I’ll show you where to put the fingers, try your lowest string which is the e string  

K – Oh okay, so *repeats* 

M – Right and then the second fret for the next note then the fourth fret. Then you go to the a string which is the next string up. Open, then the second fret again. Right. And then you’ll go to the fourth fret. And then we’ll go to the next string. So, you’re uh third string. And then you go to the first fret go to the second fret. So that’s you’re do re mi. Again that’s *repeats instructions again* 

K – Cool! So like *repeats what Tito Paul just played* 

M –Yeah! So it should sound like *plays scale slowly* and then you can go backwards! 

K – Wow cool! 

M – You got the fingering, right? So it’s like *plays with fingering* 

K – *plays back with the right fingering* 

M – So. Once you go up and down, you can do the same pattern on the next string up. Remember you’re starting on the fourth string, after you go up. Go to the third string.  

Plays* 

K – Oh yeah yeah, I see so you can do the same pattern on different strings. 

M – Yeah, so you can practice that so you’ll build up speed . Go up and then go down and then you can go to the third string and go up and down. So like *demonstrates* 

M – So that’ll ‘speeden’ your fingers and um you know get you more comfortable playing on more strings.  

K – So then if you um like if you do it on the lowest string and you have three strings down you play on, what happens if you get to the third string down and you only have two strings below to play with? 

M – Oh okay when then you’ll have to go up higher on the neck. You’ll player higher up on your highest string. And then you’ll skip to the sixth and seventh fret 

K – Oh so like *plays* 

K – Ohh cool 

M – So you can practice that as well for next week and we can figure out something to do with that 

~Later in the Meeting~ 

K – *attempts to explain scale modes* 

K– Hmm I don’t think I explained that well, did that make sense? 

M – Oh ok, umm, a little bit ahah I’m not too good with scales  

K – Yeah I can send you the website I got it from.  

M – Yeah, I’m not too good with scales because I just play from my ear, right? So I think yeah, that’s something I can check out too as well. 

K – Yeah I’ll try and find a good website 

M – Hahah yeah see I’m learning from you now too 

K – Haha, yeah we’re actually doing it in theory as well, yeah piano theory can suck sometimes. 

M – Ohh you’re still doing piano? 

K – Yeah so part of the piano lesson this year is that I have to take like the level theory? Uh and it can suck because its like a big huge amount of confusing scales, but, oh well 

M – Yeah that stuff is good to know 

~Somewhere near the end of the meeting~ 

K – Is there anything else you want to talk about? 

M – Yeah no you’re doing really well. Every time I see you every week you’re improving 

K – Ha thanks! It is a lot of fun, it’s a lot of fun playing the bass 

M – Yeah, it’s fun, I like playing it too, Soon you’ll be an expert. You can teach me to play properly 

K – Noo 

M– It seems like you can use your theory to help you, I’m just making it up as I go along, 

K – Oh no, of course not 

 

Conversation Organized into Hats

 

Red Hats

K – Cool!

K – Wow cool! 

K – Haha, yeah we’re actually doing it in theory as well, yeah piano theory can suck sometimes. 

K – Yeah so part of the piano lesson this year is that I have to take like the level theory? Uh and it can suck because its like a big huge amount of confusing scales, but, oh well 

K – Ha thanks! It is a lot of fun, it’s a lot of fun playing the bass 

M – Yeah, it’s fun, I like playing it too, Soon you’ll be an expert. You can teach me to play properly 

Yellow Hats

M – Yeah, so you can practice that so you’ll build up speed

M – So that’ll ‘speeden’ your fingers and um you know get you more comfortable playing on more strings.  

M – Hahah yeah see I’m learning from you now too 

M – Yeah that stuff is good to know 

M – Yeah no you’re doing really well. Every time I see you every week you’re improving 

White Hats

M – start with your lowest string, I’ll show you where to put the fingers, try your lowest string which is the e string

M – Right and then the second fret for the next note then the fourth fret. Then you go to the a string which is the next string up. Open, then the second fret again. Right. And then you’ll go to the fourth fret. And then we’ll go to the next string. So, you’re uh third string. And then you go to the first fret go to the second fret. So that’s you’re do re mi.

M – So. Once you go up and down, you can do the same pattern on the next string up. Remember you’re starting on the fourth string, after you go up. Go to the third string.  

M – Oh okay when then you’ll have to go up higher on the neck. You’ll player higher up on your highest string. And then you’ll skip to the sixth and seventh fret 

Black Hats

K– Hmm I don’t think I explained that well did that make sense? 

M – Yeah, I’m not too good with scales because I just play from my ear, right?

Blue Hats

M – Well okay, you know what, remember we said we were going to try the do re mi. 

Green Hats

K – So then if you um like if you do it on the lowest string and you have three strings down you play on, what happens if you get to the third string down and you only have two strings below to play with? 

K – Is there anything else you want to talk about? 

M – Mentor, Tito Paul 

K – Me, Kalayla 

Hello! Welcome back to my 4th In-Depth Blog Post!

 

Progress Report

This week, I worked on improving what I was working on the previous week as well as do more research on what we would do next. When had a meeting with my mentor, we went over what I was working on the previous week, which was A, D and G arpeggios. We talked about using your first, second, third and fourth fingers to play instead of just your first (which is what I was doing originally). “Your scales or whatever you were doing were great like- that was perfect but I noticed that when you were playing, you like to use your index finger- the best thing to do is to try and use at least 3 fingers”

It turned out that this was much harder than I expected, as you had to stretch your fingers to reach the different frets. “Yeah you’re playing the bass spot on, but maybe just work on using your fingers instead of just one finger”

We also talked a little bit more about scales and the types of scales we could try learning next. I asked if he knew a bit about the other scales (Blues, Phrygian etc.) and we decided to do a bit more research on the scales before attempting to learn them. So, this week I did research for playing scales modes on the bass and worked on playing arpeggios with all my fingers instead of just my first. There were a few problems this week with practicing where I couldn’t practice past seven o’clock pm because of the bass volume. I also ran into the problem of finding a place to practice. The bass amp was plugged into the wall next to the piano, but recently it was getting in the way of the walking area so my parents asked me to move it. And so, since my guitar and amp were in a corner surrounded by other clutter, I found it hard to practice. However, this past weekend, we re arranged the music room and made it more convenient to practice the bass. This not only helped by making room, but since it was more convenient, I found myself practicing more. I really enjoyed trying the arpeggios with multiple fingers, it felt like I could actually play the bass! It also got me used to moving between the notes so that I could learn scales easier. I found that playing the bass is actually more difficult than I had originally anticipated, so I had to extend some goals a bot farther down the timeline. Instead of learning scales within the first month, I decided that I would need an extra month or a half to learn the first ones. I also made the decision to do more independent research myself for learning to the bass so I’m not as dependent on my mentor, waiting every two weeks for something new to do. Which is why this week, I did the research on scale modes for the bass. Oh yes! I also managed to record my meeting with my mentor for this week (two weeks).

 

Video

In-Depth Video #2

 

How to Have a Beautiful Mind – Edward De Bono

This year for In-Depth, we’re using the book “How to Have a Beautiful Mind” by Edward De Bono to guide us through the project. The book talks about how to have a beautiful mind (as the title explains) and how to have beautiful conversation with others. Over the course of a few weeks, we’ll learn about the skills talked about in the book and apply them to our In-Depth project. This week we read chapters six to seven.

 

Chapter Six

In Chapter Six of How to Have Beautiful Mind, De Bono discusses listening to others. This was something that seems very simple, but I was told once that there is a difference between hearing someone and listening to them. Listening involves soaking in the information that the other person is giving and playing around with that information in your head. Listening also involves letting the person you’re talking to know that you’re actually listening. One of the more specific points De Bono mentions asking questions after getting information to make sure what you were understanding was correct with what the other was saying. I did this when Tito Paul and I were going over using more fingers to play arpeggios. I asked if I was supposed to use my pinkie finger when playing because he was talking about using all of your fingers and I wasn’t sure if you used your pinkie finger while playing the bass. This sparked a mini discussion about whether or not you could or even would use your pinkie finger to play. We talked about how you usually don’t, but it’s really handy to be able to strengthen up your pinkie finger to play so that if you ever do need to, it will be easier. “At least three fingers. If you can do four fingers, that’s fine but I know sometimes the pinky is kind of weak right.”

Another one of De Bono’s points on listening was ‘what new information were you getting and what questions can you ask to probe further into the topic’. This kind of relates to the observation/point I made earlier about getting new information and playing around with it in your head, just this time, you’re playing around with an idea with someone else out loud. Near the end of my meeting with Tito Paul, we were talking about learning the major scale after getting faster with arpeggios. I took the information about major scales that he was giving me and asked about the scale modes (which was largely related to major scales) and what the whole idea with that was. We discussed it further and came to the conclusion that neither of us knew much about them so I decided to do more research on them and come back to our next meeting with information on scale modes. “like I said, I’m self-taught, so I don’t know all the types of scales, but we can check it out on YouTube, even if you just send me a link through text and I can check it out yeah.”

The last point I’ll mention from Chapter Six is the short paragraph under the sub heading ‘Repeat Back’. The paragraph plays with and explains the idea of reiterating points back to the speaker, not only let them know you are in-fact listening, but also helping yourself by making the ideas clearer in your own head. Mr. S has told us that by teaching/explaining an idea to someone, you are able to better understand the idea yourself, so it must be true! I often use this idea in conversations with peers or teachers as it helps me learn and helps let the other know I’m listening and learning.

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven in How to Have a Beautiful Mind talks about asking questions. Asking questions is extremely important in conversations, especially meaningful conversations. One of the many points that De Bono made in this chapter was questioning the point of anything being taught to you. I used this again in the meeting with my mentor when talking about the multiple-fingers-for-arpeggios topic. I asked why you need to learn all these arpeggios using all your fingers. He explained that by practicing moving between the arpeggios with multiple fingers, it will make it easier to move with scales and in turn easier to move between notes when playing songs. “so that way it’s going to build up the strength in your fingers and it’s going to help you play faster instead of having to use one finger” “yeah so before we do doe re mi, we should just work on using all three fingers”

 

I found this to be really helpful as I gave a purpose to learning and gave me another reason to keep going. It also gave us a talking point as after that we moved onto scales and what scales we could play/learn. Another reason that questions are vital parts of conversations is that thy can start discussions as well. In the notebook I have with me for every meeting, I will write questions that I want to ask Tito Paul whether they be about learning bass or just small talk questions. For example, we had a meeting on Family Day weekend and I had written the question ‘how was your family day?’ in my notebook. When we were having small talk, I asked him how his family day went and since we were family friends, we got to the topic of talking about how each of our families was doing and what we were doing for the family day weekend. So, a simple question turned into a conversation that helped us get to know each other better!

Hi! Welcome to the 3^rd In-Depth Blog Post!

Regarding Direct Quotes and Recording

I found that when I was taking notes or direct quotes, I felt bad as he was talking and I wasn’t really paying attention while writing. Sorry for the lack of quotes in this post. I am going to work on recording our meetings if I can figure out how to.

Progress Report

This week (or past two weeks), I learned a lot about actually playing the bass guitar! Since my last meeting mishap where I had neglected to remind my mentor about the meeting until the day of, I had learned to confirm the meeting a few days beforehand. I made sure to set a timer on my phone so that every Wednesday I would confirm that we were meeting On Sunday at 5:00pm. I had a meeting with my mentor and had prepared a few questions and conversation points in my In-Depth notebook. (I felt like I was extremely unprepared for our last meeting, so I tried to make up for it my preparing well). One of the topics that I wanted to ask him about was how we should progress forward. I had asked a few friends who were experienced in learning guitar how they went about learning their instrument. I found out that many of them learned by playing songs, while others had learned scales and arpeggios first. With this information, I thought it would be useful to ask Tito Paul how he thinks we should continue. He responded saying he thought it would be pretty useful learning arpeggios and scales before learning songs. Which we did. He actually told me that he learned more about arpeggios so that he could teach me about them better (which was very nice of him). He taught me A major arpeggios, D Major arpeggio and G Major arpeggio (which is what I play in order in the video below). After that, we talked about the do re mi kind of scales, in this case, major. He told me once I got faster at the arpeggios, we could start the do re mi scale next week. We ran into a few problems where zoom was cancelling out the sound of my bass and Tito Paul couldn’t hear it. But other than that, it was a good meeting! Throughout the week I tried my best to practice my arpeggios, getting faster each time. I did have a piano recital last weekend, so I wasn’t able to practice as I was spending time getting ready for the recital. In the video below, I start with an exercise to get faster at moving in-between notes, and then practice my arpeggios mentioned above.

 

Video

In-Depth Video #1

 

How to Have a Beautiful Mind – Edward De Bono

This year for In-Depth, we’re using the book “How to Have a Beautiful Mind” by Edward De Bono to guide us through the project. The book talks about how to have a beautiful mind (as the title explains) and how to have beautiful conversation with others. Over the course of a few weeks, we’ll learn about the skills talked about in the book and apply them to our In-Depth project. This week we read chapters four to five.

 

Chapter Four

In Chapter Four of how to have a Beautiful Mind, De Bono talks about being interesting. When I first read the title, it shocked me a bit, how and why should you be more interesting? But when I read through the chapter, it began to make sense. One of the points was to talk about your interests with another person (in this case, my In-Depth topic). This brought a quote into mind from one of my meetings with my mentor: “So, why did you choose Bass guitar as your topic for the project?” “Oh, well, I had heard the bass guitar in songs a lot and I really liked the deep and steady sound of it. Plus, I had tried playing it in grade 6 once and wanted to try again.” “Oh yeah? Cool”. I had actually practiced this answer before after doing the learning contract, so I was prepared when Tito Paul asked. It can also be hard sometimes to articulate how I feel about a topic I’m passionate about. Another one of the points made in this chapter was about ‘what if’ statements. It talks about how ‘what if’ statements cause ideas to sprout from the statement. I tried this when he was explaining arpeggios and how you go down a string to get the next arpeggio. I then wondered (and asked) what if you run out of strings at the bottom? How do you get to the next arpeggio? While this what if statement is not quite an interesting as ‘what if pigs could fly’, it sparked a whole other discussion about what you should do and how you should move to get to the next arpeggio so that you don’t run out of strings. That was how I learned that you keep the same finger pattern no matter the arpeggio key (major).

 

Chapter Five

In Chapter Five, we discuss and further build upon the goals of a conversation. This time we also talk about how to respond in a conversation. One of the points made about responding was supporting a point someone makes by using evidence or extra information. It reminded me of when we were in the meeting and my mentor said something about arpeggios being the notes of a triad plus the root on top again. He asked if that made sense and I said yes and supported his point by saying the notes of an A major triad were a, c# and e and we discussed together how the specific notes made up the arpeggio. Another point made about responding during conversation was about sharing a personal story that would relate and illustrate the topic at hand. I used this when we were talking about procrastination during practicing. I went on to mention how I used to (and sometimes still do) procrastinate on homework and would often set timers or reminders to remind myself. This lead to the timers I have set now to remind myself to practice and ask about meeting times. By bringing up a personal story, I was able to use that and improve the situation and topic being discussed, which I thought was really interesting.