(EPILOGUE) In Which the Author Assesses Her Tale

"ASSESSES" LOOKS LIKE A FAKE WORD. 
There's an excessive amount of s's. But it's fine. It's having a good time.
Speaking of good times, let's talk about that TED talk.

aha

Let's try to stay within a reasonable word count! Well, there was a moment of confusion in the beginning because I have no idea what technology is, huge shoutout to my good aunts/moms Kyla and Allison, and also Kyla clicking the play button on the video because honestly I was prepared to leap off the stage (then maybe Alex would be happy) if that video didn't work. That video was also kind of embarrassing, maybe I should have just shown a clip of the instrumental because that's the part that matters and who cares about the singing....

Alright, let's assess this with the TED Commandments! 

wait i never took the time to read what's actually written on there it's so funny omg

(1) Dream big.

I guess with this one I tried to go with a really Memorable™ talk, and I hope I achieved that goal in a way. I think that went okay, especially when 83 people (okay it was like 6 and half of them were obligated to) told me they really liked..it? Woot.

(2) Show us the real you.

Okay, OOF. That was definitely...like...my entire talk? I basically Exposed myself and kind of told everyone my biggest insecurity so you could even say I never showed the Real Me up until this point. I spoke about those Passions and Dreams and Issues and I think even I would give myself 100 in this category.

(3) Make the complex plain.

Because I'm great at going overtime, I did have to shorten a bunch of paragraphs into about two sentences. I kind of brushed over the whole medical aspect, but that's also because doctors literally have no idea what's going on. When actually talking about my songs, I didn't use insane music theory terms, so I guess that's good? 

(4) Connect with people's emotions.

Thanks for laughing at my humor, dudes. I guess the Tragic Backstory could have been trying to tear at people's heartstrings, but I'm not gonna ask if anyone cried. I don't think there's any reason to.

(5) Don't flaunt your ego.

Difficult to do when you're constantly insulting yourself.

(6) No selling from the stage!

I'M SORRY MCDANIELS

(7) Feel free to comment on other speakers' talks!

Well, that was difficult to do when I missed nearly all the talks so far, so I couldn't talk about them in my talk. Er...if you mean asking questions after people's talks I didn't do much of that either so...

(8) Don't read your talk.

H*CK YEAH GUESS WHO DIDN'T EVEN HAVE NOTECARDS? THIS MAN!! Notecards are personally really bad for me, so that wasn't an issue.

(9) End your talk on time.

I pace around my room at 1:00 am, having recited my talk for like two hours. For the first hour it kept going about six minutes. I'm not sure how I managed to lessen it down by a minute, but fluency is a great thing. So I was very much Fear on whether my talk would go overtime. I'm not sure if it did, but it's actually a distinct possibility. WHOOPS.

(10) Rehearse your talk.

We're gonna ignore the friend part, because I have no friends (NO IT'S BECAUSE FBLA WAS NOT AT A VERY CONVENIENT TIME SO I COULDN'T MEET UP WITH sQUad). But I rehearsed a lot...alone. In my room. In front of the mirror. I had also sometimes mouthed it to myself in the hotel room late at night, and then one time I had an epiphany at 2am and changed something in my script and then dropped my phone and my roommates probably wanted to smite me.

♭ ♮ ♯

Welp, I feel really relieved now! The entire thing is over, and honestly I'm already forgetting parts of how my talk went. I guess my brain is already blocking the memory. That was the....wildest thing I've ever done. I've never even Exposed myself to any of my closest friends except like Two. And here I am practically coming out to the whole block. And I've kept up that ~ruse of normality~ for so long because the last thing I wanted was for others to treat me differently because of this unfortunate situation. But really, when I consider this project, I'm most proud of myself because I was able to surpass this obstacle that is my entire arm. 

Alright, if for some reason you're reading my TED talk reflection without even seeing...the...talk...then I guess I'll just attach the script on here somewhere so you can read it. Maybe later. I gotta do that math homework.

UPDATE: HERE IT IS

♭ ♮ ♯

Wait, but guys, it seems almost as if I have forgotten about that

I wish. 

Some random channel commented "dope!" on my final video, but upon closer inspection it might be spam (I didn't even know YouTube had spam whom is she) so I guess I'm not actually a YouTube star (thanks to all two of my subscribers). But let me examine my three songs. Unfortunately, it seems that I literally peaked at the first song because I had the most time.  And I decided to try and take more risks in my second song. I made the instrumental less repetitive but that made it weird and I was not a fan. And then, as some of you probably know, I had -2 hours to write my third song because the apocalypse was happening in the form of FBLA. 

Here's the conundrum with me writing songs: It's extremely time consuming, but it's also best done in one sitting. Do you see the problem? All three songs were basically finished in one sitting, except maybe the lyrics could be done another day. But it's so annoying to not do it continuously because I might forget something I was going to put in or something like that. And since I'm Not A Fan of transcribing as I go (I'm lazy), I kind of just have to....Remember it. Yeah, it's certainly a time. I'm a professional. 

I think that's the best explanation I can give for my actual decrease in quality. But I think my final product is still like...a Final Product. I really did manage to combine all three melodies and try making them meaningful. I had some fun with chords. Really, you can still see my improvement from the Very Beginning. It looks like this:

would justin j approve of my curves

At first, I was Nothing. Then I peaked in my first song and went steadily downward. But my Final Product was still Something.

Accomplishments!

I think I really did have a Good Time, so now the question is will I continue?

I believe I mentioned Very Briefly before that the whole reason I chose this project was because I currently had a song in progress. I wanted to learn how to write instrumental for that song, which was based on a story I was writing. So there was a whole reason I was writing songs for a story! Obviously, first course of action would be to finish that song. And then I want to write more songs for that story. I mean, okay, maybe I should also finish the story, but that's what NaNoWriMo is for! 

Okay, whoops. "Reasonable wordcount" WHOM?

I should go now, so here's a cool quote:

See you on the other side of the war (shut up I don't care the project is over the grind never stops)~

P.S: FROM THE SOUNDS OF IT NOT MANY PEOPLE ACTUALLY CLICKED ON THE LINKS ON THE SLIDESHOW AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE YOU SHOULD 110% DO THAT I SWEAR I'M NOT RICKROLLING YOU
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Commented on Olivia, Jasmine, Amanda, and Ellie (A)'s blogs

(WEEK VI) In Which the Author is Now Free...ish

MY TED TALK IS TOMORROW and I just finished uploading my third song hah. IN FAIRNESS, I was at FBLA and at least I got to go on the stage (7th place woot).

(1) Disgusting, my voice cracked like every two seconds, apparently I'm a teenage boy
(2) I was so tired
(3) I messed up a bit but I recorded the piano part in one take so
(4) I think the piano part is better than whatever was being sung, pay more attention to that
(5) I say "good luck" at the mashup part, but the three characters have literally been using the same melody the whole time so it shouldn't be that hard to figure out...although I did post the lyrics on the video description
(6) I might have to blast this from a bluetooth speaker during my TED talk because I am very much Fear something will go wrong with PowerPoint
(6.5) I didn't actually do that, Kyla just saved my life
(7) That was actually pretty cool and I want to write more in the future...whoa...

See you on the other side of the war (which is TOMORROW in the AUDION oh my GOD)~

(WEEK V) In Which the Author Finally Finishes the Second Song

I WOULD CONTINUE THE INCOHERENT SCREAMING except my vlog basically covered that. So yeah. Here's some tips before you do anything:

(1) Don't be me.
(2) Listen to my first song at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq0qyuIyqzE or in my previous blog post.
(3) Listen to my second song, which I shall reveal soon enough.
(4) Now watch my vlog, if you haven't already.

If you've already gone out of order, then whatever. That's probably my fault, because I posted this so late. It would be ideal for you to at least listen to the two songs, which are the only things that actually matter on this blog. Like, aside from the stuff being graded. I mean, I'm hoping I've intrigued you enough to want to listen to both songs, but I understand if you have much better things to do.

Alright. Without further ado:

(Lyrics are in the YouTube description)

LET'S SEE.

(1) Sorry my voice range is like two and a half notes
(2) The beginning sounded a lot like Fall Out Boy, especially before I finalized the piano
(3) The weird bassline thing sounds like "Seven Nation Army." I mean....welp
(4) I was definitely trying to be a lot more adventurous with the instrumental this time. I think it was less repetitive than "Hans," but I can't really tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing right now
(5) Yeah, occasionally there were verbal talking interjections. I got bored. Those were great quotes and I didn't want to put a tune to them. Also...singing "AUFMACHEN!" (open up)??
(6) I liked the first song better, but that might be a personal stylistic taste choice thing
(7) This song is lowkey trash
(8) Someone's gonna tell me I'm being hard on myself
(9) It's gonna be Olivia
(10) I'm sorry this is so late
(11) I did a thing near the end which I ~kind of~ mashed up Max and Hans's songs! I guess that's a precursor to the Ultimate Mashup which is my final product
(12) I'm not entirely sure either as to what the ending is. What are endings tbh

Cool. Remember to bike, lament, and describe.

See you on the other side of the war~

(VLOG and WEEK IV) In Which the Author Becomes Self Aware

What up, Mein Dudes. Since I have already posted a video and a few audio recordings of my playing, I think that it won't be entirely necessary to base my vlog around actually listening to my songs. Let's have a nice chat instead.

Gotta love that lighting. I mention in the video a currently nonexistent second song being on my blog. It is not on my blog. I have the instrumental I just need to record the vocals. I wonder if I can do that during the workday somehow.....
I mainly talk about my issues, especially the lyrics and instrumental order thing. That was supposed to be the main point of my project in the first place: finding the best method. Except that goal was problematic in itself. Whoops.
I also explain the reasoning behind my procrastination, because a few of you (if at all) might wonder why I wasn't able to upload a song this week. Or last week. It's kind of inexcusable, like most procrastinating, but I do think there's a backstory to it.

ALSO, if you are watching this vlog, please then also take a moment to listen to my first song, on my YouTube channel and on a previous blog post. You might wonder "but what does your second song sound like?" All you need to know is that it's a mess.

See you on the other side of the war~
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Commented on Jasmine, Justin, and Alex's blogs

(INTERVIEW) In Which the Author....Interviewed

YEAH, IN CASE YOU COULDN'T TELL, I conducted my interview. I mean, it's kind of three weeks overdue, but, uh, actually I don't have a good excuse why it's late except

or rather just BEHIND now HAH

I interviewed Mr. Hood, our very own band teacher, and I think I kept putting it off partially because he's literally right there, so I was like "Hey it's okay I could interview him anytime." I'm really good with plans. But hey, I got two of his CDs through that encounter!

The experience was probably around 20 minutes. I didn't take a video, mostly because I hate myself and also because I had anticipated a lot of movement (from the piano to the laptop and such). Since Mr. Hood wasn't a complete stranger to me and because he's really chill, the interview ended up pretty informal and more like a conversation, so I'll refrain from posting a Q&A format because it got a bit confusing when I tried. So I'll organize the conversation by topic:

♭ ♮ ♯

On Inspiration
- From your head. Your brain (triggered) can surprise you sometimes. Just a small tune or bassline can start an entire song. Or you might revisit a "little kernel" you once started but then abandoned.
- From other pieces. He talked about this groove/bassline from another song that he incorporated into his own song. This is not illegal. The police do not need to be called. The song he ended up writing was completely different from his inspiration. (It's really cool!)
- From noodling around. He came up with an entire song that ended up on his CD that started out with playing around on the piano. Sometimes songs write themselves. This also happens on the guitar, finding a cool chord progression and strumming pattern. Except that's irrelevant to me, because I've never played a stringed instrument in my life other than a bit of ukulele while Armageddon was happening at Ellie's house (long story).
- From emotion. One time he was very much wrath, and he came home and immediately started writing a song. It's called "Crash!" and crash(!) it is. I listened to an excerpt, and the chords and rhythm and everything are so aggressive I love it. It's definitely inspiration to me as I write Max's angry song!

On Theory
- When I asked him how much he considers music theory and how much he just goes by ear, he gave a rightfully vague answer because music is confusing. Again, sometimes songs write themselves. However, there are times when you need to think a lot, especially when writing for multiple instruments. It also does help to know chords, because chords are gr8. If you want to hear a song that's written with nothing but theory in mind, check this out:

I KNOW IT'S A MEME BUT IT'S ACTUALLY REALLY GOOD. (Sound warning at the end.)

- About chord progressions, he wrote a song that only used three chords. Other times, his songs are pretty complex. It doesn't make either better than the other. One of them just takes three hours to write and the other takes more than three hours to write. Definitely do consider the style, though.

On Writing
- He does use some online writing platforms, but that may mostly be to hear the other instruments he can't hear right then and there. It's good to get an idea. But most of the composing is just done right at the instrument.
- Since he primarily writes the instrumental, the lyrical examples he showed me were all writing lyrics after the instrumental. Interesting.

♭ ♮ ♯

It probably would have been more helpful for me to have conducted this interview before writing my first song, but too bad I have social anxiety. I did learn a lot and had some of my previous notions confirmed, so that's good! I have to take into consideration the fact that I'm only writing on piano and lyrics are probably a bigger part (considering this is for a book), and this makes my job both easier and harder.

Hopefully I haven't peaked in my first song! Knowing myself, I probably have. Oh dear.

See you on the other side of the war~

(WEEK III) In Which the Author is 24601% Done with Life and Her First Song

*INCOHERENT SCREAMING*
Let me tell you a story.

I ~spiced up~ the instrumental in maybe 1.5 hours. That was Pretty Good, in my opinion (like, speed-wise. The song is still trash.) And then it took me three hours to successfully record it and layer the singing on top of it and I AM GOING TO COMMIT SEPPUKU. 

That was BY FAR the most frustrating thing I've ever done in my life. Oh, and I made a YouTube channel (in other words, I uploaded a video to my preexisting YouTube account) because Blogger is not sufficient. I just made it off of this account, and I don't even care anymore because this Google account can burn next year so I can start anew. Or I'll just take down those videos once the Genius Project is over because honestly why.

Let's see. Okay, this is why I play three instruments instead of joining Chorus. The piano was too loud. Also, dynamics were lowkey just Not There, mostly because I was ready to break something at that point just to successfully record it. There's a weird part where the word "heart" lasts for three years because I had to Traverse Down The Keyboard and it gives me nightmares. Also, I'm a soprano. Well, I like to think I am, but my voice has changed a lot since 6th grade, so honestly who am I. But the point is that I should not be trying to sing a middle aged man's song. If Hans were to actually sing this, let's assume it would maybe be an octave lower because honestly he'd be a baritone. 

The instrumental continues to be pretty repetitive. I definitely need to work on instrumental more for future. Speaking of instrumental, the best part of this entire thing (in my opinion) is probably the countermelodies in the second half. And ;) you'll ;) probably ;) hear ;) that ;) countermelody ;) again ;) in ;) Max's ;) song ;) because ;) it ;) may ;) or ;) may ;) not ;) be ;) his ;) theme (or something similar). I mean, notice that it shows up around the words "He never told me he had a son." Oh yes, I'm a Genius. It was 18% a coincidence and then I realized it was brilliant. 

Also, in case you couldn't tell, I did Not get Jasmine's microphone because the apocalypse happened outside today and I didn't have any other time to use it. And it really wasn't worth her PROFESSIONAL microphone....

It doesn't sound like John Williams, it doesn't sound like 40s music, German music is pretty Diverse I guess, but I honestly don't even care at this point because oh my god I finished writing a song in its entirety this has never happened before. 

What a start.

Also, I'm trying to get my interview with Mr. Hood in tomorrow or anytime this week. That should be the next post. So much for doing the interview before writing my songs. 

See you on the other side of the war~
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Commented on Ellie (A), Bobby, and Joel's blogs

(UPDATE THE SEQUEL) In Which the Author Establishes Chords

YEAH, SORRY THERE'S NO CREATIVE POST TITLE.

I have the chords and everything figured out for the song!

Here's a recording of the chords in a simple waltz rhythm (aka all I've got right now) and the singing part played by my right hand (the notes an octave higher are just the theme and not sung):



Okay, I messed up at least 24601 times in that, but you get the point. The syllables might not match up exactly with the lyrics right now, and at some points I seemed to forget how to play the piano.

I need to make the instrumental a Lot More Interesting, but I'd say this is a start. Yeah, I essentially repeat the same 4~5 chords over and over again, but in my defense......it sounds decent? (I'd say that 40s music is pretty repetitive in chord progression as well, which is true, but my song doesn't really sound like a 40s song. It doesn't sound like a pop song either. It's just. There.) And they're not the really stereotypical Four Chords found in a lot of pop songs, which you should totally check out at this video.

Alright, that was definitely a time, and the Complete Song with Everything shall be up as soon as I finish ~spicing up~ the instrumental and get my hands on Jasmine's microphone...

See you on the other side of the war~