Mark's Music School Diary.

Since I have to record my own recital tomorrow I had to pull out my recording gear and discovered that my Macbook Pro only has USB and Thunderbolt jacks and the external drives I have are all firewire. I ordered a 1TB SSD drive on Amazon for free same day delivery and I'm running a test session to make sure that 45 minutes worth of recording isn't going to do anything weird or crash my machine. 20 minutes in and its going fine.
 
Copied from:http://markweinguitarlessons.com/forums/threads/my-junior-recital-was-today.88431/


It's funny to say "junior recital" when you're going to be 48 years old in two weeks and mass as much as two of your classmates, but hey.
  1. Overall it went well. I'm still not very comfortable playing jazz, especially in this format so I am very happy with my performance in spite of a few "moments". I'm hoping that by next years senior recital that I'm more comfortable in my "musical skin".

    Listening to the recording now. Might share it later.....

    a few pics:

    T.K. (my guitar professor) and yours truly:

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    the band - Martin, Josh, Tyler and me.


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I'm in a strange place this week. Last week of lectures. Next week I have a final every day of the week plus my jury on Tuesday. Trying to frontload my studying a bit since I have gigs and other obligations this week too.

For my jury I'm copping out of my usual practice of transcribing a solo and performing it (which is the harder of the two options for a prepared piece) and playing a chord melody arrangement of "All the Things You Are". The three tunes that I have to prepare are these:








Naturally since I had my recital this month I put off jury prep until after and these three tunes are the hardest I've had to put together so I'm sweating it quite a bit.

Hoping to get grades back on my last Form and Analysis test (balsa wood and spit form) and my term paper today although they might not have them until Thursday.
 
Ok.. Form and Analysis exam grade:

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It’s always uncomfortable when a professor spends 15 minutes going through mistakes people made that are incredible stupid at this point and wondering if you had just failed the test. Luckily I seem to know the classical era “balsa wood and spit” form well enough.

My baccalaureate term paper turned out pretty good too:

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Not being the most literate person in the world I was pretty worried about this one, and the grade for this paper goes into your transcript separately from your class grade as it is a degree writing requirement.

I finally have a meeting on Saturday to get my recital grade. Finals (and juries) are next week so life will be a little nuts for a while.
 
Finals week starts today for me. I have both my music history final and my guitar jury today, both of which I'm not feeling 100% on.

the rest of the week is Biology on Wednesday, FOrm and Analysis on thursday and Political science on Friday.

I got my preliminary recital grade over the weekend and I'm a little unhappy about it but I'll go into it later. It will probably be finalized today after my jury and I don't want to jinx anything.
 
Survived my Jury. Apparently if you’ve done a recital but need the jump to the next level (400 in my case) you only do a partial jury. Not only did they make me do a full jury they made me play an extra song. And I screwed it up so the panel gave me an A- but I got an A from my private teacher so I got an A for the semester. I’m also officially a Senior now too. And not just chronologically.

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Ok. My private instructor called me last night to let me know that they had finally discussed my recital grade and it is an A-. He gave me an A but the other person on the panel was going to give me a B for a bunch of things that I was specifically told not to do by my private teacher. Once they actually met and discussed my performance it was adjusted up.
 
Did you throw in a buncha poop knife dive bombs into Giant Steps?

And congrats on your Seniorhood! One more year!
 
frunobulax said:
Did you throw in a buncha poop knife dive bombs into Giant Steps?

And congrats on your Seniorhood! One more year!
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It sure sounded like it :embarrassed:. I counted it off too fast and got lost. They let me play it again slower and it was fine but by then the damage was done. My combo director walked in while I was playing it and said “well, you sure played it better in MY class”.

And thanks. It takes most students 5-6 years to work through this program and I’ve done the first three years in two. Some of the jury panel were a little surprised when I was asking for the level jump but I got places to be and people to see.
 
I am impressed by your ability and willingness to approach the degree. As a person who went to college later in life, I know the strain of trying to earn a living while going to school. I was at least lucky enough not to have parenthood of younger children thrown into the mix. Congratulations!
 
Gary Blanchard said:
I am impressed by your ability and willingness to approach the degree. As a person who went to college later in life, I know the strain of trying to earn a living while going to school. I was at least lucky enough not to have parenthood of younger children thrown into the mix. Congratulations!
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Thank you!


There is definitely an element of “I need to make this moment in time matter” to all of this though. It’s not so hard to do this if you realize how your families future will be impacted one way or another.
 
Mark Wein said:
There is definitely an element of “I need to make this moment in time matter” to all of this though. It’s not so hard to do this if you realize how your families future will be impacted one way or another.
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Very true and well said. When you can see the long-term benefit for the short-term struggle there is no choice but to do it.
 
Ok. Took my last music test today for Form and Analysis. We just spent the last three weeks working on Theme and Variation but the piece he gave us was a rounded binary, which was what we did at the beginning of the semester. It was also complex enough in the B section that you could chase down it being Sonata form for a while if you didn't fully get how the A section laid out. I spent an hour thinking I had lost my mind, and as I turned it in I saw that my classmates who had turned theirs in right before me all came to the same conclusion so I think I'm good.

Tomorrow is my final test in Political Science. All about political opinion, elections and some of how the courts work.
 
I guess I did OK on yesterdays test. The professor already posted my final grade for the semester:

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That was the first theory-type class this whole time that I actually struggled with.
 
A few more grades. The "A-" for my recital is magically an A. Apparently I did well on my Music History final so that is also an A. Biology hasn't appeared in the transcript but it shows as an A in the class website. The only thing I'm missing is the Political Science grade, which probably won't show up until the end of the week.

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One thing that I noticed and might have screwed up on is that my combo class is not showing up at all and I'm wondering if I forgot to register for it. We get the assigned the second week of school and it's usually mayhem. I have to ask about how to resolve that since I did do the class.
 
Denverdave said:
Congrats! That is a major accomplishment. Are you taking the summer off?
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Thanks!

And no, I have to take two GE classes and private lessons over the summer starting next Tuesday. :(

My first GE class is called "Digital Media Literacy":

Introduces literacies necessary for thriving in a digital age. Develop, practice and self-evaluate digital literacy. Learn to effectively, ethically, and mindfully use digital media for communication and wellbeing. Topics include participation, collective intelligence, attention, networking, and ethics. One or more sections may be offered in any online format.


Then in July I have to take World History to 1600.
 
shoeless said:
A-?! You bring disgrace to your family!! :lol:

Seriously though, you're killin' it. Congrats on another well done semester! :thu:
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hehe. Thanks!

Some of my obnoxiousness over grades is that it is hard to have the moral high ground with your kids at report card time if they see you've been phoning it in yourself. The other part is that at age 48 this shit shouldn't be that hard at the undergrad level.
 
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