Final Post

Well, I guess this is goodbye to all of our eagerly awaiting readers. I know you're out there somewhere... Today we performed our Google Project. We talked about the difficulties of this project. Alena hasn't played piano in years, Megan hasn't played guitar in a while and the chord progressions are difficult, and I have never had a formal guitar lesson, which makes singing and playing hard. As a group, we found it difficult to bring the whole thing together and do simple things like harmonize while playing our respective instruments.  Another difficulty would be finding time to practice with our otherwise busy schedules... However, we all enjoyed this project a lot. Thanks Mr. Matthys!
Elise

Yay! We're done!

Alena:
So today we performed our Google project, and it went pretty well. I messed up a little on the last chord, so that was annoying, but otherwise it was fine. This project was difficult because i had to relearn the piano, which i haven't played since sixth grade. Also, getting the piano and guitars to play together was difficult. I have new respect for the people who play the piano and sing at the same time. Wow. It was hard enough as is without singing. Overall, it was really fun.

Finished.Over.Done and out.

Well, we did it. The performance was pretty good considering. There wasn't any harmonizing due to Alena's and my lack of talent. Elise's voice was beautiful and Alena's playing was flawless until the last note...and my guitar playing could have been better but I played the first and last chords and that's all that really matters. I got a couple in between but, performance jitters, what can I say.
It was a great experience. The whole team building thing I didn't really notice but now that I think back, we all played different roles in how the song would be played. I don't think all of us agreed with all decisions but we went with them anyway. Being open-minded definitely helps.
I really enjoyed the project and it was a great way to spend time doing something that would take a very low standard in my normal life. I rarely play the guitar and Alena never plays the piano so getting back to it was something that was special and fun.
Thanks Alena and Elise for such a wonderful time!!

Action!!!

I honestly have to say I was amazed at how productive we were. We ran the song a bajillion times and the last couple times there few to no mistakes! It was amazing. It was probably due to the fact that we cut about 3 minutes from the song but hey, it still sounds good. Anyway, we didn't get to any harmonizing and we're thinking of cutting the harmony and having Alena and I just sing along with Elise to the melody. "Ours" is a great song and I think we've got a pretty good rendition and it's been really fun.  It's nice to have some time to just dink around and hope something comes out. For us, it sure did. I'm probably forgetting something, like how fun it was to run the song a bajillion times....but all the same. It rocks.

Final Google Day

Alena:
Today was our final Google day, and we started to pull things somewhat together. We decided on a cut to make the song shorter, which will make it easier to have ready and minimize page flipping. I need to practice more. On another note, electric pianos with options like "guitar" and "voice" are hilarious. The one for woodwinds/brass sounded like a whole bunch of incredibly in-tune bumblebees.

Wow, i can't believe that was our last rehearsal day...

Yet another google day today. In fact, it was our final google day before presentations on December 13(coincidentally the same night that Nutcracker opens...). Today was definitely more successful than our past few practices, maybe we're feeling the deadline approach. We cut some of the song because it was just too long (8 pages plus a coda and repeats) and when we went to rehearse those pages, it turned out pretty well. We also learned that Alena isn't very good at counting off: she would count at one tempo and play at another. I, on the other hand, would count the beginning of a bar and taper off when I got distracted. We finally convinced Megan to do all of the counting in because the rest of us couldn't. Although we had a few distractions, for example, Alena was using an electric keyboard and decided to change the sound of the instrument, it was a fairly productive day. I'm feeling a bit more confident in regards to our google day. :)

Hi Again!

Another successful Google day down. Today we managed to get through a few pages with piano, guitar, and singing. Of course, it's way under tempo, but we're getting somewhere. Besides, if we can play a bit together and sing in tune, i think we're getting somewhere. We had our usual resistance when i tried to get Megan and Alena to actually sing, but they did actually do it and sounded really good. Mr. Matthys listened to us and told us that it sounded like a start. He also told us he could see us singing in cafes. That is, if we can get the song worked up in time. It was fun though.