Friday Afternoon

Yesterday I was bored and I thought what they heck, so I sat down on my couch with my cat, picked up the guitar, and tried, again, to play Ours. It went ok...not great, but ok. The first page I can do but when Taylor starts adding new chords everything goes downhill from there. Especially the F to G...it's horrible.
Anyway, I played though a couple parts of the song and  sounded better than when I started and that's what you call progress.
My cat hated it, by the way. She stared at the guitar and ran. She's kind of wimpy.

GD3

Hey! Google day number threeeeeee! It was amazing. We attempted to put piano, vocal, and piano together and it wasn't awful...but it was pretty bad. The song is really fast so I have strum really fast and I'm not so confident with that yet. Anyway, after that, we tried to sing and do harmony again. Alena and I were not super cooperative :) but we got some things done. Elise is a great singer and Alena and I have the practice of a five year old so...Elise had a hard time getting is to sing anything that sounded at least ok. It was fun and I have high hopes for this google project.

Well, we got somewhere...

Today was our third google day and we tried to work out the music some more. I actually brought my guitar in so that i could practice the chords with the piano and Megan borrowed Isabel's guitar (Laurent-in case you were wondering) so that we could attempt the whole piece together. We went to the auditorium to practice, but it was dark so at first we had trouble finding the lights and the piano (which, in our defense, wasn't on the stage). Sad, I know. Surprisingly, at a tempo that was slug-like, we managed to get almost all of the piano and guitar chords and i was even able to sing. We made it through the first two pages alright, but after that, the piano and guitar fell apart. So, we have six pages to go... yeah, 6.  After we left the piano so another group could use it, we found any empty hallway by the dressing rooms and attempted to harmonize/sing in general. Which is where Alena and Megan came up with ninja-pirate-cat things and other assorted nonsense. however, we almost managed a simple major chord today. YAY!

Google Day 3

Alena:
Today was our third Google Day! It was very much fun, although we did not get a ton of work done. We did attempt to put together the first few pages of piano w/guitars, but it had to go reaaallly sllowwwly. Then we tried to harmonize. (again) It had no more success than the first time. There were also cat pirates involved. (Arr, Arr, Meow)

Who knows?

Friday was the second Google Day. It was very exciting seeing as we finally had something to do and a place to start. Elena dinked around on the piano....she eventually got the hang of the first page of the song (the song is seven pages long). Elise looked over the lyrics. I mostly helped Elena with what the song was supposed to sound like and to help her read treble clef (she plays the bassoon). Elise and I also wrote the note names in of all the treble clef notes in the music for the piano part for Elena. After a while of that, the topic of background singers came up and I said "Let's try to harmonize!!!". Elise sang a G, I sang and E, and Elena sang a C. Elise actually knows how to sing so of course she showed off her beautiful voice and Elena and I were just putting out a pitch, in tune or not. It took a while but we got pretty close to singing an alright chord. It was pretty cool.

This is kind of a double post because today and took my hand at the guitar. The chords are pretty well to do but I'm totally making up the strum pattern. I think it might work okay but I'll probably mess around with it a bit more.

Who knows how this will work but it will definitely be something to remember.

Google Day 2
Having finally decided on Ours, (Alena likes the piano part, Megan likes the song, I just think we need to get started) we spent some time writing out the treble clef notes so that Alena would be able to read the music faster. Unfortunately for us, almost all the notes were below the staff and Megan and I play flute. We don't really read beyond a few notes below the staff...
 Eight pages later, we realized that it was Kelly's music and she probably didn't want us to write all over it. Oops. Sorry, Kelly. We used the piano a bit to help Alena learn her part and she soon had the (extremely repetitive) pattern down. Everyone else who was in the band room with us, I'm sorry you had to hear the opening chords to Ours so many times. We asked Mr. Matthys to photocopy the music for us so that we could all practice at home and he kindly obliged. Now (hopefully) by next google day we'll have a better idea of how our song goes. Then Megan said that there was harmonization in the song so we spent the rest of class trying to harmonize. Read:trying. It was actually really funny... but anyway, we suck so that's going to take a lot of practice. :) It was really fun though, and I felt that we were pretty successful.

Elise

Google Day 2

Alena:
We had another Google day today! I spent 10 minutes or so trying to learn the first few lines of Ours (which is our song of choice, by the way) I have a lot of work to do. We also tried to harmonize. Emphasis on "tried".

Yes, it's not a google day, but I thought I'd give you guys an update... Today Megan brought her ipod in so that we could (attempt to) decide on a song. Of course, between freaking out about chair tests and our noisy class, we were unable to listen to every single Taylor Swift song in existence (seriously, Megan has them all) so Alena and I borrowed the ipod and listened to music over lunch. Unfortunately for Megan, I didn't see her for the rest of the day, so i still have the ipod. But anyway, we've come up with a list of songs that we are willing to choose from, so here you go!

1. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (quite the title, I know)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA4iX5D9Z64
2. Superstar (who is this one about?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYc4SC1cxS8
3. Ours
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asOQolzLCU0
4. Our Song (who doesn't know this one?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb2stN7kH28
5. Mean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYa1eI1hpDE
6. You Belong With Me (this one is so catchy!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6JdUw
7. Mine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vyfRe2KoHM