first practice sesh

A couple days ago I had my first practice with my mentor. I played through a couple of my songs and we went through them, making notes. Some of the changes we had to make involved tempo, dynamics and articulation. I was speeding through some areas so there was less musicality and shape in the song. My original dynamics were too few and hardly noticeable but now it's definitely improved. When it comes to articulation there was just a couple spots where the written in articulation didn't fit the song so we changed a few things here and there. The good thing about music is that it isn't written in stone. You can change it to your will and add your own musical flavour and essentially make the song your own. I'm looking forward to continuing with this project as I will be growing as a musician, it's nice to keep playing even though I am no longer taking lessons and not required to practice.

my mentor

One of the requirements for this project is that we find a mentor to help us and guide us through the semester. They are supposed to keep us on track and give us pointers in the areas where we need help. I had a few potential candidates in mind including my former piano teacher and my band teacher but I decided to ask another of my teachers, Mrs. Hildebrand. She organizes and leads the practices for our school worship team that I'm a part of and is already helping me with that so it just all works out. I will be sitting down and playing my songs for her and she'll tell me where to improve and different dynamics and articulation techniques to do. As you know I've been away for awhile and so I haven't been up to par on my practicing but I'm trying to get back on track and am hoping to have my first video up as soon as possible.