Monthly Archives: October 2019

Mallets Selection!

Diploma Program, IB Core

Continue on with my second CAS experience, I will be selecting various kinds of mallets to perform the piece, ultimately to find out the most suitable combination of mallets. I will be choosing from a specific group of mallets that are made by a composer named “Keiko Abe”. Although the mallets she made are all in white, the ribbons on each of the mallets symbolize different softness of the mallets which directly affect on the sounds that the mallets could produce on marimba.

Unfortunately, I do not have every pair of mallets made by Keiko Abe since some of them are quite similar and create only little contrast. Therefore, I will be choosing 4 pairs of mallets to play the same piece and find the most suitable one specifically for that piece, but also having the sense to determine the sounds that different mallets could produce on marimba. The 4 pairs of mallets are each named: MKA-04(yellow ribbon, hard), MKA-06(green ribbon, medium-hard)), MKA-S7(light/dark blue ribbon(medium-soft), and MKA-09(purple ribbon, soft).

I am still deciding whether I should play a section of a long piece or just dedicated it in one short piece. At this point, the initial desired piece that I will be playing is Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, Prélude. Thus, I will be finding the most suitable mallets to play for this piece, ultimately identifying and determining the sounds of different mallets which benefits me on further investigation on marimba performance.

Starting with Creativity!

Diploma Program, IB Core

As I completed my first CAS experience about volleyball pancake, I started to get more familiar with the CAS program and has the enthusiasm to accomplish more things beyond this point. In my second CAS experience, I would like to accomplish something in the Creativity part of the program, which conclusively I chose to work with an instrument that I am really familiar with, marimba.

Marimba is a percussion instrument, very similar to a xylophone but larger in size. I have been playing this instrument since I was 4, which I am very familiar with how to play the instrument and actually perform it in front of the audience. For this experience, I would like to play a single piece several times and each time with different kinds of mallets in order to find out the most suitable mallets for that piece. Thus, to have a better sense and perception of different mallets in further performances on marimba.

 

In order to make it a good quality recording, I will have to record the sound not just with any interior microphone in a phone, instead, I would use a more advanced microphone that specifically helps to record the sound with better quality. I choose to work with the microphone called “RØDE VideoMic Pro”, which this type of microphone is designed for better audio recordings. After having the equipment ready, I will start working on selecting the mallets in the following week!

The Introduction of RØDE VideoMic Pro:

Portfolio Post #1 ADH

Diploma Program, IB Lang & Lit, Literature

For this ADH Unit, we have written a complete analysis of a specific act in the play. In this analysis, we focus on different scenes that occurred in act 2 and analyze it with deeper understandings and ideas. For my act 2 analysis, it focuses on the scene that Dr. Rank is being pessimistic about his circumstances in society. He receives a lot of fo pressure from societal norms and his illness as well, which he demonstrates his pessimism throughout different reasons in the play. I believe I can write a better analysis by providing more specific and detailed on the intentions of Dr. Rank’s interaction with Nora and has a more comprehensive overall view of the scene with a solid conclusion sentence.


Furthermore, in order to investigate more deeply on this play, we have several discussions about some specific topics that either directly or indirectly shown throughout the play. For me, I received a topic about “in what ways does the family depicted in the work help you to understand the culture surrounding the nature of love and marriage?”, which it is essential to look at the family especially on their tone and interactions with each other. Evidence and interpretation must be provided and explained throughout the discussion, and more essentially, this discussion benefits me by knowing some additional ideas or opinions from my classmates which help to strengthen my understanding of the act. I believe I can do better on explaining my own points and ideas with more confidence and fluency so that people will be able to truly understand my points. I think it will be important to provide a beneficial point of view from myself throughout the discussion.