Wise is over!!!!!!!

I thank everybody for all the support.

WISE journey is finally over and I'll be on another new journey

Happy summer!

Editing with Mr.Heurich #2

Things are getting crazy. I couldn't record vocals as I planned it to be and the entire thing is on the verge of breakdown. Both Mr.Heurich and I are confused about what to do from now on. In today's editing session, I tried to fit in the tracks by the way i want them to be and it turned out that some parts are out of rhythm. Still haven't found any clues about it, I'm just crossing my fingers to work it out tomorrow. This is making me really nervous...

Reminders to myself

• Printed version of wise materials
• Mr.Heurich meeting tomorrow morning
• Start making presentations. Should be done by Friday and spend the whole week practicing.

Editing with Mr.Heuric

Today was an important day.In the morning, i brought my recorded guitar parts (plus solo) to Mr.Heurich to loop it in order to make a whole song. In the end, we determined that we should record again because guitar parts were off pitch and there was no way to fit those in. However, during the process, we learned a lot of stuff. It was only a period long, but things we covered were invaluable. Before I forget, I'd like to write those down, and Mr.Heurich himself also told me that i should take notes about these.

• Slicing and Looping. Once a track is done with recording, i can play it like a puzzle. I can cut the section (slice) and copy it, delete it and move it around to fit it with some other part. For example, if the part i want is slightly off beat, I can adjust the timing. Also, I can merge different parts in to one chuck by mixing it down.
• Compressor function reduces the gap between the max and the min of the sound, so it makes it more uniform. After applying the effect, along with reverb (almost same as echoing effect in a sense), the guitar sounded so much better, like the one in an album.

We decided to record guitar part again tommorow in the morning. Although this might he hard, i don't have enough time and i should try my best since there's no way aruond.

Mic check 1,2,3

As I said yesterday, my mic was acting crazy and I got really scared about it becuase this is time to record and if i have a mic breakdown, i wouldn't be able to finish my project. So, i brought my mic over to Mr.Heurich and tested it with his comptuer. We plugged my mic in via pre-amp to his iMac and I didn't hear a bit of wind noise that was all over my computer yesterday.

So, with a great hope, I tried the same thing at my house with my computer and it was the same. A little bit frustrated, i started to play some time with settings and I was able to reduce the amount of noise somehow. But still I haven't figured out what's going on really. I am going to bring my computer to Mr.Herich ASAP and find out what's wrong with my system.

I also uploaded on a recording website. (http://homerecording.com/bbs/equipment-forums/microphones/my-mic-making-wind-noise-326554/). Haven't got any feedbacks yet, but I'll check it out soon and see what kind of solutions i could get.

I wish i could upload an mp3 file, but the website doesn't let me...

This weekend + Monday.

I still can't believe there are only 2 weeks left for my wise journey. It is important because it is a time that I should actually be compiling my effort and produce a solid work that demonstrates it. As this goes, I finally stepped up and began recording from this Sunday. Also, one of my friends volunteered to help me on this project by singing a chorus. She has done a similar thing and a lot of recordings, so she was really good at those. I was able to finish recording guitar part today, which took infinite number of trials, for a simple part that's going to be looped. If i knew this would take forever, i would've started earlier. That's my fault being lazy.

I must be done recording music parts by this week because on the following weekend, I'll have to record vocal part, which is the most difficult part of all. It's going to be a duet, which wasn't my plan, but after singing a few times, it turned out that it sounds really good, better than me singing alone.

Also, I encountered a problem. Today while I was recording, my Mic got crazy and picked up a wind noise. I still haven't figured what it is, but I'll bringing it over to Mr. Heurich tommorrow and try to see what happened to it. This is crucial because I can't return it since there are only a few days left. All I need is to pray and cross my fingers that it's not broken, hoping it's a temporally thing...

What is needed for successful presentation (Research)

So on Thursday, there was a sample presentation by Carrie which i thought was really successful. I'd like to jot down a few reasons that made presentation awesome and should try to incorporate those in my presentation too.

• Know what you are doing. Carrie seemed like she knew what exactly she was doing like an expert. She was able to tell a lot of information related to slam poetry to audience and it kept them interested.
• Talk with a passion. She also really liked what she was doing and was eager to tell us what happened during all the process. 
• Gestures and eye contacts. This is the most basic stuff about presentation, but still the hardest thing to do for some people. I am one of them since I haven't done a lot of presentation in my life. Carrie enthusiastically used her gestures and made an eye contact with audiences, which kept everybody in focus.
• Talk about every detail that happened during the project. 6 months are not short time. There must have been a lot of tings that went well and bad. She told lots of stories about those and I was able to picture in my mind what she has been doing so far
• Excellent Q & A session. After the presentation was over, she was able to answer many different kinds of questions with a great fluency. It's probably because she knew everything she did in depth and this made her seem like she was an expert about this field.

These were the things I took notes on, and lastly, practice makes it perfect.I'm 100% sure that it wasn't her first run. Judy even mentioned that she has practiced a lot throughout the day of presentation. Since mine is after a weekend, i should devote all my time practicing the presentation to finish it without any flaws.

Sample presentation.

6:00 at York. Today was the first day a wise student had her presentation. Although it was a sample one, it still was a legitimate presentation. Everybody had to show up for the credit and so did i, even taking a day off at work. The name of the presenter was Carrie, which I first thought was Harry. Her topic was on slam poetry.I didn't know what it was even though I've seen a few posters hanging around in school hallways, advertising there will be a poetry slam at school library. It was as the name suggests, reading out poem, but with actions. She performed a few different poems, as well as the reasons that let her choose to do this project. Carrie said that she has been a poet for a long time, but for the wise project, she needed something that is challenging. That part was the action part, since she has never done it before. The presentation also revealed a lot about herself. I was able to know what kind of person she is, and how much effort she has put in to finish this. The hand written journal that she wrote everyday definitely was a great example that she tried really hard and I was really impressed by it. My presentation is only about two weeks left and I'm not even done recording stuff. The deadline is suffocating me and the presentation reminded me that i should as well do my best until the journey ends.

Orchestra band concert (Research)

This afternoon was awesome. My family had a tiny barbeque and i also got a new iPhone, which made my day (or year). After eating dinner, my mom and i set off to high school to watch my sister playing in an orchestra. Although I've played a few instruments in my life, I have never engaged myself in playing those types of instruments. My sister was playing flute in the band, and when every single instruments were added up and created a euphony, it couldn't have been sounded better than that.

Anyways, the performance was great. There were two groups of quartets that played great music and the last pieces, which was star wars theme songs, were amazing. Meanwhile, I tried to figure out how the high or low sound was made. For example, looking at a flute, i could see it has a thin and a long body while a sax has a huge and relatively short body. And then i thought, since the pitch of the sound is determined by the frequency, (higher frequency, higher note) the narrower body gives room for more reflection of the sound, thus it will have a higher frequency, while the larger body will take more time for sounds to reflect off, then it will have a lower frequency.

There, there is the secret to the pitch of a sound!

Advices for next year's WISE hopefuls.

Hey everybody! I'm so glad that you guys are going to take WISE next year. Well, I'm sure you guys are all excited about the freedom you will enjoy once the 2nd semester comes. Taking English off everyday can't sound better than anything, eh? That was one of the reasons that lured me into this program. Thanks to that, I have 1,2,3,4 free periods everyday but Monday. What a life. But on the other hand, there are many things you need to go through. First, you'll have to cover everything that other kids learn in a year in 6 months. That means you'll need to twice the amount of work everyday. And once thats over, you'll have to keep journal entries almost every other day, do the work, meet the mentor and just so many things in a span of 6 months. Those stuff could be really boring and hard sometimes. But at the same time, you'll learn tons of things. It's like living in a real society. The most important thing I've learned is discipline. Wise is a course that requires a tons of timeliness. Because if you fall behind, for example in writing journal entries, you'll have to make up for that, and if you keep doing that, you'll end up with tons of work, just like me. 

Anyways, if you think you could keep up with all these work, you'll learn so much stuff during you are doing WISE, and once your project is all done, you well feel proud of yourself like never before. So, hopefuls, why don't you give it a shot?

Future plans

Now all the tough times are gone and the good times are coming. From yesterday, I'm done working on every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays. I'll be busy only on Thursday, and the rest of the time is mine. This means that I will have much more time I can spend on my wise project. So, on the following week, I hope to finish

• Recording Guitar part without any mistake (and master it too)
• Same thing for piano (but I'm not sure if i want to include that or not)
• Ask my friend to record the drum part for me since I can't play drum
• If I can get the transposed version of sheet music, sing that a lot to perfect it so that i can record it on the following week. 

Once it's transposed, I'll need to adjust things to the different key of the song but I doubt this will take tons of time though. Hopefully I can get the things done in time and get prepared for my presentation too, which  will be on June 13th, about 3 weeks from today.

Meeting with Mr.Heurich

Instead of not coming to school and sleeping late in the morning, I woke up earlier thatn usual (7:30) and went to school for the meeting with Mr.Heurich. The reason why we met up in the morning was to go over the basic recording stuff and I had some questions about my Mic. I frist thought my Mic was not functioning correctly because of the whtie noise, or the room noise, but it turned out that my Mic was fine and I was just being paranoid about it. We also covered some topics on editing, or mastering in a 'musical' term. There are so many things I still need to learn, but during this time, i learned about reverb, which is mimicing the room sound. This induces echo effects and simulates as if the sound was made in a studio. There was also something called equalizer, which as the name suggets, equalize the suond. By this, i mean balancing the sound by the wavelength of it. It goes, lower the pitch, lower the wavelength. The concept of editing is really complicated that it can take years to learn this. I think it's better if i contact one of the community members and learn briefly about it.

Also, reminders to myself.

• Obtain a pop filter from Mr.Lesser
• Transposed version of sheet music from Mr.Lesser
• Contact a local musician or a professor at IC

Last singing lesson

I just had my last singing lesson today. Although it's been not that many times, a few hours of learning and practicing has guided me well enough that i know what i should do every time i face difficulty. I'm not saying i became a perfect singer. It's just i know the possible solutions to the problems and the rest is up on me. The more time i spend on practicing, the better result I will get. In this journal entry I want to sum up the lessons I've learned so far.

• Try to push the voice out of my mouth. This way, I get much clearer voice and it could be heard better to the others. I tend to close up my mouth which blocks the way that sounds can go.
• Try to hold the breath as long as possible and when singing high notes, squeeze my abs all the way as I'm pooping. This way the sound stabilizes and i could sing high notes without crack ups.
• Pronunciation matters a lot too. I tend to not enunciate when I'm singing. I would like to attribute this to my tiny mouth...
• Try to do my best when singing even tiny things. Attitude is also an important factor.

First guitar recording

This is a Korean song called 'Magic castle'. It also has lyrics with it, but I only recorded the guitar part of it. During this, i made some mistakes and i also realized that my Mic picks up a lot of nosies. I am going to talk about that with Mr.Heuric tomorrow and figure out what's wrong with this. The sound of the video is really small, so its best if you turn the volume up to maximum.

During this process, i also learned how to make a youtube video with Windows Movie Maker and how to embed a youtube video in my blog. What a meaningful day it is!

Guitars!

Although I've been playing guitar for a long time in my life, I didn't play with whole lot of fun every time. Sometimes my mom forced me to play, and sometime i just played to finish my 'homework' indifferently. However, beginning from this year, i found my love towards guitar again. During that process, I had to change from classical guitar to normal guitar but the transition was easier because classical guitar had a wider frat, which was harder to play chords. However, playing on a narrower guitar was much more comfortable and easy for me to play around with, and I also loved the sound of the guitar too.

Before playing this new type of guitar, i thought it would just be silly and not cool,but i realized that this is really useful and immersing. Everyday, I play guitar whether its 10 minutes or a few hours, and still, it only makes me want to play some more and more. Actually, I think I'm going to buy a new guitar since the one I'm owning right now is not mine. I borrowed it from my neighbor. So I've been looking up the models I want to buy and it narrowed it down to taylor 214ce or 314ce. Those two are really famous, and expensive as well. Its $1000 and $1600 in that order, but the only difference is that 314ce is made out of single wood while 214ce is made out of many pieces of same woods. I'm still not sure if i should buy it or save money and do some other things, but they just look awesome and attractive. I've played those in Ithaca guitar works and will play it some other time to make up my mind.

Transposing the song

After some thoughts, Mr.Lesser and I agreed on transposing the song. We thought that it's not worth singing a song when i'm struggling every seconds during the process. And luckily enough, Mr.Lesser's wife is a piano teacher and she has majored in music related major. So thanks to her, i don't need to pay a ton of money transposing the song and my project will be much more feasible. Again, I really thank Mr & Ms.Lesser for helping me! Anyways, we decided to drop a key, which will change the entire song, which includes guitar, bass and piano. I haven't recorded anything yet, which is partly because of my laziness, but it turned out that this saves my time a bunch. Once it's transposed, and since I'm going to quit working from next week, I will have free time everyday except on Thursdays, which will give me solid time to work on this. Also there is about a month before my presentation date, so I really need to get working.

Tiny lesson from my friend

My friends came and dined at a restaurant I was working at, so we decided to go to church when i was done with it. Church is a great place to practice piano and singing because the hall is large and there is nobody, so i feel comfortable singing in that place. It also has a natural 'surrounding sound' system, because the sounds are reflected off the wall and bounces back to me.

When we got there, i sang 'I'm yours' to one of my friends, because she was good at singing. She has been in a church choir when she was young and has been practicing singing for a while. After she listened to the first part of it, she insisted me that i lack in these fields

• Breathing is way too shot so that i seem to confuse where to breathe and where to release my breath.
• Pronunciation is sometimes incorrect. I think its because i don't pay attention to what i'm saying when i'm singing.

Those were two main things she said, but I think i can work on pronunciation. Its the breathing part that really matters. If i transpose the song, it might be easier to sing more comfortably.

Practice, practice and practice

As the deadline comes and time flies by, I'm getting really nervous because there are still many things to do, but i'm not even close to be done with one of those many things. And the most annoying things is that it's extremely hard to get better at sining in this short amount of time. The project would have been much easier if I had started singing earlier in my life. However, unluckily enough, this was the year that i actively started singing and didn't know my limits.

As many things frustrate me, I'm trying to do my best to change these things. I've read so many posts about singing in a Korean website. It's a forum that mostly deals with the singing techniques and q&as. Though not all the posts are helpful, I'm learning many new things in that forum. One of the posts said breathing is the most important part of singing. It's because you produce sound with pressure and the air you inhaled. Singing is all about manipulating those two components. Yeah, the theory goes like that and i decided to trust on that. I tried to practice abnormal breathing in a way that i described a long time ago. Even though I'm not experiencing the result right away, if i keep on practicing, there will be a great boost in my abiltiy.

Helping out Alexi's skit.

Sunday afternoon. The weather was really great, the sky was blue, the sun was shinny but still, the wind was chilly, reminding me that Ithaca's weather is always unpredictable. Anyways, Alexi wanted me to be a part of his skit so he's been asking me to come from Friday, yesterday and today. With his earnest request, I was in a situation where I had to go willy-nilly. Upon my arrival, there was Marcel and Luke, also actors of the skit. Ian was there too, but he was in charge of filming everything. 

Surprisingly, Alexi didn't have any written script with him, so we kinda had to free style everything. And at the same time, I've really never been in a film or any type of recordings. I was a little bit anxious and puzzled but I tried my best to do what I can and it turned out that some scenes were really satisfactory. However, overall, i personally think he needed some more preparation. Since we are students, not professional actors, we weren't really confident at what we were doing and there were lots of differences in opinions. We had to spend some time inefficiently, just because we couldn't reach to a consensus. Although a little frenzy, it was a great hands on experience, which reminded me how hard the wise project could be and how much effort I should put in.

Internal Conclict

So i guess the AP week is bothering all the students in our wise class. I wasn't an exception. Monday, i had to take APES test and today i took AP Calc test. It was a horrible on one of the free response questions, i couldn't answer anything there. I left it blank. Anyways, these days, as the deadline is coming and my singing skills don't make a huge progress, I started to doubt myself if i can actually pull this off or not. Looking through many forums, i learned that the way I've been singing is not the correct way, because I've been producing sound in a wrong way. Well, there is no right or wrong way when singing, but based on what i've been researching, it just seems like my way is wrong.

• There shouldn't be any stress around the neck when singing high pitches. This interferes voice from coming out and hurts your vocal chords.
• No yelling when singing is allowed. Never.
• New way to practice: Try to sing a single note as long as i can. This is really helpful way to relieve stress in the neck. Singers can do it for more than 40 seconds, while i only last about 15~20 seconds.

Yea, so these are the things and i'm still uncertain that if i could do this or not... Somebody please help me!

Mentor Meeting #idk.

Well the break was delightful, in terms of not going to school. Over the spring break, I've learned new stuff and have been practicing on that a little bit. On Sunday, I tried to record a guitar part of the song and tried to loop it, but it wans't as good as i thought it would be. All tiny mistakes were picked up upon recording, and that ruined the sound really badly. So i need to work on that some more. And since the AP exams start from next week, it seems like that its going to be hard to keep up with AP,wise and work.

Anyways, I met Mr.Lesser today and talked about a few things. The list is as follows

• The deadline for recording stuff. We first decided to finish the recording by the last week of may, but changed to the second last week because if i can't still sing in the original key, (which i hope doesn't happen at all) i will need to transpose it.
• If i can't record in a sing shot, i could record a segment of a song and add to the section that I've successfully recorded. This might take a lot of effort, but still it's a way to do it.
• What else... Oh, We decided that i should contact one of the local musicians that was on the community contact sheet Ms.Gergely gave us, to learn things about the softwares, because i'm pretty sure they know what to do with those. 

Those were the things that we talked about today... And recently, I've been working on my abs because those are also crucial when singing!

Next weeks plan

So its Sunday, but I don't feel bad that i need to go to school after 10 hours, because its the spring break! As of yesterday, my family has arrived to Virginia to visit my dad. The weather was the worst because throughout 7 hours of driving it had been hailing constantly. The car shook because of the wind and we could barely see through window because of the rain. I just realized I should have taken some pictures to show everybody how intense it was.

Right now, I'm staying in a 4 feet by 5 feet room, sitting on the floor laptop on my lap. Three other family members are staying here, so it really crowed, like a prison cell. There is not that many things to do, except reading some books or just taking a nap. We just visited some places around here so far and have been looking for houses we are going to live (well, not me) in the future.

As bad as how it describes, its really boring, not that many things to do. But fortunately, there is a library in a distance about 2 miles, so what i will be doing the next three days is probably going to library and stay there until it closes. I plan to read those two books i got from my uncle from Korea. I'm pretty sure it will require some time because those are hard to understand and needs further research. The other thing i will do is 'studying' the softwares, which are Adobe Audition3 and Fruity Loops.
adobe audition
Fruity Loops

Yes, these are the programs that you might see in a studio when you look at some TV programs. Those are extremely complicated and might not be learned over a course of week. I still need to look up for some sources. Once i find some helpful sources I'll post those up as well as other video sources.

mentor meeting

Finally, i was able to have a mentor with Mr. Lesser. Its been about 2 weeks that I haven't seen him! The first week i was absent on Monday because i was sick, but it turned out that he's been out because he had his first baby. How exciting! I was able to see some pictures of him today, and it was really adorable. It might be a coincidence, but a few days ago, i was wondering how happy i'd feel if i have a first baby. Mr.Lesser told me his name is Julian, which i thought was a great name. Anyways, we had a short meeting and talked about my recent progress. By the way, i think i will have to meet with him more regularly because our meetings are short and as the end of year approaches, ill need some more guide on many different stuff. One important thing we've discussed was what to do over the break. Since i'm head to D.C to meet my daddy, it turned out that i won't be able to practice neither guitar nor singing. So, we decided that i should be working on something that doesn't have to do with those; working with softwares! I have to use two programs called Adobe Audition and Fruity Loops. In fact, those are really complicated programs and need lots of studying and practicing to skillfully deal with them. Over the spring break, all i will do will be sitting in a tiny desk in a public library and playing with these programs. Of course, i will have to look up for some helpful resources but its the amount of time i spend that makes me better using these programs. I'd better not waste time but focus hard and get some work done over the break.

Out of the Rut Journal Activity

This is an activity we were supposed to do in class on Monday, however, I didn't have enough time to to it, so I'm doing this on Wednesday. Hooray!
In this activity, I will talk about little bit of planning. Here it says, i need to make at least one of the following lists in my journal. In the planning section, there is 7 things I want to accomplish in the next week. Since I'm lacking a great plan now, I'll fill out this list which will help me what to do over the spring break.

1. Catch up with all the missing blog posts. I have 3-4 missing.
2. Find a great website and instructions that deal with Adobe Audition and Fruity Loops.
3. Play with these software for a bit since i won't have time to practice my singing and guitar. This will be the perfect time to be acquainted with these programs.
4. If possible, practice on making some loops and try to edit some existing songs, to get the hang of it.
5. Upload some samples i practiced with, which will show the progress and where i am in terms of these new stuff
6. Finish recording guitar part of i'm yours. It is better if i make a loop instead of playing all the same parts over and over again.
7. Edit the recording with Adobe Audition. Upload it on my blog.

These plans will be perfect for spring break if it's done as i planned it to be. This might be a little bit of a push, but if i try hard, i think it won't be impossible to accomplish this.

My partner for the second activity was Sam Donovan, and i had my first chance to explore his blog. His project was getting ripped, which aims at getting his body fat percentage below 8. Not to mention, there were lots of posts about working out and some mental things, since it require great will power to exercise regularly. It seemed like that he had some information from books and other people, which was a good thing because i lack these stuff. He also wrote about what he learned from these and how these will change his behaviors in the future. I also liked how he posted the picture of his recent 'shape' on his blog. This exactly showed me where he was and what should be done more. I think i should do the same thing for recordings. Unless i upload these, i won't get any feedbacks which will help me a lot on where i need some more improvements on.

Singing Gospel

Over the weekend, there was a special service that my church held. The church brought another pastor from a church in New Jersey. This is an event thats held twice a year, and I've been attending this service most of the time, regardless of my will. Yes, my mom forced me to go. Anyways, everything is pretty okay but still i can't really focus on the sermon, because i feel like i'm not completely open yet. However, one good thing about the service is that we all get to sing a hymn. And since those hymns weren't the outdated ones, melodies were great and i enjoyed singing. While doing that, I tried to incorporated what I've learned so far. Trying to sing with a head voice. Even though it is hard and i'm uncertain whether i can do it or not, it felt like my head was resonating slightly. How i did was,

• Try to think and sing, since singing is all about thinking. I think it's kinda true because when i really try to do something, it works that way better than when I'm not.
• Imagine that my voice goes up the throat, and goes up to my head via the teeth that's in the way back. It's like trying to send my voices up my head so that it could vibrate.
• Imagine that voice is going at about 15 to 20 degrees angle from the mouth. This way, i will naturally look up a little bit and this will help me releasing the voice.
• Open the mouth wide so that one part in the face thats around the ears (I don't know what its called), should be open.

I'm still not sure if i can use head voice or not, but it was a good time to experience it.

Reflection essay.

As a part of homework, I had to write an evaluation essay. Since i was writing for a grade, i tried pretty hard and meanwhile, i was able to reflect upon my progress. Below is the essay and again, this exactly shows my current situations.

The first ten weeks of wise work meant a lot of things. It was an indicator that showed me how prepared I am every day in my life and my first step towards living in the real society. Numerous values that I wasn’t exposed so far in my life were needed in completing the Wise project and every time it was a moment of something new.

One of the things includes hands on experience. Unlike other English classes, Wise is all about actually moving around and accomplishing something. Since my project was multitrack recording, hands on experience wasn’t a hard problem. Although I didn’t meet up with any of the specialists in my fields, except my singing tutor, I have already spent numerous hours singing and playing guitar. Some were related to my project and the other times it was just what I wanted, but everything ended up contributing to my project, because they were all valuable practices. Before working on this project, I’ve had a yearning for the ability of playing guitar and singing at the same time, but never bothered to try. But thanks to wise, I was able to develop a new hobby that I will possibly be doing all my life.

Although I’ve been doing researches in other classes, research in Wise class was entirely different one, in a sense that I was able to look up something I wanted to, and this has provided me with a great motivation. Also, because I wasn’t exceptionally talented at singing, research has naturally been an essential tool for me. While searching for tips and advices, I’ve visited various websites, read countless number of articles and watched a great number of videos. I also tried to try out a few books, during that, there is no doubt I’ve learned lots of valuable information.

I’ll have to admit. Journaling was my weak point so far. Since it’s my first time journaling regularly, there were some difficulties writing journals. At first I thought I could keep my blog like an online diary, a place where I can write my progress and thoughts. However, there were little bit of constraints, and there were some essential things that needed to be included in daily journal entries, which I tried to follow. However, there was a dilemma because I’m not doing multiple things every day, when I need to track the progress of with some useful thoughts. Also, procrastination has been a bad habit of me, which can only be ‘cured’ by stricter discipline and vivid goals.

Weekly mentor meeting was one of the new aspects of the Wise program. Well, frankly it’s been a whole new thing for me, and presumably to others since I’ve never had a mentor in my life, besides school teachers.  When I heard about the concept of mentors before taking this class, I was skeptical, doubting that they will not be that much of a help. But actually having a mentor and meeting up with Mr.Lesser regularly changed my thoughts. Meeting once in a week, and talking with my mentor, I was able to find myself where I am in terms of all the works and was able to get resourceful feedbacks from him and even encouragements. For example, when I told Mr.Lesser that I was finally able to hit the highest note in my song, which has been the most annoying burden ever since the launch of my project, he congratulated be warmly and encouraged me to work towards the goal. We also talked about possible concussion instruments, and he asked me what if I can use a Korean drum, which was a creative idea.

I am not sure if I’m spending more or less than eight hours on my project, but it seems like that I’m spending a great deal of my free time on this project. Some other things I do are also interrelated with wise project. For example, working out at the YMCA is also beneficial for this project since it trains my core, which is helpful when I’m holding breath. Also in the morning, I swim every other day before coming to school, which is purely aimed at increasing my lung capacity. Even though I don’t spend all eight hours singing and recording, I’m spending fair amount of time on things that are also important in my project.

There are ten more weeks to go and from the experience I have, this quarter will also zoom away really fast. Reflecting upon my progress so far, I need to step up a little bit, especially on journaling. From this week, I’ll have to practice and focus more on recording, since AP is coming up soon and as the end of the year comes, I know that things will get crazy as hard as it could get. 

2 fresh resources.

Upon my dad's visit to Korea, he was able to get two books from my cousin, who currently is a vocal trainer at Korea. His academy got famous after there was a singing boom, which was introduced by Korea's modification of America's Got Talent. It was called 'Superstar K', which was aimed at finding talented individuals and making them singers. Anyways, since i couldn't get any help from him directly, he recommended me some books ( he actually gave it to my father).

This is the picture i just took.

The names of the books are as follows (translated): One in the left is 'The correct phonation: vocal cure and care for people with vocal related professions. And another one is actually an American book, named How to train by Larra Browing Henderson.

Over the weekend, i was able to skim some of them, and realized there are just tons of information i need to study, and that I'm not going to get results really quick. But whatever. Learning how to sing is not just for wise project. It is for my future life. Anyways, the book contained great information about anatomy of vocal chords, and all the body parts thats related to singing, such as ears, chest and etc... It also had the method of breathing, method of phonation and resonace. 

I guess i have yet another mountain to climb over and i'm pretty sure the result will pay me well. Really well.

Tough week

From monday to today, I've been sick. Pretty sick. I was almost close to take two days in a row. I don't really know the exact cause of my sickness, but i used to get sick like this upon the change of the seasons, so i need to deal with it. Not to mention, i couldn't really practice because of my sickness. All i've been doing this week was lying flat on the bed and sleeping for hours and hours. I missed wise meeting and mentor meeting, and i feel like i'm really behind.

Anyways, during this phase, i've been watching this youtube video countless times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMBQXB1HPIQ
The video is about a guy singing a korean song called "running in the sky".
As the name of the song suggests, this is a really optimistic song, and also a love song that has a great
melody and lyrics. I also noticed he sings high notes really easily and smoothly, which still remains as a mystery for me... I was really impressed by him playing guitar and singin the song. He is one of many role models i want to be.

Research - How is sound produced

http://edu.kbyyed.go.kr/newboard/BList.asp?Flag=View&TId=yy_edu3&Page=1&BNo=3&sWord=&ss=0&sc=0&sn=0&BRef=3

Here is one interesting video that covers how the sound is produced. It is kinda ironical that a lot of people are unaware of how their voice is produced, when they talk everyday (and this includes me also).
After watching this video and wandering many different websites, I finally realized how the voice is made inside our neck.

Okay, so here is a nice digram of our vocal chord. I don't know all these vocabularies that are in the diagram, but at this point, those retain no importance. All I needed to focus on was two thick lines that are surrounding Trachea, in the middle of the picture. Those are called vocal fold and they have the most important role in making voices. When you are just staying still, not saying anything, the vocal folds are closed, and stuck together. But when you say something, the vocal folds open up and vibrate to make different pitches of sounds. This is how the voice is created. However, it is a little bit different when you are trying to sing. In order to sing, the first thing you do is inhale deeply. The air passes through vocal chords and when you make sounds you exhale the air you just breathed in with a pressure. During that process, vocal folds open up and then you are singing.

But in the video, i found something very interesting. There were multiple demos that a guy went through and in one of them, there was a woman singing relatively high notes. While she was singing, the vocal folds became closer and ended up touching each other. At that instance, she cracked her voice and made an unplesant sound. I thought that's what i was going through every day. I knew that i needed to breath more and deeper but I didn't know why i needed to do that. But the video showed me that i should, in order to keep the vocal folds moving so that it doesn't close.

Well, it turned out that researching is actually quite helpful. I'm discovering so many things that i didn't know before about singing, and the fact is that i still don't know about 99% of the information there is... which might be a good thing, and a 'bad' thing (too much work!)

Singing Lesson #2

2PM, every other Saturday. This is one of the most important
times in this project, because I have a vocal lesson at this time. Although I should’ve
wakened up 5 hours before I’m supposed to sing, I woke up and 1 because of my
laziness and undisciplined life… and managed to get on a TCAT bus (barely). We
start off our lesson by doing some vocal exercises, where I focus on getting
the best sound possible. She kept telling me to release the sound out of my
mouth so that it could go straight, and far away. Yes, this sounds quite easy,
but it’s really tricky because one tiny mistake messes up everything and causes
me to produce ‘bad’ sounds.  My teacher
told me that singing is all about thinking, so I should look up the sky and
implies myself that I’m singing all the way to that piece of cloud I see. And surprisingly,
when I try this way, I seemed to get better sounds, which is really
interesting.

The lesson was similar to the first one. I sang the first
part of the song along with the melody of piano. But I still had problems
during the part where it has most of the high notes. I knew that the answer to that
part lies in controlling breathing. But while I’m singing, I tend to use up the
breath before I get there and end up making a cacophonous sound. In order to
solve this problem, I need to sing a lot so that I could be enlightened. In
here, ‘enlightenment’ means that after I practice many times, there will be one
time that I could manage the high notes that I couldn’t have otherwise. It
means the feeling I had during that process. Besides singing lots of times, my
teacher made me to do some vocal practice regularly. That is, I sing ‘Ah’ along
a simple progression, such as CDEFG. After that, I go up one note and sing
DEFGA and so on, until I hit 2^nd octave A. This is something that I
really haven’t tried at my house so far, and I hope I could do this steadily to
get good results.

Recordings

Yay it was snowday! I guess it was kinda random to have a snowday when we had about two inches of snow, becuase its Ithaca. Anyways, I tried to take advantage of the snowday, and luckily i had no work this week because Cornell was on sping break. Two events that were supposed to happen today gave me tons of free time to spend for myself. I decided to sing but this time, with recording those. Since i have all my equipments ready and even the software, there was nothing to worry about. I recorded about two hours, which was quite fun, even though it turned out to be not very good. Recordings were really valuable for me becuase it was able to provide me with some great feedbacks. i can't really 'listen' while i'm singing, in here, 'listen' means hearing pitches, breathing and the sound, but my mic can and it did.
The sound i hear when im singing and the sound i hear from my laptop was really really different. It was able to catch every kind of detail that was recorded and there were lots of things i needed to learn from it.
Here are some feedbacks i got from my recordings.

•  I'm still not breathing the way i'm supposed to. And because of that, i make lots of mistakes when singing high notes and the sound is very unstable.
•  I tend to cut the voice at the end of the verse, which i am supposed to take it further way. I think it was because i kinda stop breathing once the verse is over.
•  Some more enunciation is needed. Words i say are not really clear to understand. I mean, i know what the words are, but those are not as clear as the artitsts sing.

Plans

In the class today, I heard that the 3rd marking period is going to be over in two weeks. I just got my report cards back, and all the sudden I heard that news. According to somebody else, this marking period is only 8 weeks long, because we had two weeks of breaks this quarter. 

From today, there are only about 10 weeks until the doomsday. So I decided to set up a plan to keep myself organized and act according to it. The things I need to accomplish are as follows: Master singing, record guitar (rhythm and solo), Piano (which I'm not really sure about because there is a chance that piano wouldn't really fit into the song) and Drums (probably FL studio). And I'll write plants by weeks

1) Singing practice along with guitar practice. Look up better ways to play the chords (barre chords)

2) Keep singing. At this point, guitar track should be done, which also includes solo. Record it if possible

3) Keep singing and try to memorize all the verses

4) Keep singing. At this point, the singing better be done perfectly.

5) Start recording, but don't aim to make everything perfect, since I wouldn't be able to get the perfect one without any practice. This should be like practice sessions.

6) Keep recording, should be done.

7) Start FL studio, along with learning how to mix to make the song sound better

8) Should be done making loops and begin editing the song.

9) If everything is perfect by this time, record a video of me performing, probably four videos for each part.

10) Presentation and WISE is done.

So this was a general plan I came up with. I'm pretty sure that everything can't exactly work out as I planned, but if I work by butt off, I think I can manage this schedule. As I said earlier, this is not something I'm doing for grades. This is what I chose to be a better singer and a better person who can enjoy music. I want to finish this project without any regrets and this will require great dedication and discipline.

High Notes

 I personally think the ability to sing high notes is a prerequisite for all the good singers. There are some people who are innately born with this skill, which is really rare, and no, I'm not one of those lucky people. However, people say if one practices really hard, they will eventually understand and will be able to hit the high notes. Even though time required to do so will vary by person by person, it is still relieving that there is still a room for improvement.

I feel like after practicing for a few weeks, I think i have improved quite a bit. In the beginning, i remember i had difficulty singing up to second octave F, or F sharp. However, one interesting thing is that during last years summer, when i was practicing singing by my own, i was able to barely sing up to second ocatve A, but then I completely forgot about singing, since I was working on my college apps ardously.

Anyways, after practicing breathing techniques for awhile, i was able to gain more stability and better sound. Over the weekend, I tried singing the first part of I'm yours. Unlike my thought, it went really well. I was able to hit the highest note relatively easily, comparing to last few attempts. During that, I feel like I sort of realized how to sing higher notes. These are a few tips.

• Squeeze abs as if i'm pooping... or i could throw my arms in the air, which will increase the capacity of my body, and this lets me to hit higher notes
• Look up, about 15 degrees and imply myselft that I can sing it. I think mind control is a really important part of singingg, because when I think i can do it, there were higher chances that i was actually able to do it.
• Open the mouth wide so that the sound could go outside the mouth easily.

Mentor Meting

Ugh, I really need to stop procrastinating. My mentor
meeting was on Monday, 4^th period, but now it’s Wednesday night and
I’m writing about the meeting that happened two days ago. Well, I had to work
from 6 to 10 on Tuesday and Wednesday. I also had two tests today, AP Calc and
APES which made my schedule completely chaotic.

Anyways, Mr.Lesser and I talked about my recent progress. I
said that I was able to hit higher note, which is 2^nd octave G
sharp, the highest note in “I’m yours”. But the thing is that I can only hit
the note barely, so that I could produce the sound itself. It’s not delight at
all, not even smooth. But we considered that important because in the first
mentor meeting, I told Mr.Lesser that I am little bit worried because I couldn’t
sing up that high. However, we both were relieved because at least I made a
tiny progress.

We also talked about drum part of the song. My original goal
was to play the drum, but then I changed it to making a loop. However, after
using Fruity Loops, I realized how hard it is to make a simplest 4 bit loop. I
might learn it over the book, or from Mr.Lesser because he said he has used it
quite a long time ago. He also suggested that I could use Korean traditional
drum. We both thought it was a clever idea because in the actual song, the guy
uses Bongo, which sounds pretty similar to Korean drum.

Lastly, we talked about the journal entries I write in my
blog and about the recent feedback I got from Ms.Gergely. Instead of writing every
single post like a ‘Diary of a cat’, I decided to write it more meaningfully.
Mr.Lesser gave me advices to write it in more detail, and to put in my thoughts
in every entry.

Unlike my thought, mentor meeting was really enjoyable and freshening.
I was able to check where I am in terms of work and journal stuff, and was able
to get great feedbacks and some innovative advices.

Research - singing mechanism

First of all, there are just so many different schools of thoughts on this issue and I guess I'm learning from what I find on the website, so this consists of mixture of theories. When I was thinking about this project, I desperately needed to know how to sing. I just didn’t have basic understandings of how singing works out in our body and how the good sounds are produced. In order to get clues, I surfed through lots of forums and blogs that deal with these topics. Many of them were in Korean websites, just because I think theories that are written in Korean is much better to understand and read. With researching for many hours, I learned that the most basic thing when singing is breathing. Before I knew about this, I thought all the people were singing with just their voice, and from my experience, my throat always used to hurt after hours of singing in a karaoke place. It seemed like that all the professional singers had innately better throats that theirs never hurt even though they sing all day, every day.

But after I learned about breathing, my throat never hurt like before, even I sang for a good few hours, with this type of breathing, which is called abdominal breathing.

.

The mechanism goes like this. Right before you sing a verse, or pretty much anything, you breathe in with your mouth. Some forums say you should also breathe with your nose simultaneously just to get as much air as possible. Upon breathing, the lower part of your stomach should pop out and should hold on to it. When you sing, you gently release your breath but not all the way, because that way, you are going to end up making some weird noise. And when all the breath has gone out, you breathe again during the ‘gaps’ of the songs. For example, in a song called Viva La Vida, you would breath during a $ mark.

$ I used to rule the world $ Seas would rise when I gave the word $ Now in the morning I sleep alone $ Sweep the streets I used to own.

This is how you should breathe when you are singing. But there are sometimes that you just don’t have enough time to breathe enough air for the verse, and end up making a mistake. I encounter this type of situation and I am still looking for a solution. My guess is that I should increase my lung capacity so that I could breathe more air in a shorter time.

There are some exercises to help breathing process. I wouldn’t mention about swimming and running or all the other aerobic exercises because I think even Chimpanzees would know that will help for sure. The teacher who teaches me vocal lessons told me a simple exercise that everybody could do easily. Lie comfortably on a floor and put about 3pounds of weight on your stomach (Dictionary is really good if you don’t have any alternatives). Breathe as much air as possible and hold on to it about ten seconds. Once you count up to then, try to breathe out as long as possible with your mouth open slightly. During this process, you only open a tiny gap between up and bottom teeth. If you feel like you are dying, you stop and repeat the same process about ten times. I am doing this with different exercises and this really helps because this gives you more stability when singing and of course, larger lung capacity. Next time, I am going to write about different types of mechanisms of singing.

Bloggin` and recent progress

After waking up at 11, and coming to school late, I encountered Ms.Gergely on the hallway. We had a brief conversation about my blog and she said my blog kind of looks like a diary of a cat, which was the example of ‘the way we should avoid when writing our journal entries.’ With the feedback, I thought for a while and realized that I actually didn’t really care much when writing blog posts. It was all about what I did every day (not even everyday) and what I will do in the future, which I didn’t really put much effort in. Ms. Gergely said it is okay so far that I wrote entries like that since it’s been not that long. But she said I need to write better entries, guided by the diagram that was also in the packet. So now, I have that packet right in front of me and trying to write a journal entry according to the diagram.

Anyways, this week was really crazy and still is because I have to perform at the Cabaret night on Friday and Saturday, since I’m a part of the Korean Drumming club. And along with that, I work three days a week (Tues, Weds, Thurs) which left me no room to practice and do homework. I did a little bit of singing over the weekend, but I think I need to try harder. Still, I am trying to figure out how to control my breath and just sing better in general. I think the answer lies in breathing, which the singing is all about. I think it’s the matter of holding breath longer and increasing the capacity of my lungs and stomach. To solve this problem, I am swimming about hour every other morning and working out (which doesn’t really help, but it’s better than not doing anything).

At the same time I’m working on I’m yours, I am also trying to sing a few different songs, which include Viva La Vida by Coldplay. The song is exceptionally good, in a sense that it goes as high as I’m yours goes and shares the similar chords. And I have personal preference for the song also. After singing that song sometimes, I realized that I could basically sing up to the highest note in Viva La Vida. However, it was only possible when I had 100% of my breath. When I’m singing and trying to hit that note, I run out of my breath and screw it up. The antidote to this situation is increasing my lung capacity. Same problem occurs to me when I’m trying to sing other songs besides these. I simply can’t hold breath long enough and end up making weird noises which is really annoying because even though I know the answer to it, I can’t really solve the problem in a short period of time. And I guess this is why Wise is all about discipline and dedication, because only though hard and routinely work, I can get over an obstacle.

Research - what is singing?

What is singing? According to Wikipedia definition is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. So its basically making sound that is pleasant to hear, that has candences and tones. All people have been singing from their young ages, not knowing what it actually is though. I think singing is more of a communication between a person to a person (or people). It's just a different way how people talk to each other since it has melody in it.

Lets just say that is a brief definition of singing. But I need to know how to sing better. You know, you just don't want to sing in monotonous voice. You want it to be as delightful and persuasive as possible. You need to blend your soul with your voice and articualte that to the audience.

Okay then i guess i know what to do. But what if you can't really sing that well? Not everyone is born with the innate ability. Actually only some are and i realized I'm not one of them, especially when it comes to hitting high notes. As of now, my limit is about 2 Octave G, A but i can barely sing it. And in order to sing a note you want to sing, you need to be able to sing a note that is 2notes higher than that. That way, you will be able to hit that note freely.

In order to hit higher notes, i looked around many different websites and learned how it works, (or it is supposed to) and different ways to sing and drills that will let me 'attain' the notes.

I will post these researches in different parts since there are just so much information about it and since further research is still required.

I'm Yours

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYhrYHmUPn0

Well, it is kinda funny that i forgot to upload a video that i'm trying to emulate.

This is a video of Jason Mraz performing I'm Yours at an asian country, which i'm not sure whether

it's Japan or Korea. But it is broadcasted through a Korean channel.

The chords and strokes are different from what I have on my sheet music,

but whatever. It's just a little bit of variation i can deal with.

Same thing, different days

There wasn't much of an update on my blog for past few days.

Yes, I've been kinda lazy, but at the same time, there isn't really many things to post.

I kinda want to upload the recordings, but at this point, it would be just embarassing

because everythings imperfect as of now.

This week, i've been just singing a bunch of songs (that i could sing) and if there were sings that i couldn't

really handle because of high notes, i just ignored it.

To deal with this, I am going to the y every morning since i have four frees in a row (1,2,3,4) to swim.

Swimming is extremely good for singing since it enlarges my lung capactiy, which will then improve

amount of air i can breathe in in a given time. More air means more stability and this will let me sing

higher notes. (I learned this from a little research on a bunch of websites). We'll see if it will actually work or

not.

1st Vocal Lesson

I just though vocal lesson is the salt and light of my wise project.

Its probably becasue my project also includes singing, the only part that i'm not prepared for

since i've never been a singer in my life. I thoguht singing would come naturally to me because

i have a relatively high voice pitch, and i used run, bike and swim frequently in my past years.

However, it wasn't like what i thought it would be. Singing is like learning a new kind of instrument.

There needs to be time and lots of practice to be a decent singer. (Well yeah, there are some people

that are born with an intrinsic talent, but i realized i'm not one of them.)

However, the vocal lesson is beginning to pave my way. I've had a few lessosn before and i'm continuing it

from the same teacher. Today, i learend how to control my breath, how to effectively handle high notes

and some other trivial stuff. And since i tend to forget lots of things right after i learend, i decided i should

have a tiny 'journal' to jot down what i learn on each day. I'm planning to have a few more lessons,

and we'll see how it will go, whether it could help me sing like princess Fiona.

About to be exited and some more new stuff

 Well, today i was reaaaaaaallllllllllyyyyyyyy excited that i might actually get exited from wise, a.k.a 1,2,3,4 free periods in 2nd semester senior year, but my excitement was crushed when i found out that i was still missing a tiny stuff.

Anyways, I'm guessing that i will be exited tommorow if theres no snowday. But at the same time im kinda worried because theres a meeting for red-flagged peops and that might interfere with Ms.Gergley's time. Lets just hope i'll be fine.

Enough talk about exiting the wise class, and move on to new stuff. I bought a mic and a mic stand a few days ago and those arrived yesterday. I bought them with a really good deal, but i realized that im still missing an audio interface and bunch of cables. It seems like i still need to spend some MORE money on those. (I feel sorry for my parents that i spend whole lot of money for buying stuff).

I also met up with Mr.Heurich and talked about audio interface. He said we'll talk some more when i bring my mic and laptop. Seems like i will learn how to setup a mic and a few things about Fruity Loop.Things are getting really busy and now i finally feel like im actaully doing something!

"New" guitar!

As of 2/8/11, I become an owner of an acoustic guitar.

Well, I’ve had a guitar from 5^th grade, but it was a classical guitar. For this project, I needed an acoustic guitar and luckily, a kind neighbor said I can borrow his for a while, which I don’t know how long it would be. I don’t really know what kind of company the guitar is made from, but that’s not important because… it’s not mine. Just kidding. It’s because I can make the sounds I want regardless of the brand. You all know, don’t judge a book by its cover. That’s the attitude I’m going to have on this guitar. Anyways, here are some pictures of that guitar, along with the sheet music I got.

Bought the sheet music

Yesterday, the day of super bowl which I didn’t really watch, I got a sheet music for ‘I’m Yours’ by Jason Mraz. The website I bought this was a Korean website that’s specialized in producing sheet music called ‘Akbobada.com’ which translates into ‘the sea of music.’ The sheet wasn’t expensive. It costs $4.5 dollars to buy the entire thing. I can’t really download things from the website but I can print them anywhere I can assess, which is handy.

2weeks plan

2weeks plan

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun
Ask Ms.Gergely for funds and talk about where to buy stuff.	Get a sheet music for the song ‘I’m Yours’. Order things online.	Start practicing guitar chords. Don’t necessarily need to memorize.	Start singing (vocal training) along with guitar	Start singing (vocal training) along with guitar	Start singing (vocal training) along with guitar	Start singing (vocal training) along with guitar
Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun
Start singing (vocal training) along with guitar	Start singing (vocal training) along with guitar	Start singing (vocal training) along with guitar	Start singing (vocal training) along with guitar	Start singing (vocal training) along with guitar	Start singing (vocal training) along with guitar	Record only guitar and my voice, evaluate the progress.

Contacts

Person: Mr.Heurich (aheurich@gmail.com): Although he is not my mentor, he was my interviewee and provided me with great information on recording, since he is currently in a band and has done the same thing (multitrack-recording) before.

Book: Home Recording For Musicians For Dummies by Jeff Strong: As all the 'for dummies' books do, i think this book will guide me through all the basic stuff and give me the sense how the big picture would be like. The book also had good reviews, such as It took me from knowing next-to-nothing about recording and mixing to having a good understanding of the basics, and most importantly, of where I need to go next to keep learning, so as an introductory book, it's done everything it needed to. I liked the writing style too by Steven Gaskin) so i guess this book will be my guru for next 6 months

#1 Dear Reader

Dear reader

Welcome everybody!

This page is dedicated to inform people about what my future wise project is going to be like. Throughout my life, I’ve always been playing some kind of instruments. I started off with piano, then classical guitar, and eventually had a chance to play electric guitar in the band I used to be in. These times add up to 11 years in my life, which is definitely not a short time! So, I thought, since I’ve spent lots of time playing these instruments, let me ensemble everything and celebrate a pinnacle in my musical career. I decided that I should record a song that is sung by me and played by me. This is also called multitrack recording, because it uses multiple tracks of each instruments and voice, then those are mixed up to be a concrete piece, a song.

Another reason why I decided to do this project is quite silly. One day, I was surfing through many YouTube videos, and I encountered an a capella video made by a guy. In the video, the screen was split into about 20 pieces, and in each of the piece, there was that guy singing all different parts of the song. Starting from base, he also covered alto and soprano, and even the instruments, which he mimicked with his voice. The video blew my mind, and I thought “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” This is in part, what inspired me to do this project, which is really funny.

Practicing for different instruments along with singing would be an extremely demanding. And since I’ve never dealt with mixing and editing programs, it will be even tougher. But since this is the project that I’ve been dreaming my entire high school life, I will try my best to accomplish it and it would be great if everybody could watch the progress!

Thanks,

Tae

Wise project will take over the entire blog!

It's been a while since I've visited my blog and uploaded new posts.

Prior to what I've been doing, which was taking photographs and writting my thoughts about it,

I'm going to use this blog as my Wise journal.

This webpage will record all the progress I will make in the future, which will include recordings,

sheet music, reflections and progress.