Thursday, February 19th;
Hey guys!
If you are a musician, then you know that there are almost two separate styles of thinking when it comes to music; creatively, and logically. When most people think of music, they think of creativity, but it is also VERY methodical and logical. The creative side of music would include things like training your inner ear, sight singing(being given a sheet of music and a starting pitch and singing through it.), and being able to hear when something is out of tune. Musicianship, on the other hand is all the logical and almost mathematical details that go into music. For instance, time signatures, and being able to know when you change from this note to the next based on the count. Other musicianship skills are, mastering the circle of fifths, memorizing key signatures, calculating intervals(knowing that the jump from an E to a G is a jump of two notes...), and solfege(using the key signature to determine "Do" and then determine the rest of the notes using the solfege scale). For a lot of you, I just listed a bunch of jibberish, and that's ok, music is not for everyone! Anyways, I have always greatly excelled at the CREATIVE side of music, and loved when we would sight sing in choir because I was good at it, but at the same time, I despised the musicianship side of things. I would struggle determining which line or space a note was on, I would confuse the two rules for determining key signatures, you name it, I did it. My Junior year, I even had the student conductor meet with me every week before rehearsals to work on musicianship, and I've actually improved a lot since then! Anyways, today at worship practice, as we were singing one of the songs, I knew we were doing something wrong. As we continued through it, I realized that we were not singing the correct rhythm for the song. I was on a team with a bunch of men who have been doing this for probably 10+ years, so it was a bit intimidating to say something, so I held my tongue, and we continued to rehearse. After going through it the wrong way probably 5 or 6 times, I realized that I was the only one on that team who knew that they were doing it wrong, and I needed to say something. I went to the band leader that week, who just so happens to be the music director for our church, and mentioned what was going on. I could feel my heart pounding, and I was TERRIFIED as I walked over to show him, but I KNEW that it wasn't right, and I didn't want us to continue doing it wrong. The band director is someone that obviously knows about music, and has studied music longer than I have been alive, you look at him leading up there on Sundays and know, he knows EXACTLY what he's doing, and here I am, a 19 year old girl, getting ready to correct him...Luckily, I was indeed right, and the band director was SHOCKED that such a simple little mistake had slipped by, and I was SO proud. I wasn't proud because I took particular pleasure in correcting other people, or because I wanted to show him up, I was just proud to see the musician that I am becoming, and proud to know that ALL that work I did to try and improve my musicianship skills are actually starting to pay off! This just goes to show, if you are a teen, and you see something being done wrong, don't be afraid to let them know! Obviously, do it out of respect for your superior, but also realize, they may not KNOW that they've messed up, and if you don't say anything, they might end up making a fool of themselves!
<3 Always,
Rose
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