Summer English Blog

Essential question: How does doing blog posts about certain readings improve your understanding on the topic and allow for one to apply the things that they read about to their every day lives? I ask this question because I have been really curious to find out about how reading these biographies and doing a blog on them will impact my day to day life. At first I had thought that doing the blog posts would interfere with my reading of these books. Although, I was very interested in finding out what it would be like to blog about my musical experience in side with reading about other musical experiences. I became more interested about this after I found out that Miles mentioned that he had kept a diary of certain things in his musical career. This fascinated because it allowed for him to be able to keep track of the things that he had accomplished as a musician. This seemed to be really beneficial for Miles as it allowed him to have reference to the large things that happened in his ca...

For my final project, I really wanted to see if I could improve my ability to improvise with more genuine jazz feel through learning about and trying out the approaches that Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Herbie Hancock used on a day to day basis. After reading about the three of these unbelievable musicians, I learnt a lot about practice technique as well as a lot about the type of mentality that It takes to be a true jazz musician. Since I play at least one jazz gig a week, I thought it would be cool to map my progress through these gigs. The first thing that I started working on was fixing my practice regime to match more of what these guys were doing in their day to day lives. One of the things that really inspired me was something that Mingus had said about the way that he practiced music. He stated that he would practice without his instrument every second of the day. He would actively listen to music and pick up on important things that one would not find unless actively loo...

Essential Question: How does knowing about a musicians life story effect how one listens to their music. I came across this question after getting into Stevie Ray Vaughan a few years ago. After hearing him for the first time, I liked his music quite a lot. Following that,  I began to read about his life all over the Internet. Stevie had over come drug addiction and begun to help others do the same before dying in a helicopter crash that was meant for Eric Clapton. This story blew my mind. After this, I was totally absorbed into Stevie and his playing. Reading about these three musicians made this question reappear for me. I was fascinated to read about Miles' reactions to when he learnt about the lives of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. After being a fan of their music all of his life, he finally got the chance to meet them and learn about who they were and what they were about. The meeting of Miles and Charlie Parker is what interested me the most. Before knowing Parker, M...

Essential Question: How does listening to different types of music affect one as a musician? This question I formed due to the large amount of musician friends that I have who only listen to one style of music. One thing that I have noticed about a lot of people is that they find one style of music and only listen to that style and nothing else. I personally have no problem with that, but it makes me wonder how it effects their musicianship. There are a few jazz cats that I play with who only listen to jazz and nothing else. In their playing, I rarely hear anything but jazz. Which sounds awesome except for when I am looking to hear some out sounding stuff! With the huge degree of talent that these people have, I wonder what they would be like as musicians if they also learnt how to play some other styles of music, if their approach to playing jazz would change at all. In Herbie and Miles were the best people to read about when it came to answering this question of mine. Throughout ...

Essential Question: What makes one like a certain type of music. I am asking this question because every one of my friends likes a different type of music. Not to mention, those that like the same types of music as me, or another friend, like different artists and songs in that category. What is it that attracts one person to a certain song that another person may find completely uninteresting? I honestly was not sure, but I was hoping that I would be able to find out through reading these three books for this summer english class. Through the life experiences of Herbie, Mingus and Miles I figured out what makes someone like a certain music. When looking at these three musicians, I saw that they had all played together before. The one thing that set them apart was that they all listened and played different styles of music. Miles grew up in a town that constantly had jazz floating all around. A lot of Miles' stories from his child hood and early adult hood life consist of a po...

Leading up to this quote, Mingus is going into depth about how music makes him feel and how significant it is to his life. Throughout his entire career so far I have seen that Mingus has relied on music to express himself and release the pent up emotions that he has from years of living a rough and very complicated life. Starting from his early child hood with being racially confused due to his father telling him that he was white due to his light skin, yet experiencing harsh racism. Later on with his father beating him. Leading up to this quote, we have learnt about a few times that Mingus had experienced some serious experiences involving opportunities like getting to play with Charlie Parker as well as Dizzy and Miles. Mingus expressed these exciting experiences through songs like Haitian Fight Song. The sad moments the he experienced, he showed through the writing of songs like Moanin'. In relation to Mingus' life as a whole, Music completely corresponds with his personal...