Week 4 - Tuesday - Broken and Repaired

Woke up this morning to an unpleasant surprise. Opened last week's graded theory assignment which was handed in yesterday. I felt good about it, was sure I had this shit down cold. 

F - Excuse me? F - Really?  11 out of a possible 24. 

I stared at the corrections in red pencil, all over the paper. Has to be a mistake. Did I miss the concept? Was it the execution? Is my notation illegible? Must have me confused with another student.

Angry.

Humiliated. 

Humbled. 

So full of doubt, maybe I have bitten off more than I can chew.

For reference, the concept I tanked was mechanical voicings, I mentioned that in my last entry. I guess 4 hours of review was insufficient.

I immediately email the instructor: "Yeah, I obviously missed this concept. Can I get a tutoring session? What's your policy on redos?"  

His reply: "Relax. Every year 1/2 the class tanks this assignment. Your class is no exception, 5 of you understand, the other 5 don't. I'll meet with you today and go over it, I plan on letting the 5 of you resubmit a new assignment once you prove you understand the concept."

Whew! Dodged that bullet. What once was broken is now repaired. 

On the light side, after all of the structure and strictness of the last 3 weeks, I got to actually create music today! Something creative, my choice, within a minimum of guidelines.  Assignment was to setup a sequencing assignment in Digital Performer, set up tracks and instruments in a particular way, then write 2 minutes of music. Whatever you want, you can even just bang on the keyboard for 2 minutes, he's not grading on musical content, only if you can actually input music under his guidelines. That was fun!

Oh, last week's Film Music History movie was Vertigo, directed by Alfred Hitchcock music by Bernard Herrmann. Freaking awesome! I'm a big fan of Herrmann but this is my first Hitchcock film. I'm developing a serious affinity for these old films.

Music notation assignment is to input the first page of the score to Star Wars Main Title. I will enjoy that while we are using the notation program I am familiar with, next quarter it probably won't be as fun.