Intro to Songs of Unity

Today we started by writing a reflection about both of our performances, saying our comments and critiques, which one we thought was better and why, the pros and cons, etc. Then, Mr. Karena told us about our new unit: Songs of Unity. We talked about how there are different types of songs that unite people, like religious music or negro spirituals and many more. Then Mr. Karena told us our assignment was to create a performance of a song of unity and add our own twist to it. He showed us an example of a group from the first year in Hangzhou (fun fact: one member was my sister). Our class has 8 people, so we can randomly got sorted into two groups of 4. My group includes me, Hannah, Celine, and Arnold. We then brainstormed about possible songs and came up with this list:

Man in the Mirror

We are the World

Imagine

Try

Stronger

True Colors

I Won't Give up

Just the Way You Are

What a Wonderful World

All of the Stars

Come Together

Parents Weekend Performance VS Sunday Performance

We performed on Sunday night on December 6th as a second assessment to give us a chance to improve our performance grades, then we were given the choice between these two performance and say which one we preferred and why. After performing twice and watching both over afterwards, I personally think my first performance was better. This is for several reasons. Firstly, because during the second performance the "whiplash" (basically the amount of reverberation of the string that sounds very bad) was much worse. Additionally, my voice was almost completely inaudible in the second performance, while in the first my voice sounded much louder and more confident because it was amplified from the mic. Even though both times I was nervous, the first time was more genuine and the nervousness propelled me to do better, while the second time the nervousness brought me down. I also practiced more before the first performance because I thought for granted that the second time would be easier because I'd done it before, when it wasn't and I was shaking and didn't play well or project as well. I think the second time my playing of the chords was more technically correct and I made less mistakes in the finger work, but overall the I think way the guitar sounded and ironically my confidence and how my voice sounded was much better in the first time.