All in All

Over all music is a really great thing, it can help people through things and it gives you something to listen to when you are bored or alone. And it even gives people careers.

          Music can be a life saver in some cases, for example people with anxiety and depression listen to songs to help them stay calm. Or in the case of music therapy it helps people with autism, it helps them stay focused and learn people skills plus a lot of other things.

          Music can help bring people together, such as school dances, a bunch of people from your school go to have fun. Or honor bands, which bring a bunch of different people from all over to come together and become one band, and it gives you a great opportunity to meet people who have similar interests as you and who enjoy band.

          Music is a great thing for many people and helps people, and if it doesn’t for you or you don’t fall into any of the groups, or if you don’t like music at all. It doesn’t mean that you are weird or different, it just means that you don’t enjoy what some other people do.

Why

The song Why by Rascal Flatts is very powerful. He sings about something that many people ignore. The whole song is about suicide and depression.

“It must have been a place so dark you couldn’t feel the light, reaching for you through that stormy cloud.

Now here we are gathered in our little home town, this can’t be the way you meant to draw a crowd”

The first verse of this song kind of hints at the whole depression thing and people who do suffer with depression knows exactly how this feels. Also when he uses the phrase “reaching for you through that stormy cloud” it is kind of referring to commercials about depression medicine because that is how they mark people with depression. Walking around with a grey storm cloud above their head.

“Oh, why that’s what I keep asking. Was there anything I could have said or done.

Oh I had no clue you were masking a troubled soul, God only knows what went wrong. And why you would leave the stage in the middle of a song.”

The chorus of the song refers back to the title of the song. Why. It kind of goes back to the whole suicide thing but it is not as clear in this verse as in others. Such as the next verse:

“Now in my mind I keep you frozen as a seventeen year old, rounding third to score the winning run.

You always played with passion, no matter what the game. When you took the stage you shined just like the sun.”

This verse makes it clear about the person who killed themselves was a 17 year old. It doesn’t say if it was a girl or boy. When he says “why would you leave the stage in the middle of a song” He is talking about life and dying too early or giving up.

“The tangled thoughts I hear, a mockingbird sing. This whole world really ain’t that bad a place.

Oh why, there’s no comprehending and who am I to try to judge or explain.

Oh, but I do have one burning question, who told you life wasn’t worth the fight. They were wrong. They lied. Now you’re gone and we cry, cause it’s not like you to walk away in the middle of a song.”

The last verses of this song is where it can hit people hard, especially if they have had a loved one or someone that they know closely take their own life or die at a young age. These verses sing about how people feel. About how it’s not fair and that they don’t understand.

Maybe this song is sad but does it really matter? It’s the words that matter because people can connect to them and that’s really what makes a song great.

Flute Choir

                We usually have a Flute Choir every year. Usually one with Symphonic Band and another one with Wind Symphony and this year isn’t any different. We have four kinds of flutes inside our flute choir. We have, of course, the normal C flute, then we have the bass flute; which is the lowest we have in the choir, then we have the alto flute; which is kind of like the bass but it is higher and not as large and heavy. And then last but not least we have the piccolo; which is the smallest and highest in the choir.

            The bass flute is huge and heavy. It curves to form the mouth piece, which makes it heavier because there is more metal. There are also a lot more keys and it requires more air because of how low it is. The high F on the bass flute is like middle F on the C flute.

            The alto flute is another version of the flute. It is wider than the C flute but not quite as wide as the bass flute. It plays higher than the bass flute but not as high as the C flute.

            The C flute is the normal flute that you see most people playing. It is the easiest of all of them to play and many times it is less expensive than the others because it is more common. For example during marching band and concert band we only use the C flutes and piccolos, and the other two are saved for flute choir.

            Then there is the piccolo, which is the smallest, lightest and the most fun to play. It plays an octave above the C flute. Playing high notes that are above the staff on the flute takes a lot of air and is usually pretty ear piercing because of the pitch.

      Flute choir is a lot of fun to be in but it usually takes a lot of work and practice because it is usually a pretty decent size group so it is pretty rough trying to get everyone to play the right rhythm at the right time. Since we usually don’t have all that much time to preform our director gives us music that we are able to get together in a pretty small amount of time.

            Our director Mrs. Fleer is “in charge” of conducting both flute choirs and helps us through rehearsals to make sure we can play through the whole thing without any mistakes. 

All City and State Music Contest

      All City and State Music Contests are great ways to see how good of a musician you are. All City comes first and State usually comes the weekend afterwards. There are many groups who can perform at either of the contests. Here are a couple of groups you can be involved in if you are a musician, and some groups depend on what instrument you play.

·       Solos

·       Duets

·       Trios

·       Quartets

·       Wood Wind Choir

·       Brass Choir

·       Flute Choir

·       Clarinet Choir

·       Percussion Ensemble

The list goes on and on. There are so many different options for both of the contests. All City is the “easier” of the two contests and State is obviously the harder one. All City contest is like a practice for State contest because the judges at State judge way harder than the ones at City.

          For City there are three scores you can get I, II, or III. Getting an I is the best and III is the worst. At State there are 5 different scores you can get an I, II, II, IV, or V. Same concept as before. A I is the best and V is the worst.

Pandora

          Pandora is a pretty great app for just listening to music if you are bored. You get to choose what types of music you want to listen to and what artist you want to hear. Also if you don’t like a specific song you can give it a thumbs down and it won’t get played at all anymore on that station.

          If you really like a song you can give any particular song a thumbs up if you like it and that station will continue playing it and it will also play others that are similar to that song.

          Pandora is a nice app if you are really picky about music or if you don’t care what you listen to at all. So if you don’t already have the app or have never tried it out or never even heard of it, I would definitely recommend giving Pandora a try.

Academic Assembly

          The academic assembly happens every year and usually drags on forever. A majority of the school doesn’t even want to go to it but what choice does many of the under class men have? They have to go whether they want to or not.

          Every year some kind of group usually preforms, this year it was the full orchestra, involving the symphony orchestra and some people from wind symphony. Also there is usually a choir group that sings for everyone, and of course improv team.

          Usually the groups who preform have to go whenever Mr. Kline tells them to because there is so many names and organizations that get recognized that it will take longer if they all go at one time. This year there is about 20 Japanese foreign exchange students here at Kennedy High School staying with various people who are in the Japanese class. So since they are all here visiting they had a little dance performance for all of us to show us some of their style of music and dance.

          Although the assemblies are usually super long and boring and nobody really pays attention, the music that is preformed there and the different groups who go up on stage and preform are usually super cool. No one really cares about the names that are being read unless they are part of the group who is waiting to get called up. The only thing that people really watch or pay at least some sort of attention to is improv and choir sometimes. Many people don’t pay attention when band plays because they are in the back of the gym so many people talk or are on their phones while the band or full orchestra plays their song or songs depending on how long they are and how much time they have.

Changes over the ages

  There have been many changes in the way music is portrayed in the last 70 years (http://gizmodo.com/how-music-has-evolved-in-the-past-70-years-1485770090) Many different aspects have contributed to the way the music has changed. The website named above listed many different things to help give reasoning and proof of the way that is has changed.

          A couple ways that music has changed in the last 70 years are: it is more energetic, less organic, louder, and faster. All of these things have different aspects but they all trace back to the one thing that they are all about, MUSIC.

          Music has started to become less organic, which basically means that it is more electronic now than it has been in the past. This is not a bad thing, because it has gotten more people interested in music, but it also takes away from the artist’s uniqueness.

          As everyone knows today’s music is faster, for example: rap. In most rap songs today it is hard to understand what they are even saying because the song is going so fast and they are talking/rapping too fast for many people to catch on to what they are saying.

          Music is becoming way LOUDER, and that is easy to understand. More and more people enjoy rolling their windows down with their favorite songs blasting on the radio, because that has been the normal way that people have become used to listening to it.

          Another change is that music has become more energetic. Although it might be a little different change and a little hard to understand. It makes sense because people and artists today get more into the music that they sing or preform and the people that listen to it enjoy it more and more.

          Throughout all the changes that are happening in music there are still things that stay the same. One of the things that have stayed the same is the people who listen to it, even though people switch back and forth in between different genres of music, people still continue to listen to it and find a certain artist, group, or just type of music that they really enjoy listening to.

          Many artists have also had to make a change as the music industry is changing. Sometimes it is harder to tell what ones and who have changed because they are usually not super big changes all happening at one time. They are usually smaller changes that occur over a longer period of time. Miley Cyrus, Brittney Spears; etc. The list is never ending. Even Taylor Swift has changed with the music industry. She has changed the genre that she associates herself with. Everyone used to know her as a country singer, but now she is more of a pop singer and not everyone likes that.

As music changes the overall concept stays the same. Although not all of the changes that have been made are good ones; for example take a look at Miley Cyrus and what the fame has done to her and how much it has changed her as a person as well as changing her music.