We are exited and disappointed to say this is the last week of the Genius Hour project. We are sad to see it come to an end but we are happy with how much better we have gotten and how fun the project was. Thank you to everyone who commented on our post. We appreciate it!!
This week has mostly consisted of planning. At first we tried to just make the slide show as we went. We then realized it was going to take way more planning than that. To start we drew out how many slides we wanted. This was to get an idea of what we had time for as well. Then we made a list of all the things we are required to have on the slides. This is to make sure we do not miss any key details or key information that would make our project incomplete. Then we made a list of the things that were important to us to have on the slides. This was to make sure we had our own influence in the project to make it stand out from the rest. This part of the project was one of the hardest parts. Fitting three months of material into one slideshow was difficult for us because we had so much we wanted to put into it. The design process was also very difficult considering design is not really either of our strong suits. We had to make sure we took our time and made everything look good. Thank you again to everyone who commented and helped us get better at playing and writing. We also would like to say thank you to Mr. barker for helping us bring our first song to life. We look forward to making more songs in the future.
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This week we are going to be learning our last songs before we make the final presentation. I (Hunter) am going to learn "La Grange" by ZZ Top. I like this song but I have always struggled to play it for some reason. That is why this week I am going to commit to finally learning it and being able to play it. Hopefully I am good enough at it to make a good video. We are also going to switch things up a little bit for the last week of actual content before we devote our time to creating our final presentation. Instead of just playing guitar, I am going to play Ukelele and Bentley is going to play harmonica. I will play ¨Somewhere Over The Rainbow¨ on the Ukelele and Bentley will play Piano man on the Harmonica. I have played the Ukelele for a few months now and It is really fun. It also helps with guitar chords. It is an easier version and it helps to get better on the guitar. I am excited to learn more about the Ukelele over the summer when I have more time. Bentley is playing Piano Man on the Harmonica. This song is very recognizable as it was one of Billy Joel's most popular songs. Bentley and I have seen this song live and it is even better in person. Thank you guys for suggesting songs and commenting throughout the project. We appreciate it and it has been a huge part of us getting better. Since this is the last time we will be posting a new song we will not really be taking any more suggestions however if you really want to see a song played by us let us know at school or email us. For week 10 of our project, Hunter and I have both decided to follow along with the acoustic pattern. Hunter is going to do Walk the Line by Johnny Cash and I am going to learn Get Rhythm, also by Johnny Cash. Coincidentally, we did not know what each other were picking this week, we only told each other we should do acoustic again and somehow ended up both doing songs not only by Johnny Cash but these songs were also recorded on the same day and eventually released in the same album and I do actually have the album on vinyl. I am very excited to learn Get Rhythm because it is one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs of all time and I never really looked into playing it because I thought it was much harder to play than it really is. The song mostly contains only two chords throughout the main chorus but there is a solo as well. Right now I am just going to learn the main part and I will save the solo for a little bit later. If I decide to do the solo I will switch to electric for that because it will be much easier and the electric brings a better sound to it in my opinion. I also really like Walk the Line, which is the song Hunter is playing this week, and I might eventually try to learn it as well. It has a lot more movement on the neck of the guitar making it a little more difficult to play, this is also enhanced by a slightly more complicated strumming pattern, both of which make it a more complicated song than Get Rhythm but I still think that I would be able to learn it with a little bit of practice. This week we are excited to post the second song we worked on together. For our blog, we are both going to write about the different points of view in writing and playing this together. This song took us a while to get it where it is and we hope you guys like it. (Hunter) I think the most difficult part of the writing and playing process is bringing both parts of the song together. We did finally end up getting it right but it did take a while to finally get it. I think one of the biggest factors in the songwriting process for this song was the revisions. The original was awful but it had the slightest bit of hope in it. Bentley helped sort of mold it into the version that it is now. The best part of writing is seeing something go from not so good to something we are proud of. (Bentley) This song was a bit of a struggle for me and Hunter, he wrote the whole song but he asked me for some ideas about it when he was done and I helped revise the song to make it flow a little better. When he first started writing it, it wasn’t the best but with lots of revisions and just playing it in different ways we found something that is good enough to play for others. We will still work on this song after the project is over but we think putting this through some criticism will help us make a better version after the project. We also like to see what you guys think about the things we play and write. As always, if you have any songs you want us to play please comment below or find a way to contact us by looking at the contacts section of our weebly page. We are very excited to be making our own songs and playing them however we are still open to suggestions. If anyone has a song they want to hear us play or even a suggestion of something to add to one of our songs or change. This week we are very excited to post the song we have been working on. Writing a song and playing it is much harder than just learning one someone else wrote; however it is really cool to have your idea come to life. This has inspired us to try to write another song and play it together for the next week of our project.
This song is a little different than the last one. This song will be fully acoustic. The last song we made was played with electric guitars and bass guitars. This song is just two acoustic guitars. We may build upon what we have made so far and add a bass guitar at some point but for now, we are keeping it simple. I think the hardest part of the writing process so far has been staying on track. It is really easy especially when writing the instrumental parts of the song to get far off track quickly. Sometimes this works out well. For example, while playing the rhythm part of the song I sort of found the lead part. While finding the lead part I sort of fell into a rabbit hole trying to perfect it and ended up having so many different versions it became a bit of a mess. Luckily I was able to run all the versions of the song by Bentley and together we found the best one. It always helps to have multiple ideas. If you have any ideas about our songs please comment below. We always appreciate the feedback. This week we are bringing everything together. We will be able to get together and play this week. Playing together has been the toughest thing to do so far in this project. I(Hunter) have been working on a song for a few months now and it finally seems to be in a complete enough state to play for our project. As I am still trying to develop it, I want to go ahead and put out a rough draft version in order to see how it sounds and to get some feedback on things I can do to improve it. Hopefully by next week it will be in an even better place and sound even more like a complete song. Bentley will play the base/intro part to the song, this was not the first part of the song that I wrote but I feel that it would be the easiest for him to play without knowing the whole song.It also stays close to the same the whole song. I(Hunter) plays the part on the guitar, this part is more advanced than the base part of the song at the beginning. I think the hardest thing to do will be playing different instruments together. We have played the same thing together before but we have not played two different instruments at the same time. I am excited to see how this goes. So far this is my favorite thing that we've played just because of the sheer fact that it is unique and new to both of us. This could be a great step in progress for us being that we have never really done anything like it. As always please comment and let us know what you think about our video. We always appreciate it. This week marks the official halfway point of our genius hour project. We are excited to see the progress we made. This week we are going to continue learning new songs but along with that, we plan to regroup and check our progress. To do that we are going to be playing "crazy train" again. This will show how better or worse we have gotten. We are very happy with the results of our check-up. Our timing is much better along with sound quality. We played much better this time than last time. Last time it took us a very long time to record the video. This time we shot it how we wanted it the first time. We have gotten better at playing on camera and we have gotten better at playing relaxed. You can tell in some of our videos that we seem a little tense. At first, we were not very good at playing while being recorded. Along with that at the beginning of the project, we noticed Bentley had never played standing up. This is a common issue. Most people learn sitting. I had this same problem when I first started. To overcome this we simply played standing more. We are taking two weeks before we post a new song. The reason for this is our next song will be a song written and performed by us. This will be the first time we have ever written a song together. We are both excited however we know this will be tougher than learning a song already written for us. I know it may be disappointing that you will have to wait a whole 2 weeks for a new song. I am just as disappointed however we all have to replace our disappointment with excitement and curiosity for when the wait is over. As always remember to suggest songs you want us to learn. Thank you. This week we are learning new songs separately. Bentley is learning ''Paranoid'' by Black Sabbath and I am learning Nirvana's "Something In The Way" and "Purple Haze" by Jimmy Hendrix. I know how to play "Paranoid" already. Once Bentley learns how to play it we may make it our next song to play together. This is a fun song that uses similar chords to "Hard School". It also uses a lot of fast picking which is good to work on for of course playing faster and keeping good rythem. This will be a fun song to play together once we both polish our skills some. "Something In The Way" has become very popular with the release of the new batman movie. I for one am friends with someone who actually claims to be the real Batman. Although this seems like a stretch I have never seen him and Batman in the same place at the same time so it is possible. The song is very easy to learn and it consist of only a few easy chords. The song is mainly a tuning hassle. It is tuned way down to give it the dark sound Nirvana was looking for. "Purple Haze" is probably one of my favorite songs. I am very exited to finish learning it. It has lots of hammer ons and pull offs along with lots of sliding. Hendrix always put a lot of visible emotion into this song when he played it. The hardest part of the song so far is tone. I play a lot of harder rock songs which all have a very similar tone. This song is very different compared to my normal songs. This song was picked by one of our fans/followers! Thank you guys for suggesting songs and please continue if you want to see one of the songs you picked played by one of us. This week, Hunter and I both learned a new song called Hard School. This is a really great song in terms of new things to practice, and it is also a satisfying song to play in general. We picked this song for no particular reason other than we thought it would be interesting to learn, given that we both like the song. Sadly we were once again not able to meet up to play this week but we should be able to much more often in the next few following weeks. At first this song was a little hard for me to learn just because of the amount of quick paced, single string picking. Although that part is difficult, I eventually got the hang of it, though I would not say I have quite mastered it yet. The quick paced picking referenced is at the end of the riff but it is what really brings the piece together and sets it apart from other songs like it. While Hunter was learning the same song, it was much easier for him because his skills are more advanced than mine. Even though the song is fairly simple for him it was still enjoyable for him to play it. While I do agree that it isn't super complex I think the fast paced picking patterns will help me with future songs I plan to learn like Paranoid, and even help me refine songs that I have already learned in the past such as Hell’s Bell’s. This song along with the unique picking pattern, uses a few power chords, these aren’t specifically new chords to me or to Hunter, but they are always good to keep practicing for they are used in just about every single song we will be learning. Along with Hard School that I learned to help practice with individual picking, I also practiced moving my fingers on the neck of the guitar and picking. I did this practice exercise by going through the scales and each time I went through, I would try to do it just a little bit faster in order to improve. This week we were also not able to meet up to play. We still learned new songs on our own. I learned ''Still Of The Night'' by Whitesnake while Bentley learned ''Seven Nation Army'' by The White Stripes. Still of the Night is a fun song. It has many difficult techniques. For example, pull-offs are used a lot in this song. Pull offs are when you play a note on a string and then pull your finger off the string letting it ring out for a second. This is hard especially when used quickly. This song should help me with ''The Trooper'' by Iron Maiden. It has lots of pull-offs but is one of my favorite songs and I want to be able to play it better. Bentley's song is very popular. You hear this song at lots of sporting events. It is fun to play and easy for an audience to recognize. The hardest part of this song is moving chords quickly. Playing power chords slowly or with some down picking in between gives you time to move your fingers where they need to be. This makes it easier to have clean chords that sound good. Playing faster makes it harder to do this. Even if you can play the chords moving them quickly and still having a clean sound is difficult. Next week we are planning to learn the same song separately and then bring it together the next week. This will be the second song we play together. The song will be Guns N Roses new song ''Hard School''. We are looking forward to learning a new song and playing together again. Please comment suggestions for songs we should play next. We are willing to learn anything however we prefer rock. Depending on the song we can always go out of our usual music type. |
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