Email Logan at loganhone@gmail.com to sign up for the Community Band email list
March Community Recording Project
This project is completed! Here is the song we recorded:
Here is the project page we used:
Hello! This month, Community Band is learning & recording "Small Town Story", a famous Chinese pop song composed by Weng Ching-Hsi with lyrics by Zhuang Nu & first recorded by Teresa Teng in 1978.
You are invited to participate in this recording project!
Musicians of all skill levels are encouraged to learn the song on any instrument & submit a recording to be mixed into the community recording!
There will be 2 (nonmandatory) Zoom meetings for this project this month:
March 3: an introduction to the month’s song & a quick rehearsal (6-6:45pm)
March 17: listening session and reflection (6-6:30pm)
2 devices will be needed: one for listening *with headphones on* and one for recording
Record yourself playing along to the playalong track with your voice memo recorder or any available recording device.
Don't worry about the sound quality, this is just for fun and to remotely jam together as a community band!
1. Press record on your recorder.
2. Press play on the play-along track, and play along. *Make sure to wear headphones*
3. Email your recording to loganhone@gmail.com by March 14
Small town (has) many stories
full of joy and happiness
If you come to the little town
(you will) especially harvest a lot
(the town) looks like a picture
(if you heart it, it) sounds like a song
The scape of life truth, kindess, and beauty, here already includes of
Talking (people) talks, chatting (people) chats
The small town story is really not bad
Ask your friends come together (with you)
(to) the little town to be quests.
Tips on how to learn a piece of music:
1. Download sheet music for your instrument
2. Download the song if possible, add it to a playlist, favorite it on Youtube, however you access and listen to music, try to put it there. Listening is THE KEY to learning music. Music is all about learning what things sound like and then learning how to produce those sounds. Listening is everything!
3. Look through the piece and make sure you know what all the notes are. If there are some you aren't sure about, use a sheet music reference to determine what they are.
4. Listen to the play-along track/video 3 times while reading along with the music. Do not play your instrument yet.
5. Try to play the song with your instrument by yourself. Play it with your metronome at a slow tempo (60bpm is usually a good place to start to see if you can then speed up or need to slow down further)
6. When you make a mistake, always take a slower look at that spot. Always slow down to understand and learn music.
7. We have to fully understand what we are reading. Sometimes that means we need to stop the metronome and look closely at something to figure out what it is. It's often a good idea to make markings & make notes on the sheet music to help remind yourself of what something on the page is.
8. Gradually start trying to play-along with the recording. Can you play through the whole thing with relatively few mistakes? Remember that perfection isn't everything!! It's okay to make a few mistakes. Except always make sure to take notice of what your mistakes are -- often times, you will find yourself making the same mistake in the same spot each time you play a piece. With those spots, you need to take a close look at them: 1. make sure you understand what all the notes, rhythms are. 2. Slow it down and make sure you can play it at a slow tempo. 3. If you can play it at a slow tempo, gradually increase the tempo until you can play it at the normal speed. 4. Remember to put the passage in context, beginning a measure beforehand for example.
