Tales of Tenth Grade

     The way I tend to listen to music is I'll have two or three albums that I'll listen to on repeat for a month or so, and then I move on to a new set of albums.  I find I can't listen to music while I'm working or doing something else, I'm too easily distracted by what I'm listening to. Instead, what I ususally do is I take time to listen to an album all the way through and do nothing else other than focus on the music. This means I really only listen to maybe an album a day, so I don't get bored of any song or album very quickly. I know  this is a really weird way to listen to music,--I don't even use playlists--but it's what I've done ever since I've had Spotify.       This style of listening means that every once in a while, I need to find new music to listen to. This happened to me earlier in the week, and this time I decided I wanted to find something that I had never listened to in my life. And so my journey of scrolling through the ...

     So my brother Hayden has been annoying me for about 3 months now to listen to this one band he likes and I still haven't listened to them. Its not that I don't think I would like the band, they actually seem like exactly my musical taste, and I've enjoyed a lot of music similar to them. No, the reason I haven't listened to them is because of the way Hayden's gone about convincing me to listen to them. You see, he's been giving a masterclass in how not to convince someone to like something you like.         What Hayden does is he marches in to my bedroom every other day and says "You should listen to X," with the occasional added, "They're really good." And then he leaves. Thats it. It seems he chooses to perform his little skit at the worst times, too, like when I'm doing homework, or about to go to bed, or worst of all, when I'm already listening to music. The last thing I want to do when listening to music is to be interupt...

Godzilla (1954) Godzilla (2014)      I've been having a lot of conversations with my brother over the past few months about old movies and remakes of old movies. It turns out the pretty much every time I prefer the original and he prefers the remake. He liked the new Godzilla movie, while I thought it completely lost everything that made the original great. He thinks the new Star Wars trilogy is the best Sart Wars trilogy while I think nothing has come close to the originals. In fact, I found out that my brother won't even watch anything that's in black and white, and is reluctant to watch anything made before 1990. My brother's reasoning has always been "its because it doesn't look as good," which made me wonder how much that really matters.      Looking at the example of Godzilla, its easy to see why someone would think visuals and technology is what makes a movie good. The original Godzilla looks terrible by today's standards, the monste...

     I was originally going to write about the importance of music in general to me, but then my brother stole that idea. So instead I'm going to talk about playing music. I've been playing music for a long time, ever since I was 8 when I first started guitar lessons. Remember the fourth grade teacher Mr. Cosolovo? He was my first guitar teacher. A year later as started learning the other instrument I know how to play, viola, through the school. The reason I wanted to learn music in the first place was because I wanted to be like the rock stars I used to idol. Music was always around me when I was growing up, so it was natural that I wanted to learn myself. Ever since, I've been consistenly trying to improve, and I've never once doubted manting to play an instrument.      Now, playing music has become a part of my life. I never really plan to do anything with my knowledge of guitar or viola, I more use it to give myself something to distract me from the s...

I noticed a lot of posts this month have been about music so I wasn't going to be basic and write mine about music. But I was thinking about it and music is really important to me. So I'm writing about it anyways. I developed my music taste a few years ago when I got Spotify Premium. Instead of listening to only the Top Hits on the car radio, I began to expand what I listened to. Now, I never listen to Today's Top Hits. I don't think I really have a specific music taste. Depending on my mood, I listen to everything from songs my parents love to pop to rap to Disney. My Spotify has playlists for each mood and I take great responsibility in keeping them updated. When I'm home, I almost always have headphones in or my phone connected to a speaker.  My love for music is boosted by concerts. Concerts are probably one of my favorite things ever. Something about the energy and adrenaline in the air is so fun and makes you feel very alive. I really like smaller con...

Ok, so I'm sure many of you know that I love classical music. I used to always talk about it and a friend and I currently co-curate a classical music fanpage on Instagram (close to 8,000 followers, by the way). Now, I'm not here to tell you that this is the only genre of music or only type of real music.  That's simply not true and I'm not one of those people. I respect your opinion on music. In fact, it's not the only genre I listen to. I love  film music like  Hans Zimmer  and John Williams . Oh, and I also like jazz music  and really any type of instrumental music . Now, you're probably thinking, "Chris, this is all instrumental music." Yes, yes, yes. However, I do listen to some music with lyrics. For example, the Les Miserables soundtrack and La La Land , Phantom of the Opera , Frank Sinatra , and others , and, heck, even Dollerie (no link due to bad words). I'm sure you can tell by now that I love music and a lot of types too. So,...

I’ll always love listening to my dad’s music on long car rides. When I was younger, we would often listen to these mixtapes my dad made for my mom. Before I was born, he received the album The Eminem Show for his birthday, which includes the song My Dad’s Gone Crazy. The song features Marshall Mathers’ daughter, Hailie Jade, as a little girl. My dad must’ve been inspired because these mixtapes he made included short audio-clips of my sister speaking when she was little and would say spontaneous cute things. I’ll never forget that. Listening to the songs on those tapes is a feeling I can’t describe, deeper than nostalgia. To me, music is a universal language, with the power to wrap people up and tie them together forever. As I write this, I’m having a little trouble trying to find the words to say how I feel about music without using vague, cliche lines. But it’s true. Music is so much more than what I can say with only words.  Initially, I had a bunch of ideas for thing...

     I grew up listening to music all the time. It was never really my choice what music I listened to, instead it was my dad's. He was always playing the rock music he grew up listening to around me, so it became the music I listened to when I was a kid.      I think this is the case with a lot of kids, that they grew up listening to the music their parents like. It always seems, though, that as kids grow up, they drift away from their parent's music and start to like more current music. This was never the case for me, for the most part I still listen to the same music I grew up with.      I've never understood how everyone else so easily found conemporary music they liked. To understand why I struggle to do this, I looked back on the specific music that defined my taste in the first place. For me it is 70s progressive rock. When I was around ten-years-old, my dad used to play all the great bands of the genre like Yes , Genesis , and The M...

JPM100 P2. I am sure that that assortment of letters and numbers means absolutely nothing to you, and they shouldn't. It's completely foreign to you, and that's fine. However, it isn't foreign to me. This phrase, JPM100 P2 represents something that means a lot to me. It provides me with entertainment and with a challenge and with joy. This phrase represents something that you probably wouldn't be thinking of; it is a guitar model. This phrase represents the Ibanez John Petrucci Signature model, and it is the guitar that I have. The guitar isn't actually mine, it's my dad's. He purchased it in 1997 and he used to use it a lot. But he doesn't have as much time on his hands now, so I use it a lot, and it is really fun. Let me just get something straight first of all; I'm not really that good. If you asked me to play 99% of songs or riffs that existed, there is a pretty good chance that I couldn't. It could be because I don't have th...

A lot of students listen to music while they are studying, but what music is proven to be the best for this task? Will you get a higher score on your history test if you listen to Beethoven instead of Louis Armstrong while reviewing for it? Well, according to Marsha Godkin, a professor at Northcentral University,  classical or meditation music is the best option, or basically any genre of music without lyrics. Songs that have a fast tempo can also be distracting, the optimal beats per minute are from 60 to 70. Music that is too slow can also relax you to a point where it’s hard to keep working. Making personal study playlists can also help more than pre-curated playlists or stations on apps like Spotify since you don’t have to feel the need to skip unwanted songs and it also can help you time how long you want to study. When the music is over, take a break or take a final glance over your material. Other options for studying music are nature sounds, spa music, lo-fi music, or anyth...