Reflection

While doing the Creative cycle or Design cycle I have learned a lot of things. The obvious one being the creative cycle it self and all its stages, and what we have to do in each stage of the process.  I have learned all the things and effort have to be put in each performance ever made. Other performance don’t really concentrate on the process but every performance went through this process so learning it in detail and focusing on this cycle to made a performance is a very good thing for me in the future. Other thing that I learned during this process is the teamwork. Yes, in other classes for years I have work with many people before. Doing this ‘project’ using the Creative cycle is different from the others. This time we have to do everything from scratch and many people have different opinion and different interest, finding a thing that we all like is something hard to do. Even after that we have to start practicing and designing the performance is another challenge when you’re doing it with a group. We have to manage to practice 3 songs while we have people that have many personalities is hard. This project really improved my Teamwork and collaborative skills.

Each and every Stage in this process/ cycle can be applied in other subjects or anything in our everyday lives. This cycle is basically used for every project ever created fro music (obviously) until something as boring as expos. Investigation stages can be used whenever you want to start any project; we need to investigate all the possibilities and information first. Design is another thing that can be applied for everything. Design or planning help us to imagine and plan everything. Without this stage we cant and wont have a performance. The create part in my opinion is the most important part; in every project ever created there is no use of planning everything without actually making it happen or creating it. And the last stage evaluation, this is used in almost all if not all subjects. This is where we reflect back to everything and see where we did well and bad (what I’m doing now) and this is important for the future. There, every stage is and can be use for every project so learning this cycle is really important.

The design cycle in my opinion is not something very complicated or hard to do. It’s a cycle that is used to create something. But it’s not the easiest thing either. In my opinion the hardest thing is actually working with everyone and finding an idea that can make everyone happy and make everyone enjoy it.  Working with such a big group creating something we all can agree with is hard especially in such short amount of time that we have.

Like what I said before this process have thought me many lessons an in the same time improve my skills. This semester, I have improved my Collaborative worker, as I have to work with many people that have many different personalities and interest to create a performance together. Combining all of our ideas and forgetting all our disagreements to make one epic performance (well. what we hope was an epic performance. its not). Going through that make me learned more about teamwork and it have improved my collaboration skills.

In my opinion the performance is a success. Yes, it’s not our best. There are a lot of things that we have done better in the practice and we didn’t do in the performance because of nerve.  We have tried our best to stop all the nerve and perform our best but getting up in front of people and perform is hard. In my opinion of course there are things that we need to improve so bad but we are only 8 graders, we have a lot of time to improve ourselves. We have put lots of effort and energy on planning the performance and actually perform it. We have tried to do our best to give our best performance, Maybe its not our best performance but at least we try and that’s what matters. Its better to fail knowing we have tried out best and think out of the box than to have no fails but didn’t try to do anything nor think out of the box.

I really like how we all manage to learn everything from scratch (well...except thriller) in just a few months. There are lots of things that I love from this performance. One of the things is the fact that we create everything by ourselves with the help of our teacher. I also like how we manage to do everything with a very good attitude and properly. No really big mistake happens.

There are some things that we need to do better like, the singers need to sing louder and loosen up. Other than that there is technical problems like the power point is not working very well in the beginning or one of our singer’s voice cracked but these things are not intentional and none of us know that this will happens so there is nothing we can do about it. Another thing that we really need to work on about the performance is CONFIDENCE, we are not confident enough during the performance and in my opinion it shows in the performance. One of the people that are meant to introduce the song run out of stage after saying 3 words just because of he’s nervous. Some of us (me included) talk and kid around during the performance, mostly in between songs. For me, it make my nerve less but I know it’s a bad attitude to have when you’re performing so that is another thing that I need to improve about the performance.

In most part there is no big mistakes with the sound we all sound great together, the only problem is that during the first song the harmonies are not loud enough and during the second song one of the singers stop singing a lot making it looks and sound kind of weird.  In the second song the kulintang over power the singers. Other sound that we have problem on is in the third song we have some kulintang playing but because there is a lot of other instruments and only about 4 kulintang you cant really hear it. The main problem is almost all the singers are not loud enough.

The Instruments that we chose is all-amazing and blend together so well. Especially in the second song “superstition” we have the modern instruments and a traditional instrument, which is kulintang, and in my opinion, both instruments together are magical. It makes the song sounds so much better and unique than any other version of the song. But if I can do it again and change things. I will change some things like putting more kulintang players fro the third song “thriller” so you can hear it more and I believe it will sound better. Besides there is a lot back up singers, maybe some can just move and play the kulintang. For the second song “Superstition” I think the kulintang is too loud and I think we need to tone it down.

In my opinion the idea of topic/theme that we have are brilliant but the thing that let it down is that we fail to give the point across. When you see our performance you will just see us sing 3 songs without seeing the connection and the whole theme of the whole performance. The whole idea of Back from the future is great but we fail on showing them the connection about all 3 songs. How it was all sang by legends’ from the music industry and how at that time and until now all 3 songs are always remembered and played instead of forgotten like most song from their decades.

Others than the bad things there are things that I think I actually do well at not only during the performance but also all through the semester and this cycle. While in class planning and preparing for everything I have tried my best to keep up. I learn everything I need to learn and do everything I have to do. I always try to make sure I’m ready for the next practice because I know that we work as a group and if one of us didn’t remember what we’re supposed to do or things it will let everyone down and stop us from moving forwards. I don’t want to be that person that stops the class from moving forward just because I’m too lazy to give it my all.  I think while the performance I try my best to give it all with the way I’m playing the kulintang, the movement and the singing. Before the day I make sure I know everything and me and my friends are not afraid to sway and dance around while we’re singing “thriller”, I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Yes, it makes it looks like we’re having the time of our live but it make the other groups looks lazy and stiff.

I have talked about what I did good and things that we as a group need to improve but there are also things I as an individual need to improve. Like I said before I need to stop talking and kid around on stage so it looks more serious cause our performance is serious we all have worked so hard for it. I think I also need to be more active in class by giving my ideas more and contribute to the discussion more than I have. By doing so maybe my ideas that I have only kept in my head can make the performance better or it can open a new conversation that will make it better. I need to Practice more outside class maybe at home when I’m not doing anything, instead of doing useless things like opening gossip sites or YouTube; I can do practice more. If each of us practice more I personally think our performance will be way better. Not just at home maybe during break and lunch time because the music room/ class is always open for us to practice.

I believe that every single one of us have work hard to plan and perform everything. There is a lot of work and energy put into the process all together. I can say that much but I don’t know if every single one of us perform to our best ability. I can go and say that to memorize all the words and notes plus playing everything together with that many people is hard and need a really big effort put in it. I really think that all of us have put a great effort into it, Even if it’s not up until our best ability. I can’t say about the others but me, personally I haven’t put my best ability into this performance. I don’t think I have realized how hard effort it need and how serious all of us need to be to make things work. But at the end I start to snap back and work my hardest.

Overall this semester has been a great semester. Of course I would change a few thing is I can redo everything and do it again. I will take it more seriously and I will try my best to make our theme of the performance obvious to the audience. Another thing that I will improve or change if I ever can do everything all over again is that I want to make sure that when we are in the stage all of us look happy and excited. None of us talk or kid in the stage and we all looking like we have the best time of our lives.

This semester is lovely and memorable.  The thing that I really enjoy this semester I think is playing instruments with friends. Sometimes grooving around and having fun, it makes all of us closer. The whole process is so much fun to do. Coming up with crazy ideas that we think will wow everyone and have a good laugh when you realize half of the thing that we have is impossible to do. There are a lot of funny moments during the whole semester and the whole preparation. And those memories will be cherishing with all of us.

I will miss a lot of things after this semester is over in 1 week. There are a lot of memories and funny moments in the class but one thing that I really think I will miss is our music teacher Ibu Megan. She has helped us all through the whole experience. I don’t think we can create such performance without her helping us. She is a very fun teacher and that makes us all feel confortable in class. She knows how to be funny and it make all of us in the class laugh. We can joke around with her but when it’s serious its serious. I can’t wish for a better teacher to guide us through this cycle. <3