Musicals

Why do you like to watch movies??? Is it the drama? Action? Suspense? Music? Special effects? To be honest I’m not huge fan of watching movies, and I don’t normally care for the ones coming out these days. However, there is a genre of movies that I can’t seem to get enough of…. the ones that were made around the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s. I love them so much that I spent a whole summer just watching old movies. I probably watched twenty plus old movies, and most of them were musicals.

I don’t watch movies for the action or special effects, but I watch primarily for the costumes, music, songs, and occasionally actors. Yes, I’m one a person who was obsessed with Hayley Mills, Doris Day, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, etc. at one point in my life. Through that one summer in which I watched a bunch of old movies I discovered some of my favorites. They became my favorites because of the songs that were sung and the actors who sang them!

 

The first one is Summer Stock, a movie not many people know about, but is well known for its songs. The song “Get Happy” sung by Rudy Garland became famous through it, but for me that was not the star of the movie. “Happy Harvest”, “If You Feel Like Singing, Sing”, and Dig-dig-dig-dig for Your Dinner” are the upbeat, snap-your–fingers type of songs.  There are also some slower songs like “Friendly Star” and “You Wonderful You” that are so beautiful sung by Judy Garland. Yes, these songs are pretty old-fashioned, but I’m certain that they will get stuck in your head. They have mine, but I absolutely love them so I don’t mind that much!

 Another movie with excellent music and singing is By the Light of the Silvery Moon. I was a little skeptical about this one just because of the title, but it turned out to tie in first place with Summer Stock. I loved the songs, acting, and singing in this movie so much that I decided to re-watch it about four times before I had to return it! Doris Day and Gordon McCray are amazing singers, and they are even better together! My absolutely favorite songs from this movie would have to be “Ain’t We Got Fun?” and “Your Eyes Have Told Me So” I adore these songs because of the way she sings them and the way her voice just effortlessly glides over the notes in a way that leaves me very impressed. It has defiantly become one of my favorites!

I’ll leave you with this quote from “If You Feel like Singing, Sing!”: “If you feel like singing, sing! Tra-la-la your cares away! There’s something about giving out with a song, makes you belong, helps you to find a piece of mindful day! If you feel like humming, hum. Fiddle-dee-dee-didy-dum! Just look in the mirror and do a duet, and raise your voices along! Tell your friends to go places if they start making faces, if you feel like singing, sing!!”

Musical Goals

         I’m not a very patient person when it comes to learning music, or accomplishing any “hobby” activity for that matter. If I can’t sit down and learn at least part the song I looked up, I get frustrated. For I while, any song that I would look up on the computer, whether it be guitar chords or a video tutorial, I could play at least a rough version of the song in one sitting. If I could accomplish that, I am satisfied and continue on learning the piece. But, as time went by, I realized that most of the songs I wanted to learn would just be impossible to do in one sitting. So, in order to be sure that I would learn the whole song I’ve had to set goals for myself.

 My first encounter was when I first started watching Downton Abbey, I’m sure most ( if not all) of you have either seen or heard of this TV series. I’m not a huge fan of the series, but I absolutely LOVE the opening theme song! So, as I usually did when I heard a song that I wanted to play, I looked up the piano tutorial for the song on Youtube. I never found a tutorial—I guess it was too new, but I did find a recording of a guy playing it from sheet music. I started looking around to find where I could at least find the sheet music…. I’ve become very good at this. J  After searching for the sheet music I finally found it and found some loop-holes in order to be able to print in out (no I did not to anything illegal, I just couldn’t print off the page because it was in the form of a picture), anyway. So, that night I printed it off I decided that I was going to learn it by the end of summer. After several months of wrting out the letters of the notes, memorization, and practice I was able to learn the whole thing by my deadline which I am very pleased about it!

 

After I completed that theme song, I gained more confidence in my playing abilities and decided to learn another one. At the time I was dreaming about being able to play a song titled, “What Love Is This” by a Christian artist named Kari Jobe. It was a no-brainer that this was the next one I was going to learn. Just like the previous song, I looked it up on the internet, found the sheet music and started the same process of learning. This time I’m determined to have in memorized by the end of the school year, and I would love to be able to play the whole song completely by memory. It’s a huge task, considering the song is much harder than Downton Abbey, but I’ll get it someday!


If It wasn’t for deadlines and setting goals I would get nowhere quickly, but thankfully I found a way that works for me!

Going Back

After all the years of learning different instruments, I did eventually go back to the piano. Almost every day, I hear my mom playing the piano or I hear some beautiful piano pieces in certain songs.  As I listen I can picture what their hands are doing and how to create that melody myself, so one day I decided to sit back down at the piano and try to plunk out a melody.

From the piano lessons I took many years ago, I didn’t get very far in my playing abilities. I understood timing and reading music, but reading the notes on a page then interpreting it on the piano was a struggle. Now that a lot of time has gone by and I haven’t been practicing my music reading abilities (or lack thereof), I can no longer take a sheet of music and play it without some help of a pen to write down the letters of the notes. It’s funny how I’ve forgotten the letters of the notes on a page, but never the letters on the piano itself. But at least I remembered something, right?

Even though I couldn’t read music, I still wanted to play… very much. I knew that if I only learned the pattern of the notes and memorized them I would be able to play it with no problem. That is probably the only reason I was able to learn the music during piano lessons. If I couldn’t get it, my teacher would play it for me and then I would able to play It, with no problems.  So, I looked up a video of a simple song, written by a young girl and I would ware out the “play”, “pause”, and “rewind” buttons to memorize how to play the song.  I would watch one about one measure of the tune on my laptop that sat on my lap as I sat in front of the piano, and then played it myself. Yes, it was very time consuming, but I was having loads of fun doing it! More fun than I would have had relearning how to read music and then finding the sheet music. I also think this was a lot easier for me, because I can learn a lot from ear.

I began to continue with this method of learning songs, by looking up a video of someone playing it.  I soon realized, however, that with some songs only provided the sheet music and no videos of anyone playing it in a way that I could learn it myself. Nevertheless, I was determined to find a way to learn these songs, but I’ll save that story for another time.   

Another Christmas Gift

I continued to listen and fall in love with bluegrass music (specifically Gospel bluegrass). I started expressing some interest in another instrument of bluegrass… the mandolin. The mandolin is an instrument that is used in classical, traditional, folk, and bluegrass music. For those of you who don’t know, it’s basically acts as the “drums” in bluegrass music. By its short, rough chop the mandolin creates a counter beat with the upright bass and keeps the fast-pace rhythm of the music. The chop is when you mute the strings to create a sound of only your pick hitting the strings without playing any notes. However, the mandolin is mostly known for its fast melodious tunes used in solos and background music to the vocals.

Some of my favorite mandolin players are Sierra Hull and Celeb Lindsey. Both of them have been playing since they’ve been very little and, in my eyes, have mastered the instrument! Sierra Hull is a singer and songwriter, who learned the mandolin when she was little and has never stopped. She formed a bluegrass/country band who now tours, performs and enters in contests. She has several CD’s out and she is planning on continuing this adventure. See here to hear some of her music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vlfL00J1eY

Celeb Lindsey is the main mandolin player of the Lindsey Family Band. They have been playing as a family for over ten years now and have been producing CD’s and performing all around the country since. As they put it, they play “Toe-tappin’, Heart-touching, Home-grown, Southern fried,   Jesus-lovin’ music”. Celeb has been playing since age six and his talent is clear when you hear him play! You can hear some of his incredible picking here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoJJAqhqatM&feature=c4-overview&list=UUiwVcLh8wf1scEeOjlQ-3Ww

 

  Christmas came once again and the last gift I opened was a mandolin (a gift that I was not expecting to recieve at all!). I cannot express my excitement! Having one of the instruments of the music I love in my hands was more than I could take. It was a very surreal moment that I could actually be able to play the music I loved the most. I also learned this instrument by videos on YouTube (both by watching how-to videos and just watching others play and trying to replicate them) and from the “teach-yourself-how-to-play” music book I got alone with it. I am nowhere close to being as good as these two people I’ve mentioned, but I hope to pick it up again soon and start practicing again and hopefully get much better at it! This instrument definitely puts a smile on my face when I hear it!