“I promise it won’t be three months before you hear from me next!”
…obviously, I have an apology to make because I’m now coming up on six months after my last post. My movie review site has taken the priority for me; coming up on a year later, it’s still going strong and I’m loving sharing my opinions with people. More news on that further down.
This semester has been a good one. My first as a senior (though this was my third year, I completed enough credit hours to be classified as a senior this semester), it has been pretty busy but in a completely different way than past semesters. I started off the semester enrolled in Advanced Brass Methods, Texas History, Music and Your Mind (an honors seminar), Symphonic Band, Matador Singers, The Superhero in Film, Television, and Popular Culture (another honors seminar that I just took for fun), Instrumental Conducting, and, of course, horn and voice lessons. I ended up dropping Texas History due to it being too reading intensive in addition to all of the reading I was already having to do in my honors classes, but everything else went just swimmingly.
Advanced Brass Methods was great until after spring break, but the second half of the course was taught by a teaching assistant who I just do not care for. Music and Your Mind has been lots of fun; it is taught by a professor I have had twice before, but I was the only music major enrolled since it is an honors course, not a music course. It’s sort of like music philosophy and physiology, and it has been very interesting. Our final project was a presentation and a paper over a subject of our choice, so I did a study on the recognizability of film music, which ended up being incredibly fascinating…more to come on that later. Symphonic Band with Dr. Allen has continued to be extraordinarily rewarding; he’s one of the best directors I have ever had, and I really enjoyed everything we played this semester. Being back in Matador Singers was also a lot of fun, though I wish that our concert hadn’t been so early in the semester…it was back in March, I think. But I’m enrolled in Matador Singers this fall for the first time (I’ve only been able to participate in the spring semesters so far), and Andrew will be joining me! Exciting news. Going back to classes with Dr. Allen, conducting was also a lot of fun this semester, with the focus being less on conducting and more on rehearsal techniques and lesson planning, which was a very enlightening experience. My superhero class has been interesting as well, with us learning about how superheroes came to be and how they were and continue to be reflections of the world we live in. As far as my lessons go, horn has been about same-old, same-old, though I plan on getting even better over the summer, but voice lessons go things were a lot more active this semester because I did a recital! It went quite well and was fun to put together. Video for that will hopefully be posted soon, once I can figure out how to split up large video files without losing quality. Soon!
Summer plans are pretty basic at the moment; go home, practice horn, make an attempt at working out and getting fit (I’m down to 200lbs now!), etc. I wish I could say that I was returning to my job playing horn for Garland Summer Musicals again, but, unfortunately, the guy who was music director for South Pacific last year is not returning this year and didn’t pass on his information to the new guys, so the orchestra spots have already been filled. I am hoping to return to teaching French horn private lessons at Kimbrough and Poteet, maybe even North Mesquite, but we’ll see how things go. In any case, I will be teaching at Poteet’s band camp again this summer, so I have that to look forward to.
Now onto the “more news” I referred to above. As much fun as it was to maintain this blog for my first two years at Tech, as I said, my movie review site has taken the priority as far as my writing goes. This does not mean that this blog is going away, though; rather, it is now being re-purposed. In the coming weeks, I will be re-structuring “chadadada.wordpress.com” into a supplemental editorial-style blog for my ChadLikesMovies.com review site. This space will be a place for additional commentary I may have on movies or their soundtracks or on anything else that I find relevant. The first post for this will be a thorough write-up of my findings in movie music recognizability, which will be up in the next week or two.
I want to thank you all who have kept up with my blog these past couple of years and who care what goes on in my life, and who knows? I may even keep up a portion of this site to allow for the occasional personal update or two, but your best place to keep up with my day-to-day ramblings will be over on Twitter or on Facebook. I hope that you all enjoy this new idea of a supplemental blog for ChadLikesMovies.com and will give feedback as those changes are implemented soon.
God bless,
Chad