Intention (SMART Goal)

By April 15th for my SMART Goal project, I will significantly improve my piano skills on a specific melody from Hans Zimmer frequent practice and the tutorial below on performing Han Zimmer’s piece on a piano.

PRE-PRODUCTION – INQUIRY

Leader(s) in the Field / Exemplary Work(s)

Interstellar (Main Theme) composed by Hans Zimmer is the piece that I will be sampling this project from. I find the melodies and arrangement to be absolutely amazing and something I want to practice.

Training Source(s)

The tutorial above is heavily detailed on playing Han Zimmer’s Interstellar on a piano. I found it super easy to understand and practice with despite being heavily complex.

I am currently practicing two combined parts and might fit in a fourth if I have enough time for this session.

SMART Goal Schedule

Day 1 – For the majority of this day I attempted to find a song I would focus on practicing for this session. I eventually landed on Hans Zimmer and Interstellar. The next major part of this day was picking out a reasonable part to practice via the piano.

Day 2 – Using a tutorial I found I opened up GarageBand and began practicing the first major melody in Interstellar

Day 3 – During this day I sped up the pace of the first melody and learned a lot about the piano when it came to notes and major scales

Day 4 – This day I began practicing the second melody of Interstellar and corrected a few mistakes from the first melody

Day 5 – This was the day I decided to improve upon documentation here and setup a detailed plan for the remaining days

Day 6 – During this day I continued working on difficult parts

Day 7 – I realized the scope of the project this day and decided to focus on a simple five to seven second clip of Interstellar with repeated chords

Day 8 – Completed the entire project this day

Day 9 – Worked on the documentation here

PRODUCTION

SMART Goal Starting Point Evidence

SMART Goal Ending Point Evidence

POST-PRODUCTION – REFLECTION

21st Century Skills

Ways of Thinking (Creativity, Innovation, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving)

Overall during this project I had to work with the mindset that frequent practice will help improve my skills greatly. Throughout this session I found myself being overwhelmed by the scope of Interstellar as a project but also found it super enjoyable to master parts of it. The song just sounds so good and to be able to recreate that feeling is amazing.

One real frustration I had though throughout this project was the MIDI keyboard being way too small. It would be tough to do most of the segments without splitting it up or being forced to use the one actual keyboard available which could not exactly be moved to my workspace.

Ways of Working (Communication & Collaboration)

In terms of collaboration, I would get support from my team when needed. Some of us were also practicing the piano for this session which helped greatly when support was needed.

Tools for Working (Info & Media Literacy)

The tools used during the project were GarageBand, YouTube and a MIDI keyboard. YouTube was primarily used for the various tutorials used during this project. GarageBand was used mostly because of the class I am taking which uses MacOS.

Ways of Living in the World (Life & Career)

Some skills gained throughout this project when it came to workflow was the use of a trusted system to keep track of the various due dates, persistent practice through slowing down a piece or listening to the song frequently and being able to work effectively with a  DAW using real-world instruments.

Reactions to the Final Version

My friend Michael was very impressed with the final version. We both had decided to use the same song for this session to practice.

Self-Evaluation of Final Version

Overall I am very satisfied with the progress. Although I was unable to document most of my progress since I could not record my work done off of the MIDI keyboard on a real piano. Regardless I had fun during this session and greatly improved my piano skills.

Grammar and Spelling

Grammarly & writer.com

Editor

Micheal, who will hopefully remain the editor for this. If not… he has failed me.