Celebration of student Writing

My experience at the EMU Celebration of student Writing (CSW) was very positive.  I observed presentations from a wide range of topics, in a myriad of formats.  Something that was very valuable was the fact that there were SOO many presentations going on simultaneously.   This lowered the stress (for me at least) of the presenters.  The fact that there weren't twenty people at a time watching you present, really helped you relax and be able to present your project in a calm and collected manner.  It also made the other presenters seem more excited about you walking up to their booth and checking out what they had done.  When you only have a few people looking at each presentation, it makes each observer feel more special.  Although, having so many people all presenting at once did cause a problem for presenting a video.  In a large room with so many people taking at once, it was very difficult to hear what I was saying in my video.  That aside, the CSW seemed very exciting and was a lot more fun than I anticipated.  It was surprising seeing the vast differences in all of the topics presented.  I went in with the preconceived notion that everyone's presentation would be about English, or the writing process.  I was happily surprised to find that to not be the case ☺

Week 3 blog post

The peer-reviewed article I read aims to address the problem of teaching music students the ability to have a well-tuned ear.  The context of this problem is that it is widely accepted among music educators that having a well-developed ear is essential in the education of any and all music students.  The approach of this article is to use the standard combination of sight singing classes and applied lessons, in a way that both incorporate the emphasis on aural and visual methods.  The student must be able to both hear something and replicate it on paper, as well as see a piece of written music and hear in their head how it will sound.  This article also mentions specifically, the Rabbathian techniques used for double bass as a method that executes this idea of education well.  This is an article that promotes rabbath, but makes no mention of the simandl techniques I wish to compare it to, because it refers to teaching music in general, rather than specifically teaching double bass, but is insightful to bass teaching.

Week 2 blog prompt 2

http://doublebassblog.org/2006/11/rabbath-versus-simandl-comparative.html

This blog post interests me professionally because the issue of Rabbath vs. Simandl teaching techniques has been an age old debate in the double bass world.  The fact that the author seems to finally land on the preferance of the George Vance method, which is a bit of an amalgamation of the two, is particularly interesting to me, because that is what method I was primarily brought up with.  My first teacher started me with simandl, but less than a year later, when I switched teachers, I started using the Vance books.  as a student, I greatly preferred this to what I was doing prior.  And for a lot of the same reasons that the author of this blog post states his students preferred Vance.  It would be interesting to research how many teachers use which method of study, now that the Vance books have been out for longer than when I was first starting.  I use the Vance book with my students to great success, but would be interested to see how new bass players are taking to the older simandle technique nowadays.

Week 2 blog promp 1

The issues of Dr. King's speech and letter remain ever present today.  Although the particular points of issue may have changed, the issue of equal rights remain the same.  The fact that gay marriage is not legal federally, and is only legal in select states is a current issue of inequality facing American, and global, society today.

Week 1 blog prompt 1

My name is Philip Rinke, and I am a Music student at EMU.  My purpose for writing in this space is to write my first blog post and Introduce myself and my purpose for writing in this space. I will try to avoid limiting this to the “single story” of myself as a student in English 121, and Give people reasons to want to know my stories.  I want to dissuade the single story of myself as learning only about music, and broaden my education to include all fields of study.