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Tag Archives: Music
Into the Mystic with Thunderhorse: a Q & A
By Shep Greene, Steven Landry, George Littlefield, and Cole Schmitz, VI Form
Into the Mystic with Thunderhorse: a Q & A
LEO: How did you form the band and who are the members and their roles?
Thunderhorse: Our band consists of four members: Steven Landry, George Littlefield, Cole
Click for “Into the Mystic” live
Schmitz, and Shep Greene. Steven is on the vocals and has been singing since his middle school acting career. He is a member of the Marksmen and choir. George is the drummer, and he has also been playing since middle school. Cole plays the tenor saxophone and has been for seven years. A very talented musician (he is the only person to win the Massachusetts Association for Jazz Education’s “Most Valuable Player” two years in a row), he has been integral to the Jazz Band and now serves as its vice president. Finally, Shep plays the guitar. He has been playing since eighth grade, but started getting serious about it sophomore year. (more…)
Voice in Guitar and in Literature…and in Me
By Shep Greene, VI Form
Voice in Guitar and in Literature…and in Me
The guitar is an integral part of who I am. As my skill has progressed, I’ve seen my appreciation and understanding of music progress as well. Over this past year, I began to delve into a more abstract form of music in improvisation. Within this form of my guitar playing, I began to find striking similarities between music and literature. Imagine every note as a letter and every note coming together to form a riff, with all of the respective letters coming together as one word. By the end of a piece, just as by the end of a novel, you’ll have a powerful message to send out to your listeners and readers. (more…)
Becoming a Musician at Interlochen Arts Camp
By Jason Hwang, V Form
Becoming a Musician at Interlochen Arts Camp
Not many people recognize the beauty of classical music. I might not deserve to say this because I was actually one of them before this summer. Attending Interlochen Arts Camp was by far the most engaging and life changing experience of my life in terms of the depth of what I learned and how I advanced into a better musician. (more…)
Modern Day Martins
By Jenny Deveaux, V Form
Modern Day Martins
Much like hip hop music, modern day United States culture is based upon movements for change and the spread of continental ideas.
Hip hop was born in the seventies, and first originated in New York City. The genre was developed largely by African-Americans, but evolved to incorporate nuances from other minority groups such as Latin-Americans. Today, hip hop is a multi-billion dollar franchise that has become a symbol of United States culture because it exemplifies a diverse and influential community that seeks to spread tendentious ideas. Artists like Common, Nelly, Macklemore, and LL Cool J use their prominence in the hip hop genre to address today’s issues. Macklemore did this recently in his song “Same Love,” advocating for marriage equality while producing a track that made the top charts in America. (more…)
Open C Tuning Improvisation with the Guitar (Video)
By Liam Monheim, VI Form
Open C Tuning Improvisation with the Guitar (Video)
During the winter season, I was granted an ACE (Athletic Commitment Exemption, or a season
without afternoon sports) in order for me to focus on practicing the guitar. I used this time not only to improve my improvisation skills, but to teach myself a completely new way of approaching the instrument. I learned how to play in an alternative tuning called open C tuning. Standard guitar tuning from lowest string to highest uses pitches EADGBE. In order to make a chord, you must finger the strings with your left hand. However, when you strum the strings in open C tuning without doing any fingering with the left hand, it creates a C Major chord. This means learning new chord fingerings, but it also opens up a sonic richness in the instrument. (Click on picture to play video)
My solo performance (Click here for video) is a structured improvisation using open C tuning. By structured improvisation I mean that I follow a similar structure each time I play it but I decide in the moment what, how, and why I play a certain part.
The Quest: An Original Composition for a Life Philosophy
By Helena Lin, IV Form
The Quest: An Original Composition for a Life Philosophy
At the end of my fall Roman Religion and Philosophy class, Dr Harwood assigned us a free-swim 
final project that asked for a creative presentation, in any desired form, of something we found interesting and meaningful in what we learned in class. After several conferences with Dr Harwood, I decided to produce my first music composition, which aims to demonstrate my understanding of Epicureanism and Stoicism, the two Roman philosophies that we studied. (Click right image!) (more…)
Northern Pacific Seastar Asterias amurensis & My Zone as an Artist
By Mei-Mei Arms, III Form
Northern Pacific Seastar Asterias amurensis & My Zone as an Artist
(See larger image below)
This seastar originated in Japan, Korea, China and Russia, about 20-40 metres deep off the coasts of these countries. It was introduced by the ballast waters of cargo ships as they returned from these countries and used ocean water to replace the weight of cargo. They can reproduce without the aid of another sea star and can multiply in the thousands. Due their rough exterior, the Northern Pacific Seastar does not have many natural enemies. Their larvae are so small that we cannot find a way to capture them and nothing appears to eat them at that stage in their life cycle. The Sea stars eat crustaceans and due to their numerous population, when they enter a new area, their numbers can wipe out the whole population of crustaceans. They can break off limbs and these limbs can grow in to new Sea Stars, but this process does take years. (more…)
The Orchestra Coalesces (incl. a video of “Ashokan Farewell”)
By Jonathan Qu, VI Form
The Orchestra Coalesces (incl. a video of “Ashokan Farewell”) (click on photo or scroll to bottom for the video link)
Have you ever wondered what it was like to do four things at the same time? Well, all members of the
orchestra do. To effectively coalesce and produce a song that is pleasing to the ear, members must read the music, translate the music, play the music, and then listen to the music. This may not seem difficult at first, but simply playing the music and then listening to the music takes a lot of skill. Take the cello for example. Not only do you have to translate the notes on the page, but you also have to pay attention to what kind of combination those notes tell your fingers to do. You then also have to keep in your mind how you (more…)
LEO 