Hi here is an update on my musical xylophone journey!

I have been working on my xylophone and practicing daily. Something that I realized is that I have been really favouring my dominant hand and have difficulty using my left hand. It has also been challenging for me to not grip the mallets, but but instead use loose wrists as my past experience with dance and gymnastics have trained me to do otherwise, Overall, I believe that there is still room for improvement but I definitely feel as though I am improving and adjusting.

Throughout this past week, my focus has been on my second song Amazing Grace. The line (I once was lost but now I am found) in this song has been particularly challenging for me as it includes notes that accentuate a certain letter when trying to sing while playing. For example, please see picture below the line “I once – was-s”.

I began by first following a tutorial on youtube, then I decided to write out the notes (this step helped me start to memorize the notes and become a little more fluid in transitions between notes). Then I thought to take it a step further I should write what is being said during each note, as I found myself singing in my head anyways, but could not quite put it to the exact notes. Therefore I wrote out this to help me understand the relationship of notes to the words.

The third line is still very difficult for me to play and sing at the same time, but with more practice I cannot wait to update my progress. I also think that the following video is slower and not super fluid, but shows a good demonstration of my practice and will be useful to see for progressions when I upload my midterm video later on in the term.