by Allijah Motika '14

In our morning session today we learned about melody and more specifically eastern styles of music and melody. We worked with modes and quarter tones (half flats) and experimented with those augmented/diminished notes. It's incredibly strange to try and train your ear to hear those intervals and sing them back. Very cool stuff!

Earlier today in a session with Judi Donaghy we learned two exercises that she calls the "Bobby's." They are exercises to help with singing large jumps. I hope to share them with professor Bartz when I get back; they're really helpful for staying in tune. I am still not being able to sing very much, my throat hurts a lot from being sick but I'm still being able to learn lots of good stuff here!

The rest of today was amazing. We did a small group session with Rhiannon who is an amazingly inspiring member of the faculty. The thing that I loved about this small group session is that she led us in exercises that helped to create improvisation (watch my improvisation video). I had been missing that tactile direction for improvisation so far in the workshop. These were exercises that I also want to use back at Catawba, I don't know how but I want to :)

Tonight we were lucky enough to see a performance of WeBe3. WeBe3 is a three person acapella improvisation group. The members were all faculty at the workshop (Rhiannon, Joey Blake, and David Worm). They were amazing. So talented, impressive, inspiring, and so much fun to watch! They invited all of the other faculty to come sing with them on various improvisations which was really cool to watch. I got their CD and can't wait to listen to it :)

Tomorrow is the last day ... but the workshop has totally turned around for me since the small group session with Rhiannon this morning! I can't wait for the small group session with David Worm tomorrow. He is a vocal percussionist and although I already beatbox it's going to be great to learn from someone who has been doing it for over 20 years and learn the techniques that he uses and how they differ from mine!

More coming later, goodnight!

Allijah