Let’s do a quick & dirty one:
That’s it for today. See you tomorrow.
I gave my students the task to create a playlist with songs that get them though this strange time. Party one of the task was the playlist and they also had to wrote a few sentences about each song and why they chose it. I decided to do it as well and here’s the result. You can click on the title to get to Spotify.
I tried (pretended) to be a eclectic in my music taste and decided not to use some all-time favourites. I decided to mostly go for quiet and somber songs with some nice crescendos. Most of the songs are light on electric instruments and focus on piano, strings and so on, but that wasn’t a rule, I mostly just went for songs that work in the background as well as active listening.
Here we go:
A good playlist starts strong, you need to communicate that you mean “business”, you need to introduce the theme of your playlist….
Yes, I’m opening with the soundtrack of the Zombi apocalypse. This track has a driving quality, almost a crescendo that ends very quietly with just a guitar.…
Because, as we all know, you start strong and then you calm down…
…crickets…and then we get this melancholic song. “Time is a bandit..”. Yeah, it feels like corona is stealing a lot of time from us.
…ok…lets’s keep the mood but with a bit more “oomph”.
I love this songs especially for Berniger’s baritone voice. You don’t hear that often in music like this. The songs has a somber tone yet, its weirdly engaging and almost uplifting, which nags us to…
Let’s get a bit folky. These are strange times but let’s try to be upbeat and live in the moment and let the rhythm move and the strings sooth you.
Which brings us to track 5 & 6… the midpoints of this 10 song playlist….time to bring the heat…time to turn it up…
There are many musical power ballads but there’s only one “Defying Gravity”. Performed by Christin Chenoweth & Irina Menzel (Elsa from Frozen) this song actually makes you defy gravity….and I think that’s what we all could use right now. (I could do a whole playlist with just musicals…depending on how long this goes on, I actually might.)
And we stay strong…
Yes, even the social distancing there needs to be time for one of the greatest love songs ever. Live in Australia with an orchestra in the background…for added effect. It was either this or “Tiny Dancer”.
Time to calm down again before the big finale…
Yes, we stay with the piano, but let’s go solo piano jazz played by Keith Jarrett…If you don’t know, this is one of the most beloved Jazz albums of all time. “Pt. II C” is technically the encore. The music is just beautiful and I highly recommend the whole album. Fun fact: He wanted to cancel the performance because he caught a cold.
Let’s get the groove going with Daft Punk and Giorgio Moroder (the “Father of Disco”) and a track with a great “needle drop”. This is one of my favorite Daft Punk tracks. I also recommend the “Tron Legacy” soundtrack.
We’re getting closer to the end….so it’s time to get back to the theme again…
A piece of music that explores the meaning of time, something we all do right now. What does time even mean in the age of corona? Max Richter is a german-british composer who walks the line between classical and contemporary. Worth a listen is also “Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons”.
And finally….
From his album “Scratch my Back” Perle Gabriel covers this Arcade Fire song in an orchestral arrangement. A beautiful haunting version…. don’t we all feel a bit caged at the moment?
…and…well, there’s nothing left to say. Stay healthy.
Back from I little blog break. I had a relatively quite weekend 1. I uploaded an old video essay of mine, damn you youtube content filter, and then I uploaded an edited version again. 2
I’m already working on an other video essay and I think I have a decent plan for this weeks episode of “Mr. Vogt Explains”. The plan is to write it on Wednesday and record some new band inserts, and then, like last week I shoot and edit the episode on Thursday. At least that’s the plan.
I spend most of the day correcting, as long as my students hand in their stuff like they are supposed to, the workflow is pretty great. I use my iPad to correct, so I can do it with “a pen” without having to print or scan anything. When it work, it works like magic…unless….well, lets not go there.
I have to get some dinner now and then it’s more correcting before I go to bed early to get rid of this jet-lag, damn you daylight savings time.
Feedback to the video has been good. I just sent it to a couple of students and I’m not claiming that I’m hitting YouTube jackpot here, but one could say that the video went a bit viral. 🙂
That being said, work on episode two has officially begun. I’m aiming for that 10minute mark. I’ll probably record some more band reactions and I have some ideas for “Anonymous Reporting”.
One thing I might have to introduce thought, “RANT!”. Guess what, the video got copyright flagged for the shirt Corona Song clip. I’m probably not gonna dispute the claim, there’s no money in it, but doing a segment on copyright seems like an interesting idea.
That being said, I’m toying with the idea to do something really educational next time. Should something besides Corona come up over the weekend, I’m seriously going to consider that.
Another idea, I might use a topic my students are working on (Revolution of 1848 or WW II) and do something educational and fun about. WW II with jokes, what could go wrong.
I’m taking a blog break this weekend. I have to start with some grading, apparently of you let your students do work, you have to correct it at some point. Who knew.
Besides that I have to get my new D&D campaign running. I have the first few sessions outlined and I know where I want the campaign to go but I need to adapt to new circumstances. It will be “trial and error” but by now I’m used to that.
If it works out, I might actually try to join an online D&D game.
WW II with jokes, what could go wrong?
So, yeah. I published the video. It’s not perfect and it’s definitely not where I want the show to end up but as a first effort, I’m quite happy. I need some time to find my footing and discover wit I ant the show to be. The first episode was definitely style over content. The next one needs to focus on content and I need to find my groove, I need to improvise more and find the show in editing.
The band was a great idea though. Makes it easier to cut and hide takes. “Anonymous Reporting” stays as well. But here I’m am, talking about a show you haven’t watched yet. Please Enjoy.
Yeah, the ting with the computer didn’t go that well. Had to go all the way and apparently at 2 in the morning I made a mistake with the partitioning and now i need to shove some stuff around. At least I finally git the iCloud to work properly.
I did a videoconference with two of my classes today. Went quite good. Not the best quality though. Not sure if it’s me, them or just the technology being at it’s limit.
That being said, I worked on the video today. Uploading it to youtube right now. Probably not the final one yet, just figuring out how its going to look but it’s going to take ages to upload it. It runs almost 7 minutes and it turned out quite OK. I had to redo the whole Intro but recording myself was a bit weird but If I keep doing it, It will get better. I’m a bit stiff.
The material itself is ok. Nothing too insightful or groundbreaking but as a “proof-of-concept” it will do. I don’t expect a TV station or so to call, but with a bit of practice it might not be too bad.
Stay tuned.
Damn it. My computer has issues. It crashed and became unusable just as I was about to finish the first drafting of the script for the first episode.
Need to reset everything. Might take a while. I just hope that all the things I prepared yesterday (not backed up yet) are not lost. That would suck.
Wish me luck.
UPDATE:
Not looking good. Tried a reinstall. FUBAR. Looks like I get a clean mac. I might use a late backup for all the non cloud data but unfortunately the new stuff was just on the HD. Looks like the first episode premieres a bit later than anticipated.
Just a short one today. Students are working and so am I. Some of them are actually doing a great job and are very motivated…some not so much.
My webcam arrived today and my setup is complete now. I recorded the band segments today, yes my show has a band and familiarised myself with the Adobe Premiere. Tomorrow is the first day of shooting the actual episode. I have some jokes lined up already and the plan is to put together a 10min show by the end of the week. Who knows, depending on how long this lasts I might actually start to do video essays on a regular basis.
Stay tuned and healthy.
So it’s Sunday evening. The first week is over and what a week it has been. I just finished updating tasks for my students. They should be busy for the next couple of days. I’m really curious how the students will handle those assignments I shared with them. Ideally it’s something I might use once regular school resumes.
The goal for next week is to plan a face-to-face lesson with at least one class. I probably use mine, I’ll set a date and we’ll see see how capable the video conference feature is. Speaking about video, my proper webcam should arrive tomorrow so I might start with with test recordings for my “show” tomorrow. I have some ideas for the first episode, I am aiming for a 10 minute version of “Last Week Tonight”. It’s going be more of a “proof of concept” than anything else. I’m not sure though I I have the broadcast energy to come across the way I intend to, it’s probably going to be very embarrassing but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for the greater good. 🙂
The other area I looked into this weekend was D&D. We have a pretty good group together and we decided to keep playing through the crisis, so we’re switching to online. I looked into roll20 and it looks quite good. It seems manageable without too much hassle. I prefer sitting round a table but it’s definitely better than not playing.
I’m in the middle of learning Premiere. So stay tuned for next weeks adventure in homeschooling.
To close the day, a german video that explains quite well why you should stay put.
No big news today. I’m settling in, students seem to be working and home-office starts to become normal. I have a broad plan for the next few weeks and I’m now trying to find ways to make those tasks more fun for students or to maybe prepare a reward for them. I testing out a bunch of software and I’m making progress. I’ll probably try to cut a little movie tomorrow and figure out how to properly record a podcast.
The plan is to start writing creatively this weekend as well. As I said, I’m getting the hang of this and between tech-support and watching tutorials I’m sure I can find some time to write.
That’s it for today. Stay healthy and remain indoors.