jayden tokar-katz

"Everything I do is for my people". - Sacagawea

Month: September 2023

“Simply” Not Enough

September 26, 2023 / / 3 Comments

See what I did there? As I said last week I explored Simply Piano

There are several good things about Simply Piano, it teaches you basic notes and chords, it listens to you play and more but quite honestly I find it a bit too basic and does not really align with my way of learning. Looks like I will have to find more resources to learn from.

In my pursuit of looking for additional resources, I found a video on YouTube from a channel called “Become a Piano Superhuman” In this video the gentleman outlines the notes on the piano and teaches a basic note sequence that can be used in several ways to produce beautiful rhythms. I found this resource exceptionally helpful as it refreshed my memory on the location of the notes on the piano and doing the rhythm sequence helped my finger dexterity. When I did play piano in the past the biggest thing I struggled with was using both hands. If you try and make your hands do different things at the same time it is notoriously difficult. It is like your brain is trying to push a square through a triangle aha!

I think next week I am going to explore more videos about teaching piano from this author and see what else there is to learn. I also want to buy this book called “Piano for dummies”. while not an online resource I find these books helpful when learning new things. Actually just as I went to grab the link for that book I found another book that might be helpful called “Music Theory for Dummies” I will update everyone next week if I decide to purchase that book as well.

Video Games – Good or Bad?

September 25, 2023 / / 2 Comments

Honestly, when it comes to technology, my biggest use is my PlayStation 5. Not only do I use it for playing video games but I also watch YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video, etc., I mostly play competitive shooters like Overwatch or Valorant but I try and play good single-player story games that come out like Spider-Man 2 which comes out next month

Growing up and to this day I spend the vast majority of my downtime playing video games. To me it is fun and it is really that simple. It is a place where I can socialize and interact with my friends and live vicariously through the game. Some people get lost in books, and some people get lost in movies and TV, for me, it is video games as nerdy as it sounds.  I almost hate to it admit because I do not see myself as “nerdy” or even feel like I give off a “nerdy” vibe, maybe I do, I have no idea. I personally feel like I give off a more sporty vibe because I am also very into sports both playing and watching. If you saw my first blog post you would see that side of me.

Throughout high school, I was not much of a “partier” per se. I remember one time my dad expressed his concern over me playing video games but said ” I would rather you enjoy time playing video games than going and drinking and getting into that mess” So while I do play a lot of video games and spend a lot of time doing so it is just to alleviate boredom and I learned in my drug education class that boredom is a potential risk factor for developing other issues. I definitely think I could spend more time being productive in other areas but if video games work for me I guess it works.

When it comes to academia, the university is really the first place where I started using technology for the purposes of school work, there was the occasional slideshow or collage in high school or elementary but that was the extent of it. University started using Grammarly and had to get used to UR courses and emails etc.

My Learning Project – Week One

September 7, 2023 / / 7 Comments

For my learning project, I decided to pick up the piano again. I used to play the piano in my early teen years (13,14) but when I started high school I got too consumed in other hobbies to devote time to practicing the piano. I ended up discarding my piano. To begin practicing piano I went on Amazon and bought this piano . Decently priced for the purpose of this project and if there is one thing I learned about music and instruments is the better quality instrument the easier it will be to learn on.

To help illustrate my beginner-level grasp of the piano here is a short video of me playing small snippets of Let Her Go by Passenger and The Last of Us  Main Theme by Gustavo Santaolalla.

I am excited to develop my skills on the piano over the course of the semester. My goal is to be able to play this piano rendition of the hit song “Stay” by The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber

The piano I bought from Amazon came with a free subscription to an online piano learning resource called “Simply Piano”

For the first week of my learning (maybe two, depending on how much their is to learn from Simply Piano) I will use this learning resource to knock some of the rust off my piano skill. The goal for the first curve of this learning process is to get myself back to where I was, then once there I will focus on learning the aforementioned Song by Justin Bieber.

If you play the piano I would appreciate any tips or resources you have that would help me along in my piano journey, please leave a comment!

© 2024 jayden tokar-katz

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑