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Dear Delta Goodrem,

Delta Goodrem

I originally planned my blog to be about music and the hard work it takes to be able to play well.  I also added posts about my home life and trips I take.  It turned out to have mostly posts about my home life and fun things that I do.  

I have made some posts about my quartet and all that we have done together.  They are some of my best friends and we work hard together to be able to compete and play in concerts.  I am hoping that even after college, we will still be able to play music together.  Maybe even some fun pop song arrangements rather than the classical music we are currently doing.  

I am currently doing classical piano, but I really enjoy playing some pop songs and singing to them as well.  I love being good enough to just sight read some fun pop songs and play through them.  I also love to sing, but not in front of people.  I love to play through my Disney song book, but also my pop song books.  

The best songs I like to play are ones that have piano and vocals because it sounds better when I try to cover it.  Being able to play the piano at the level that I can is great because I can actually make it sound like the actual song


I really admire the pop stars that are able to not only sing, but also be able to play piano really well too.  So, Delta Goodrem, you are one of my favorite singers.  Not only do you  have an amazing voice, but you also are really good at the piano.  When you play, you have fast fingers and play the piano at some of your live concerts.  I love to watch how engaged you are when you play the piano and sing.

The piano is a great instrument to play because you can pair it with anything.  Piano is a great accompaniment and solo instrument.  Especially vocals sound great with piano.  Piano is an instrument that everybody should be able to play because it helps you with so much.

I know that I practice about 3-5 hours everyday.  Sometimes I even have to put in more time.  The most I have put in is 8 hours and 45 minutes.  That was a lot of practicing for me, but sometimes that is the amount of work it requires to achieve something.

Almost all of your songs have piano in them and it really compliments your voice.  I really like all of your songs and they have great lyrics and melodies to them.  

I have always dreamed about becoming a singer who played the piano as well.  I don't think that will happen, but possibly playing more pop related piano music.  I want to be able to entertain people more with piano music.  Many people don't like to listen to classical music.  I agree that it can sometimes get a little boring.

Piano and keyboards can create such cool effects for music and is a great foundation for many songs.  I don't always like practicing, but at the end of the day, I am always glad that I stick with piano.




 

New Years Resolutions

New years resolutions.  Does anybody every keep them for the whole year?  I know mine last about a week before they are out the door.  I set a lot of them but remembering them and actually doing them is a whole other story.  

Now you probably want to know what are my New Years Resolutions.  

1)  Keep my room clean and organized.  I always have serious problems putting my clothes away and putting books back on the shelves.  I want to totally rearrange my room and organize my clothes, makeup, and hair stuff.    

2) This goes along with the last one.  Make my bed every morning.  I feel like it takes so much time, and I have a queen sized bed.  It does make me feel good to be able to have it made and nice looking.  

3) Read 50 books or more this year.  I love to read books.  Mostly science fiction and fantasy genres.  Probably I should make at least 15 of the books different genres.  I read books really fast, so this might be the one goal I am able to keep.  

4) Get my permit and drive enough to get my license in September.  Maybe?  I am a really timid driver and my parents make fun of me for driving so slow.  I prefer to be in the passenger seat while my mom or dad drives.  Driving makes me nervous, especially when you have other people in the car with you.  The second time I got behind the wheel, I got honked at for going too slow.   

5) This is a big one.  Be nice to and get along my little brother.  We are always fighting and yelling at each other.  I mean, he drives me absolutely crazy!  He is eleven years old and in fifth grade.  My towel is always on the bathroom floor, and he even used my toothbrush because he wasn't paying attention.  Seriously?!?!?  I was yelling at him and he went "ehhhhh.  Whatever."  That resolution isn't going to last long.  

6) There are also goals I set for every year.  Get good grades and do well in school.  That is an obvious goal though.

7) Learn how to cook.  I am a total failure at cooking.  I wanted to learn to cook something new every Sunday.  So far I have learned to cook Spaghetti.  I can of course make Top Ramen, Mac & Cheese,  and foods you can microwave or cook in the oven.  That might be all that I eat in college.

8)  A lot of my goals have to do with organization, so here is another one.  Organize all of my music I have so much music that I can't always find what I need and know what I have.  It is nice to know that everything is organized.  

9)  I also teach piano and I want to teach more piano this year.  So far, I have two students.  I really love to teach and I find it so much fun to see the improvement they make.  

Temple Square

I went to Temple Square to look at the Temple lights.  I went with my mom, dad, and little brother, Kaj.   We went when it was pretty dark outside.  All of the trees had colorful lights on them.  Also, many of the bushes had fun light designs on them.

It was really cold and really crowded.  It seemed like everyone wanted to look at the temple lights.  I mean, it wasn't a bad idea because it was so pretty.

I really enjoyed looking at the nativity sets.  The nativities were from different places.  There were indians,



There were little paper bags that had different languages and Christmas words on it.  I found all of the languages that I know, but there were so many other languages.  I found Chinese, Danish, and Korean.  The words were written in the different languages, but had english translations underneath.

This is the Chinese character for love.  It is made of a paper bag with little holes poked into it to show the light that is inside the bag.  I wonder how long it took for the artists to make these.

It is so hard to get decent pictures of my brother.  He is always making funny faces or moving around too much to get a good shot.  This picture took a few tries, but he finally sat still enough for me to take the picture.  He actually looked pretty cute.  
















After we went to the Temple lights, we went to the Grand America Hotel.  They had such cute Christmas displays.  Each window had a Christmas scene in it.  There was one with the Grinch's head going up and down the chimney.  Some had moving parts in them, but others were just set pictures.  There was Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Snowy Owls, and so many more.

The way they were crafted were so artistic and fun to look at.  There were big windows and little windows.  Some of the little windows had scenes made of marshmallows.  I wish I had windows that looked as neat as these did.

The Grand America was such a nice hotel.  Not only were the windows awesome, but they also had many beautifully decorated trees.  There was even a life size gingerbread house.  It was made with real ginger bread and frosting with gigantic candy canes.




I had a really fun night with my family.  We were really cold after being outside, but there were so many fun things to see

University of Utah Christmas Party Interruption

On Friday night, my quartet had a performance at the Rice Eccles Stadium on the higher floors.  It was for a Christmas Party for Doctors at the University of Utah.  We were chosen to play because one of the doctors had daughter that is also part of the gifted music school.  They wanted the quartet to do some background music for the start of the party.  

Rice Eccles Stadium

When we first started our program, there were only staff members preparing the dinner to listen to us.  After a few pieces, more people started to show up for the party.  Most of the people showed up fashionably late.  Or more like and hour later than the party started.

I was supposed to play a solo piece, but we ended up running out of time, so I didn't have to.  Our quartet played two pieces and there were are couple of solos.  One of the quartet pieces was a Mozart quartet.  That one went okay, as well as most of the solos.  It was right before the Brahms when things got a little more interesting.

Right as we sat down to play our final piece, we were rudely interrupted by the fire alarm.  It went off really loud and we were all startled.  We just stayed sitting there with our instruments.  Nobody else moved.  We all thought it was accidentally set off and there wasn't really a fire.

After about five minutes, I started to wonder if there maybe was a real fire.  We decided to pack up and leave, just in case.  Right as we started walking out, a lady came and said that it was a false alarm and we could all stay and finish our piece.  We unpacked again and were all ready to play our piece, but the alarm was still going off.  We decided to wait until the alarm stopped going.

As we sat there waiting, the security people came to us and told us that everyone had to evacuate the building.  They said it was probably a false alarm, but everyone was required to exit the building so that they could check.  We had to pack up all of our stuff again and go out a side exit and down 5 flights of stairs to ground level.  Thank goodness I play the piano so I didn't have to carry an instrument around.

After we got out, we started thinking that maybe it was Brahms (the classical composer) who set off the alarm so we wouldn't play that last piece.  He didn't want us to play it because we didn't sound very good at rehearsal.  He is probably wondering why we even bother trying to play his music because we didn't sound very good.

Overall, it was a really interesting night.  We decided to just leave without finishing that last piece.  We were all really tired after, but we had a lot of fun.