Composition

Composition is writing music with an original array of notes and sounds. The composition style I'm doing, film music composition, is a composition style meant to fit the theme of a scene and has no lyrics. I'm doing film music since I'm not good at writing lyrics, but I tend to find very good combinations of chords to fit the occasion.

So far, I've worked out a combination of sadder chords for a piece. I need to work on making them sound more harmonious with harmony chords.

Creative Writing - Two Wire

Having to face your fear in a compulsory activity sounds pretty scary, right? Well, that happened to me on the Year 10 Camp. My group and I were hiking through the forest along wet, muddy trails. The mud squelched under my shoes, which were getting dirtier by the second. The rush of river water got louder and louder as we approached an activity I thought I was prepared for; well, I was wrong.

A big phobia of mine is potamophobia - the fear of bodies of running water. Y’know, like rivers. You could easily get swept away, then who knows what’ll happen to you. At the activity we’d arrived at, we had to cross a large river. Using only a wire for our hands to grip and a wire under our feet. While sure, we were harnessed, it still felt dangerous.

As you can probably guess, I was shaking like a frightened puppy, though a few of my friends reassured me I would be fine. A wave of anxiety crashed over me as I offered to put on one of the first harnesses. Why I thought this was a good idea, I don’t know. I stood upon the wooden platform as the leader clipped my harness to the upper wire.

Don’t look down, I repeated to myself as I started to walk on the wire, don’t look down. The crash of the water against the rocks was overwhelming, as was the smell of fresh water mixed with the forest aroma. Despite my own thoughts, I looked down to see where my feet were - and man was that a long drop. Even though I knew otherwise, I felt like if I fell, the harness would snap clean off and I’d plummet into the water. Well, until I actually fell, that is. I sat there dangling for a moment as I processed what just happened, before doing what the instructors had told me to do if I fell. I sat back upon the cold, rough surface of the lower wire and put up one of my feet. The only problem is that sometimes my feet have a habit of literally dislocating themselves if I put them in the wrong position. Pain like a knife stabbing through my foot hit, and I quickly put my foot down and rose the other one back up to the wire. That one, thankfully, didn’t decide to dislocate on me and I managed to pull myself back up to a standing position.

After what seemed like an hour - in reality, it was only around a minute or two - I finally made it to the other side of the river. An instructor unclipped me, and I waited patiently for my bag to be sent across on the pulley. My gloves were in there, and my hands were icicles at that point from holding onto the cold metal wire for so long. I watched the others come across until a few of my friends had made it, then we began to talk while my hands warmed up. After everyone had made it across, we began on our next trek through the forest.

I handled this situation much better than I thought I would - maybe I’m not so scared of rivers after all. Even so, it felt nice to know that it is possible to conquer fears, no matter the irrationality.

Creative Writing: Risk or Challenge

WALT: Identify and organise ideas for our 'Risk or Challenge' creative writing task, as well as the physical sensations associated with it.

R/C
Camp - 2 Wire, Solo, Swamp, Nightline
Sports - Competitions, tournaments, trials
Project K
Abandoned house

Physical Sensations
Sweaty - Palms, feet, back, forehead, backside, armpits, nose, upper lip, back of knees
Weak knees
Shaky
Heavy breathing
Looking around
Pacing back and forth
Need to use the bathroom
Leg bouncing
Pins and needles
Dry mouth
Pounding heart
Butterflies in stomach/blood drop/fluttering

Halloween in Drama!

For Halloween, 10Drama had planned to make a scary backstage area for the Junior Social (which, unfortunately, got cancelled). It was a winding path leading from the entrance of the auditorium, through the backstage area and out behind the auditorium stage. We'd all planned to do different Halloween looks - Joey being a scary tour guide, myself being a zombie, Kaiden being a stalker, you get the point. We used the layout of the backstage area to our advantage - using things like the doorways and rafters to do different effects. The path went past Kaiden (who was in a box) and Meagan (who was in a cupboard), then around a corner and past Sam (by the lockers) while going up a set of stairs onto the platform Miji sat on. It went down again by the piano, where someone would be playing, then around another corner to the far exit into the auditorium. I started slumped against the closer entrance to the auditorium, playing dead, then standing up and following them slowly. There were lots of smaller details, like small lights and a hanging skeleton. We used things like screens and wooden walls to direct the path.