Friday, June 22, 2018

One Instrument That Changed It All


Nowadays there are different styles of music where different instruments are used. Jazz music was popular at all times, and since its beginning it was played by energetic and talented people. If we speak about jazz, it is necessary to mention that there are different styles, according to which various instruments are used. Jazz music is a brilliant combination of sounds produced by different musical instruments, among which guitar is the most fascinating and remarkable. It suits both man and woman, because it can be lyric and romantic, energetic and jocose, but always sincere and deep. The purpose of the paper is to apprise of the development of guitar playing, concentration on the latest guitarists and their modes of performance.

It is a well-known fact that bass, acoustic, and electric types of guitar were created in order to comply with any musician’s need. Historians do not know exactly when the first guitar was constructed, but its origin dates back to 1900-1800 B.C. in Babylonia. Moreover, at the same time a clay plaque with some instrument resembling the guitar was found (Estrella).

Modern jazz guitar techniques are major 3rd division and tritone division soloing. Among the essay expert players who do not follow new directions in jazz guitar is Kurt Rosenwinel (Warnock). A vast majority of people think he is extremely contemporary and very innovative that exemplify his works. One of his best albums is Heartcore and Deep Song. Another great one is a new album Live at the Village Vanguard. It is also reasonable to mention Brian Blade who is renowned for his unwonted album Season of Changes.

To compile the list of players who abandon new ideas and guitar playing directions, it is worth mentioning another modern guitarist, Ben Monder with his album The Vastness of Space, Adam Rodgers and his Follow the Red Line, Mike Moreno with Another Way. To unearth more avant-garde music, it is recommended to refer to Oz Noy's album Fuzzy. Furthermore, a trifle strange but modern album is composed by David Letterman’s band, which performs good up-to-date solos.

Among other notable guitarists are Derek Trucks, Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. They are noted for remarkable awards and important performances.

Derek is one of those who were acknowledged by Rolling Stone "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. What is more, he was the youngest in the list due to his perfect guitar skills. His talent helped him to perform in the Allman Brothers Band. Also, he took part in Peakin' at the Beacon (2000), was successful At the Beacon Theatre (2003, live DVD) Hittin' the Note (2003), and was great in One Way Out (2004).

The musician is known for his unusual slide guitar playing. His Trucks Band is famous for such albums as The Derek Trucks Band (1997), Out of the Madness (1998), and a brilliant Joyful Noise (2002). After all these works Soul Serenade (2003) and Live at Georgia Theatre (2004) were written. In 2006, he achieved popularity for his Songlines.

In 2007 during Derek's tour, the musician played as an accompanying guitar player for Eric Clapton.

In conclusion, it is justly to use James Sallis’s words, who wrote that the melodic of this music instrument lines in such a way that it is hard not to cry. Charlie Christian, Derek Trucks, Chuck Berry and other famous musicians played the electric guitar to reach the acme of its technical and expressive possibilities. Their great techniques became a real treasure of modern jazz, and some even began to distinguish between the jazz guitar before Christian and after Christian. These types of guitar playing started to sound like two different instruments (Sallis).‎




Thursday, June 21, 2018

7 Strategies to Help Students Remember What They Learn

If you studied a world language in high school or college, can you still carry on a conversation—or write a simple sentence—in that language? How to write persuasive essay outline? Do you think you’d be able to solve a problem you may have considered easy back when you took algebra II or calculus? For many of us, the answers to these questions would be an emphatic “no.” And that’s not necessarily surprising if several years (or decades) have passed since we were students. What is more surprising is how common it is for current school kids to learn a concept or fact in class early in the week and completely forget it by week’s end—or even day’s end.

Why Is It So Tough for Kids to Remember Lessons?

In the late 1880s, a prominent psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus, created “the forgetting curve.” Today’s researchers still refer to this measure of how much people forget. Without conscientious efforts to reinforce lessons, Ebbinghaus concluded students forget about 56 percent of what they learn within one hour, 66 percent within one day, and 75 percent within six days.
In June 2017, neurobiologists explain in an article in the journal Neuron that without employing strategies to retain knowledge, the brain is “wired to forget” from an evolutionary standpoint. Information not crucial to survival is discarded by the brain as extraneous. Clearly, that’s a huge problem and illustrates the importance of teaching students strategies to retain what they learn.

Strategies to Increase Learning Recall

According to the authors of the Neuron study, one key to helping students retain lessons is to employ strategies to help them form synaptic connections—linking new lessons to existing memories to create a web of connections. Each connection is a strand in the web, and the more strands there are the stronger the web. Another strategy is to make students access lessons repeatedly so they’re not able to simply fade away. Here are seven concrete ways teachers and parents can help boost learning retention:
1. Assign students frequent practice tests or quizzes. When students are given tests or quizzes that they’re not graded on, they’re able to review material in a low-stress environment (stress can undermine memory retention.)
2. Combine visual and verbal lessons. Learning to use multiple senses helps increase retention. Showing students visual aids while teaching a lesson verbally helps to illustrate and cement the message for students.
3. Encourage and help students to develop memory “cues.” Examples include acronyms like “Roy G. Biv” (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) to remember the colors of the rainbow and “Pretty please my dear aunt sally” (parentheses, powers, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction) to remember mathematics’ order of operation. Another way to “cue” memories is to create memory-boosting songs about lessons.
4. Encourage peer discussion and group-based learning. Group discussions naturally help students retain information, because when students see their fellow classmates, that visual will spark memories of what those students had to say about the lesson in question.
5. Include constructive comments on graded assignments or tests. Each comment becomes another synaptic connection enforcing the “memory web” for a given concept or fact.
6. Encourage students to make lesson review the last thing they do before bedtime. Research shows the information circulates in the mind during sleep, bolstering retention.
7. Employ the spacing effect. Research shows that revisiting lessons just as they are on the verge of being forgotten boosts memory retention. Instead of teaching one lesson, considering it complete, then moving on to the next lesson, a better approach is to teach a lesson—but then revisit it at regular intervals in the future.

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

My Best Friend


One of the things I cherish most is my best friend Jack. I met Jack in a restaurant one of the days that my father had taken me out for lunch. He was with his mum and we shared the same table at the restaurant. I remember his mum introducing him as future musician and that he was very much in love with music. That struck me because music was one of my favourite hobbies and I hope to engage in some already written essays posting. After his mum’s introduction, my father exclaimed noting that that was as wonderful coincide because I also was a future musician. We exchanged   numbers and started communicating afterwards. I was very much surprised when I found that Jack’s family stay in a very close vicinity to our home. This has given us opportunities to bond together and grow in friendship.
The fact that Jack and I are fond of music is the core of our friendship. To me music has been my companion since the time I was a little boy. As I grew up it came to my realization that music close to me more than anything else. The moments that I am stressed by school work by usual faded away by the strumming on my guitar. I have found a lot of beauty in music and I must agree with authors who have tagged music with a lot goods things; optimism, joy, calmness, enlightening, relaxation among many otherthings (Herwitz, 1996; Jacox, 1871; Karkanis, 2008). Throughout my life I have come to appreciate the benefits that I gain from music apart from just being entertained. I also strongly believe that Jack has come to this realization and that is the reason where we have become such close friends. 
Jack is a very nice person and I must confess that he is quite caring. He takes time to listen and is always very willing to help. I have learnt a lot of skills in music during the time that we have spent together. He has always claimed that I am very talented at playing a guitar but what I admire most is his skill of playing a piano. After our first encounter we found out that we were attending the same college though he was a year ahead of me. We have been training for a moment together and we have realised that we can form a very good team. Though we are thinking of forming a band the plans are still at the initial stages. We are hoping to recruit more people who are in a position to play other musical instruments.
I must admit that my father has been very supportive to our friendship and he has gone to all the extent including getting us some new musical instruments and hiring a tutor who comes around the weekends to polish our skills. Jack has renewed my passion for music and made me believe that we actually are in a very good position to form a formidable band. Apart from just being good at playing musical instruments we are good at singing. Together with Jack polished some of the songs that I had composed early. We have also composed more songs. Our tutor likes the songs and believes that with the inclusion of other people playing other instruments, the band will be a big show. 
I believe after going through college, we will be in a good position to dedicate more time to our music career. I personally intend to enrol in music school to make it possible for me to perfect my skills. Together with Jack we have participated in a number of musical concerts where, I must confess, we have received standing ovations. I believe that with the inclusion of more people in our group, it will be possible to come up with a more appealing entertainment team. I am looking forward to the time I will be joining music school as I believe that this will be one of the best moments in my life.
I am very grateful to Jack for being such a great friend. I must confess that he has been an encouragement to me and that he has helped to raise the quality of and passion for music a level higher than it was before.  I can foresee that with time together with Jack we will form a great music band.