Michael

Josh

Jesse

JT

Cindy

Lem

Isaac

Morgan's Reflections

Labyrinth:

The Road’s Parallels “On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.” (32) - The man The Road This post apocalyptic world that the man and the boy live in is completely barren, and all they have with them on their journey to the coast is their shopping cart and their dreams. The dreams consistently make an appearance throughout the book because the dreams that they have are defined by the man. The man defines dreams as bad because you lose the reality that you live in, but bad dreams and nightmares are good because they are similar to the reality that they are enduring. There are two main aspects of this journey that compare to the labyrinth. The first is impersonal use of man and boy. Because McCarthy did not use real names, the people on the journey could be substituted to be virtually anyone, and just like the labyrinth, anyone can use it. The other aspect of the journey for the boy and the man that is comparable to labyrinth is that each night as the boy sleeps, the man reflects on his work with his son and he uses the time to think about his journey and the road that has gotten him to this point in his life. The man has created his own labyrinth by sitting by the fire and bearing the cold, harsh winter conditions. Reflection is a key part to the apocalyptic world this is inhabited by the boy and the man because everyone needs time to escape the negatives of the reality they live in and focus on the positives.

The Journey that Leads to the Labyrinth “The first commandment for every good explorer is that an expedition has two points: the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don't think about the means -- because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as many means as there are different ways of 'finishing.' That is to say, the means are endless.” -Che Guevara Motorcycle Diaries (1) Che Guevara was an excellent explorer who set off on a pilgrimage that would transform his life. What Che is trying to articulate in this quote is that all of our journeys travel at different paces. No two journeys are the same, but all journeys need to have a starting point and an ending point. Whether it is known what the ending point of the journey will be, every journey needs to have one. While creating our labyrinth, I felt more in touch to the words of Che Guevara and his journey. Our journey was specific because there was a specific goal in mind, but the pilgrimage that Che and Ernesto went on did not have a specific goal. When Che left Argentina, he had no idea he would find the desire to heal the social injustices in the world. I believe that the labyrinth has parallels to the journey of Che and Ernesto because the goal of the labyrinth is to reflect, and each step taken has a significance. The labyrinth does not necessarily have to make a connection with the issue that brought you to the labyrinth, but by walking the labyrinth, we are bound to discover something in an aspect of our life that has the potential to change our entire journey as a hole. Although there may be times where we cannot immediately discover the resolution we are looking for, and something stands in our way just like Che’s asthma, it will eventually pass and our journey will continue.

Walking the Labyrinth Nothing compares to the sounds of nature. Hearing the wind blow, the rain fall, or even a crack of thunder bring me the most peace, so when we had the opportunity to walk the actual labyrinth I expected greatness to come from the self reflection I was about to encounter. The most vivid aspect of this course is the labyrinth because I was able to synthesize so many different aspects of the journey that I have come across throughout my pilgrimage class. While walking the labyrinth in the rain, I was able to reflect on the different journeys that we have read about so far. As the rain was coming down, I received vivid imagery from Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, and I pictured myself as one of the immigrants who as trying to overcome the harsh sea and swim to shore. Although the weather conditions were far from harsh, I pictured myself taking a journey similar to the journey that the man and the boy were on in The Road. Although the conditions were terrible, there was still a job to be done for them, and the weather would not and could not stand in their way. The weather inspired me to add new words to my dictionary that were weather related. I will take away the experience of peace that I gained while walking the labyrinth. Although life may be hectic at times, it is our responsibility to ourselves to create an environment for ourselves where we can reflect happily and peacefully. As life continues to speed up, it is important to focus on ourselves and the goals that we set for ourselves, and consistently, we see that each story has main characters who do not let their life control their journey and do make time for themselves and that is incredibly important for our transforming lives.

Pilgrimage:

“Knowledge is power,” this common phrase seems to run our lives as scholars. Rather than learning the material just to get another AP on your transcript, we are supposed to be learning to both challenge ourselves and to deepen our desire to learn. This semester, I would like to learn a new word every day. Rather than limiting myself to just English, I would like to expand on this idea by allowing myself to learn a new word in any language I choose. This pilgrimage will allow me to expand my knowledge and also take 5 minutes of of my day to alleviate my everyday life from the constant stressful and chaotic life of a senior. By learning new words in Spanish, for example, I would be able to expand my capabilities as a Spanish speaker. But, if I learn new words in multiple languages and have a language of the week, I will be able to change the way my brain works because studies have proven that people who speak more languages have better brains because their brain works off memory and disregards irrelevant information that comes across daily life. By learning new words in multiple languages, I will be able to more effectively communicate with those in my community and outside. While this task may seem overwhelming to find a new word every day, I am excited at the challenge of discovering new ways to being able to interact with those around me. As my pilgrimage progresses, I might change the idea of my pilgrimage to work on phrases rather than just individual words. By the end of my project, my goal is to be a more developed communicator.

Today while I was searching for cognates in Spanish and English, I came upon the cognates between spanish and arabic. This was incredibly interesting because it opened a new door to my project. While looking at a table with english, spanish, arabic, and urdu, I found that the root of many spanish words come arabic words. This thought process made a connection to my spanish class because we learned that through the Conquista, much of southern Spain was controlled by Muslims. For my project, I worked on my dictionary. While I still have no idea how I want to organize the dictionary, I was able to temporarily organize my dictionary. Today I focused on German, Spanish, Italian, French, and English emotions. I made a list of all the english words and the same word in other languages next to them. I was thinking about the most basic/frequently asked question used in my daily life and I realized it is “How are you?”. I have created a list of emotions and common reactions to those emotions. I am so pleased with the progress I have made today. As I continue to explore the organization of my project, I have decided that I want to organize everything alphabetically and then I want to organize everything by subject. I am excited to continue working with my dictionary.

I have always felt unable to fully express myself. As someone who constantly battles the concrete jungle of the 210 freeway, I have resorted to road range. Roughly two hours a day I spend yelling inside my car at the annoying Toyota that cut me off or the Mazda that broke the great yellow divide and crossed into the carpool lane before allowed this. As the road rage increased, I started to develop a vocabulary that my mother was not fond of, so this project initiated me to find new words to express the way a feel.

When I first started working on my dictionary, I did not know where to begin. I was lost on where to start looking for my words, so I did what all teenagers do: procrastinate by watching TV. Little did I know that TV would be such a vital role in my project. I began by watching rewatching “The Office” on Netflix. “The Office” has always been a soothing aspect to my life because it provides me with the comic relief the I need to overcome the tragedy of incredibly long task of defeating the concrete beast of the 210. While I was watching “The Office” with my subtitles on, I noticed the clever and witty puns that Michael Scott used throughout the series so that inspired me to analyze the English language and discover words that other people commonly use that I do not. As someone who admires foreign cultures and foreign languages, I knew I also wanted to explore how different languages have similarities after the Tower of Babel. I analyzed emotions and expressions from different languages and put them in a chart to see the comparison and to discover how the words relate. Many of which, to my surprise, had similarities.

After discovering the similarities between the different languages, I was inspired to investigate words and phrases that are used in different countries to explain situations that many of us go through on a daily basis. While initially I believed that this would be a daunting task, it turned out to be incredibly fun. I wanted to look for words based on things that I was experiencing in my daily life. I focused on finding a word to describe the relationship between my best friend and me when she underwent a dramatic event in her life. I was also super interested in travel throughout the first few months of the year that was inspired by my Global Scholars project, so I discovered words that people in other places use to talk about traveling to places that they have never been to.

The final aspect of my project includes the names that I added to my dictionary. Three of my cousins were expecting children in early to mid December, and so when we met up in November for Thanksgiving, they began discussing potential names for their children. I camp up with the idea to start defining people’s names in our class. I thought it would be a phenomenal addition to my project because it would include everyone on my journey.

As I reflect on my project so far, I am pleased with my progress and with all of the words that I have added to my arsenal of words. I was surprised at the connections that exist between different languages. I modeled the project after my real life situations, so this reflects the year so far. I want to continue to add to my dictionary and explore words that describe the world around me.

Noni Personal Pilgrimage Reflection

Personal Pilgrimage Reflections

Project Proposal: For my personal pilgrimage I decided to start incorporating meditation into my daily life as a way to manage the stress that accompanies senior year. 

           Reflection #1:

"Today as we began the construction of our class labyrinth, I was able to connect my experience to many of the texts we have read in class. Many of the texts we read incorporated patience, communication, and problem solving, which we were able to use while accurately measuring out twelve concentric circles and making sure everyone was able to participate. Once we got the hang of it, there were many moments of silent communication and teamwork. When one person would move the string to make the next circle, other people would do the same, creating a system that worked well for everyone. At one point everyone was silently watching the paint cover the string, creating the circles. These silent moments where everyone was focused on completing the task, made me appreciate this process even more and reminded me of the Siddhartha quote “ he thought these thoughts, listened with a smile to his stomach, listened gratefully to a buzzing bee. Cheerfully, he looked into the rushing river, never before had he liked water so well as this one.” (8.49)  Just like in this quote I began to appreciate the space on Arden more for its peaceful nature and for providing us with room to work towards the endpoint of our labyrinth project."

Reflection #2:

Although the rain can be seen as a burden, I see it as a significant contributor towards the final project. The unpredictable weather will make us work more efficiently and stay focused because our time to finish the project will be limited. The rain will also cause more appreciation for the labyrinth when when we finally get it done.

Just like in The Road, we are challenged to think and use our resources in order to get the labyrinth done most efficiently. In order to survive in the story, the man had to use every resource he could find in order to keep himself and the boy alive. “In the service bay he dragged out the steel trashdrum and tipped it over and pawed out all the quart plastic oilbottles. Then they sat in the floor decanting them of their dregs one by one, leaving the bottles to stand upside down draining into a pan until at the end they had almost a half quart of motor oil.”(7.1) Just like the man, we used the resources around us to make contraptions out of sticks and rulers to accurately measure out concentric circles.

            Reflection #3: 

"When the idea of creating a labyrinth arose, I was very excited because this project fit hand in hand with my personal pilgrimage towards meditation. Previously I thought meditation could only be done while sitting with one's eyes closed, however after walking the labyrinth I realized that meditation comes in multiple forms. The entire labyrinth project was very meditative. There was a sense of reflection and peace while walking the labyrinth on our field trip and while creating our own labyrinth on Arden. When the class walked the labyrinth on the field trip, the only sounds came from the rain, which made me feel one with nature. There was also silence while the class worked together, which formed a sense of stillness and observation of the labyrinth forming around us."

Final Pilgrimage Reflection

   My personal pilgrimage was focused on meditation. Meditation has always been a practice I have wanted to incorporate into my daily life, but I never had the opportunity until now. As a stress reliever from school, I decided that everyday I would come home and meditate for ten minutes, however as I got further into the process I decided that meditating a few days a week instead of everyday would be more efficient. Not only has this process allowed me to become more centered in stressful situations, I have also learned about meditation itself as a practice. Another part of my personal pilgrimage was to research symbols associated with meditation. One meditation symbol that I learned about is called “Aum,” which is known as one of the most common and spiritual symbols associated with meditation. It is believed that chanting the word “Aum” is a way to become connected with the universe. “Aum” is also associated with tranquility and peace, which is what I was striving for when starting this personal pilgrimage. Throughout my pilgrimage, I have used many resources around me and I am very happy with the progress I have made in my meditation.I have already thought of other ways I can expand my process for the future. I now realized that reaching a meditative state can be accomplished in many forms, whether through meditating in my room to even walking around my neighborhood observing my surroundings. Although the semester is coming to an end my pilgrimage towards meditation is not. I will continue to incorporate meditation into my daily life and find new ways to do so.

                                           

James Personal Pilgrimage Project Reflections

James Valencia

Pilgrimage Project Planning:

Name	James Valencia
Title of project	Trying to Learn to Mix and Master
Overview:	I have been watching the Youtube tutorials and am reading the audio masterclass chapters. Although I have been moving at a steady pace through the dense chapters, I will not actually reach the chapters about Mixing and Mastering for a few more weeks. The Youtube tutorials are going well though. I am really starting to understand how most Plug-Ins work, what each knob will do to the sound, and what new sound-related words mean.
Readings:	Audio Masterclass: chapters I’ve read: 1 - Analog and Digital Audio 2 - Microphones 3 - Microphone Preamplifiers In progress: 4 - Equalization
What you saw: titles, film/links:	I have been watching the Logic Pro 10 Videos by MusicTechHelpGuy. So far I have watched: Retro Synth and the Basics of Synthesis ES2 Synthesizer (PART 1) Ultrabeat (PART 1) Ultrabeat (PART 2) Ultrabeat (PART 3) EXS24 Sampler (PART 1) EXS24 Sampler (PART 2) EXS24 Sampler (PART 3) Logic Pro X - Using Midi LFO to Create Interesting Filter Movement
Experiences:	I have been playing around with the different Plug-Ins and have found some cool sounds. I’m also having fun finding interesting samples and manipulating them.
What you will make:	I will make some cool sounds so share and try to make a nice tune.
*Reflection:	Although I haven’t been able to reach my goal yet of learning to mix and master, I am learning a lot about creating sounds and using samples and am having a lot of fun experimenting.
Presentation plan:	I can show the class how to use one of the Plug-Ins to create new and interesting sounds.

November 18, 2016

Reflection 1 - Insight

I watched the Logic Pro X tutorial video, “Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 25 - Intro to Automation.” This episode explained what automation is and how to use it basically on Logic. This allows me to change parameters (volume, pan, attack, etc) of each track at a certain time in the mix. I also watched, “Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 26 - Intro to MIDI, Recording MIDI, Basic MIDI Editing.” This gave a short history lesson on what MIDI is, and how to use MIDI on Logic. These videos really solidified my understanding of the basic concepts of MIDI, MIDI editing, and automation. I also learned some shortcuts which will help speed up my creation process. I’m not ready to move onto more complicated MIDI and automation topics. 

November 25

Reflection 2

I have finished reading the Analogue and Digital Audio beginning section of Audio Masterclass Music Production and Sound Engineering Course. I now know the general information about sound and the nature of it, acoustics, audio electronics, and digital electronics. This section was extremely dense and I spent a lot more time than I had anticipated reading it. I should from now on read chapters more carefully so that I can really soak it in. This chapter was the very broad information explaining sound though, so now that I have this basic understanding out of the way, I can move onto further chapters that get me closer to my goal of actually mastering music. 

December 5

Reflection 3

I have worked my way through the Microphones section of Audio Masterclass Music Production and Sound Engineering Course. I am taking this section slower so that I can really absorb the information. I have also watched the “Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 47 - Retro Synth and the Basics of Synthesis,” which explains the basics of synths, oscillators, filters, and LFO. Understanding information like this will eventually allow me to create whatever sound I can think of. 

December 15

Reflection 4

I have watched the video, Logic Pro X - Using Midi LFO to Create Interesting Filter Movement. This video has helped me to understand the basic effect of LFO or low frequency oscillation. I can now apply this to my music to create a lot more movement in my sounds. This should help bring up the energy that I want to portray in my beats. 

December 20

Reflection 5

I have watched Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 49 - ES2 Synthesizer (PART 1) and Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 49 - ES2 Synthesizer (PART 2). These videos explained and showed how to maneuver around the ES2 plug-in, which is a really versatile synthesizer. With it, I am able to create just about any sound I can think of. I’m super excited to apply this to my music and start practicing with it. 

December 24

Reflection 6

I have been practicing my newly learned skills on Logic and have been spending time creating new sounds and combining them to form simple beats. I am especially focusing on trying to master the Retrosynth and ultra beat plug ins. Right now, my beats are mainly just a bunch of loops that I make that I layer on top of each other. I have been trying to be careful to balance the beats so that the sounds are evenly distributed among the frequency spectrum and also among the stereo spectrum. This way, my ears will feel more balanced sounds. 

December 28

Reflection 7

I have been working a lot with the ES2 plug in and have found that there are really an endless amount of sounds I can make with it. I have also been converting interesting sounding Youtube videos to mp3s and then using those as samples. Sampling is a great way to take something interesting that someone else has made and make it your own. I’ve been re-watching the Logic tutorials on the ES2 and Retrosynth so that I don’t forget the nuances of the plug ins. 

January 7

Reflection 8

Lately, I’ve been working a lot more with samples. I’ll take the audio from cool videos I find and edit it. I have been getting really cool sounds from them. I pair these with Retrosynth sounds and also drum samples from a sample pack that my friend Clay sent me. They have really unique sounding drum samples and I’ve been having a lot of fun using them in my music.

January 14

Reflection 9

I’ve been putting together a couple short beats to show the class during my presentation. I’m pretty excited to show everyone what I’ve been learning and I hope that they enjoy them. They will all be pretty simple and a little odd but I still think they are interesting to hear. Hopefully the class will be intrigued. I also plan to show the basics of how one or more of the plug ins work. 

January 16

Reflection 10

This is my final reflection for our class Pilgrimage project. Since I began this pilgrimage a couple months ago, I have discovered ways of creating and using sounds that I never knew were possible. The complexities of digital audio workstations and music have become a lot clearer to me and my own music has improved significantly. Often times, I have felt like as I gain more knowledge, I also find out about more things that are completely foreign to me. Yet, my growing ability to transfer what I hear in my head to real life has kept me motivated to continue learning. I still have many video tutorial to watch and am not even halfway through all the chapters in the Audio Masterclass course, but I am moving at a great pace. I am really excited about continuing my journey towards mixing and mastering, and look forward to the day that I am able to truly complete this pilgrimage. Tomorrow, I will show the class what I have learned and share some of my music. 

JT Tsuchiya: Personal Pilgrimage Final Reflection

Final Reflection

Proposal Excerpt: “Stand up is, in my opinion, the most vulnerable type of performance there is. A stand up comedian is on stage, representing his or herself and nobody else. The stand up performs jokes that he or she wrote and is solely responsible for the audience reaction, whether it is uproarious laughter, vicious boos, or, worst of all, nervous, polite giggles. I have performed improv onstage before, so I don’t think my resistance to try stand up is a simple case of stage fright. It is the deeper, more personal fear of presenting a routine that I worked on and that represents my point of view, and having that routine be totally rejected. As much as I am afraid to face it, the creative pilgrimage that I would find most rewarding would be testing out a small stand up set around the various open mics in Los Angeles.”

First Reflection Excerpt: “After practicing in the mirror for several days, I performed my material at Fifth Quarter in October. I was extremely nervous. I had been continuously tinkering with my material to create what I felt was a funny set, but I had no input from outside sources until I showed a friend only hours before the Fifth Quarter started. After all my practice I was confident that I wouldn’t mess up any lines, but the thought of putting myself out there and performing onstage still made me very anxious. However, my set ended up going great.”

Third Reflection Excerpts: “Last Friday we spent English class making mandalas, a meditative and reflective exercise that both offered a welcome break in my schedule and reflected the latest development in my pilgrimage project. I say this because, a little over a week before making mandalas in class, I did stand up at an open mic at the UCB theater and completely bombed. This was my first time performing stand up in front of a crowd of strangers rather than my classmates. I performed the exact same jokes as I did at fifth quarter. There I got solid reactions on all my punchlines, laughs where I didn’t expect any, even an applause break. At the open mic I got probably three laughs total. To say it was a humbling experience would be an understatement.”

“What does any of this have to do with mandalas? Well, as soon as I started making my mandala in class, I knew that I wanted to include the Yin Yang symbol. This symbol of Chinese philosophy is not only aesthetically pleasing; it is representative of a powerful idea. The Yin Yang, a perfect circle divided equally into dark and light, illustrates the concept that seem like polar opposites are actually inextricably intertwined, even complementary. Night and day, fire and water, laughter and silence, all these are part of one system. So far I have performed stand up twice with the same jokes, once to uproarious success and once to undeniable failure. Both of these results are integral to my journey as I begin to perform stand up. The knowledge that one of these results cannot exist without the other is reassuring; it that eases the pain of bombing, even if only slightly.”

Summary

This pilgrimage project has helped me make serious progress in my journey of starting stand up. I’ve flirted with the idea of performing stand up comedy onstage for much of the latter half of high school. However, I’ve always brushed off these thoughts as something I’ll have time to think about later, pushing back my first foray into stand up further and further. But using this pilgrimage assignment as a way to finally try stand up was the perfect way to hold myself accountable and make real progress. Because of academic pressure and other time commitments I was only able to perform stand up twice, and as stated in the excerpts, one went well and the other went poorly. However, at the end of the day, I would not classify these two outings as one success and one failure. I went out to perform stand up for the first time in front of my peers. I succeeded. Then I went to perform stand up again, this time in front of strangers. I succeeded at that as well. Even though I completely bombed the second time, I went out of my comfort zone to perform comedy in front of people who have no idea who I am, and I’d count that as a success. Even though it felt much better to have my jokes do well at fifth quarter, the knowledge that I took a risk to perform my set at an open mic is much more valuable in the long run. It proves that I am on my way to legitimately trying stand up rather than just performing for my friends. I hope to continue to refine my set and try open mics soon. If not during second semester, definitely over the summer. My pilgrimage in the journey of stand up is only beginning, but at least I’ve started.