Internship Experience

The internship took place on campus of Burlington High School, specifically in the music department. The time that the internship took place at was the same as a regular school day, 8:40 to 3:05. In the music department, I worked with the choral director of BHS, Ms. Weller. A big part of the internship was partaking in both her chamber chorus and concert chorus classes, as a bass singer. I joined the BHS chorus in the Spring concert, and performed multiple songs with them, with the highlight piece of music being Regina Coeli, a piece by Mozart. Engaging in the BHS chorus classes made me realize how useful it is to have a singing voice as a musician, and how it helps with other areas of music. It also made me realize how enjoyable singing as a part of a chorus is, and I plan on continuing with singing in the future.

This photo of Mrs. Weller and I is from her chamber chorus class, and at the time we were studying Regina Coeli, the musical piece that was the main goal for the BHS Spring concert.

One of the other main focuses of the internship was music composition, specifically with Sibelius, a computer program made for writing music. Prior to my internship, I have had practice with Sibelius in my music theory classes, which I took my freshman, sophomore, and junior years. With Sibelius, I had multiple areas of music that I was composing for. On the internship, I had composed warm up pieces for both of Mrs. Weller's chorus classes, one of them being more advanced for chamber chorus, with the other being more simple for concert chorus. The warm ups for her chorus classes had 4 parts, because her chorus has 4 different voice range parts. These parts are called  Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass. Something else I also wrote for using Sibelius were ensemble pieces for Mrs. Weller's introduction to guitar class. I wrote them using guitar tab, to help Mrs. Weller teach the class how to read guitar music written in tab. All of the compositions that I wrote for her classes went to Mrs. Weller first, and she was the one giving me instruction on what to write, and if I had any questions, I would ask her. For whenever I didn't have a specific assignment to work on, I had a long term guitar composition that I was writing, which I unfortunately was not able to finish, due to not having enough time.

SATB Warmup Exercise, written for Mrs. Weller's
concert chorus class.

SATB Warmup Exercise, written for Mrs. Weller's chamber
chorus class. This piece is more advanced, and it is also written
in 7/8, which is an irregular time signature.

This ensemble piece was the first piece that I wrote using
guitar tab. It was for when Mrs. Weller was introducing
 reading tab to the class.

Guitar ensemble piece, written in 6/8, which is
simple triple meter, something Mrs. Weller is teaching
the guitar class.

This is another guitar ensemble piece, written for 4 parts instead of 3. The main goal of this piece, was so the class could get used to hearing the difference between notes being played on beat and off beat.

The last focus of my internship was music production. Unfortunately, since the school doesn't have the production software that I use. I wasn't able to work on it in school, and I only could from my computer at home that has the software, gave me a smaller amount of time to put into it. Music production is something that I've always had an interest in, and I recently got FL Studio 12, which is a music software many modern producers use. With FL Studio, I've been focusing on hip hop music, and skills that professional producers use, and how to compose it, and what elements and skills are essential for the production of it.

This is an image of FL Studio, and that piece, 140, is what I spent most of my time on FL Studio on. Each pattern has a different sound, pattern 1 is the melody, which is piano, while the others are percussions, specifically hi hats, kicks, claps, drums, 808s, and cymbals.

The entire internship experience for me was very beneficial, and I learned a lot. I was able to spend the entire day working in the music department, and music is something I plan on studying and pursuing in the future. A specific lesson that I learned, was how important confidence is to have, especially in music, and how confidence also helps other areas. Having confidence makes it easier to find motivation, which makes it easier to focus. Musical skill wise, I greatly improved in the vocal area, due to being in both of Mrs. Weller's chorus classes, as well as performing at the BHS Spring concert with them. Writing with Sibelius, and writing pieces that I got to hear performed live in class, heavily improved my composition skills, especially being able to hear live instruments/singers performing it, made it a lot easier to hear what the best way to write the piece would be. I plan on going more in depth into music in the future, and potentially studying it in college or university. At the moment I'm going to UMass Lowell as an undecided major, but I have plans to change into a music major.