Old Years' Service (2015) Aramalaya

 Date for Entry: (Thursday 31st December, 2015)

Actual Date of Online Entry: (Friday 10th September, 2021)

Dear Diary,

    Tonight, I dressed up in my long white shirt and yellow and black striped tie I got from Dulip Singh’s and my black vest coat to go to Church. Mr. Sharma came to pick me up and Andrew helped me carry my things down onto the platform. When we got there the Church was empty at that time. I was a bit nervous but felt alright. We took a warm-up and also played a few songs together. I was on my Tenor pan and Mr. Sharma was on the church’s piano. We played all of my Grade 3 pieces.

    Then for the Introit,, Mr. Sharma and his daughter Aria had a trio when we played “Ave Maria” together. It was good and better than I taught than we practised at their home in Dinsley. I really like his Music room. It was nice and had a beautiful piano. He played his Tenor Pan and I was on my one while Aria played the Double Seconds.

    We had a sermon by Reverend Anthony Rampersad. This was the first time I met him, which was introduced to be my Mr Lachan. There was also communion done on the same night. I was very excited to participate. We had to walk up to collect the wine from the Gold trays they had. I was first in the church to take because I was the only one sitting upfront as usual.

    A short wait was done until it was the New Year. I had to walk back down some rows of chairs because they had to join their hands for a chain of prayer. I had to run back to my pan immediately because at the end of the prayer we had to play “Auld Lang Syne” right then. This time Mr. Sharma played from the Organ. Aria and I were on the same steelpans. 

    After that, I got a program from the back deck for this journal. It looked nicely done as I placed it into my plastic folder. I went back home to start my first sonnet of the year, which I’m planning to do one each day to break Shakespeare’s record. I hope this goes well.

Link(s):

1.  Old Year's Service (2015) - Program.

Daryl Zion M. Ali

Ave Maria Score

 Date for Entry: (Wednesday 16th December, 2015)

Actual Date of Online Entry: (Thursday 9th September, 2021)

 Dear Diary,

    Today I messaged Mr. Sharma to remind him about the Sheetmusic for the Ave Maria that he said we had to play in church. I was excited that we were going to play for the old years’ service in Church. It’s been a long time since I had gone back for that kind of service.

    During the day, after printing out the full score he sent me, which was for piano and soprano voice, I took it and arranged the whole thing for a Pan Ensemble. It sounded lovely and I hope that someday, we could play it for an Old Year’s Night with the Youth Group when they get more mature players in the Ensemble, or if they even decided to start pan in the first place.

 

Link(s):

1.  Ave Maria Score.

Daryl Zion M. Ali

Applied Music 1 - (First Jury Exam) - (Final)

 Date for Entry: (Friday 4th December, 2015)

Actual Date of Online Entry: (Thursday 9th September, 2021)

 Dear Diary,

    Today Mr. Sharma called me on my cellphone at about eleven o'clock and asked me where I was because I was running late for my Applied Music I exam. When I got to school, I saw that all of the students in my year group were happy that their exams were over because my time had skipped and gone already. My friend Shikia came and gave me a hug and another girl (Sheamya) that I knew from class and they left and she told me, “Bye! See you next semester.”

    Seeing the whole class walking off, I went and got a pan and two stands from finding out from my friend Abbigail that the Pan room was open. Inside the Pan Theatre, my two friends Justin and Jaid were playing Music together. I was like, “Wow! Why can’t I play so nice like them?” I took out Tenor Pan number 4 and went outside with my two-book stands and had a little chat with Abbie and her two friends and a guy from intermediate.

    The five of us spoke about the bad times of their older Intermediate class and then performed for this same exam I was about to do. Then the other girl who was there said she was gonna practice the next piece she was going to do for the next semester like mad. I would agree because I was gonna do the same thing too. She then said she’s gonna learn through the whole thing and just go through section by section in Class and have it good for the next exam time. When there was silence for smiles, I interjected with my smile and say I did that already and they all burst out of laugh. She couldn’t believe me.

    When the guy from intermediate was over, Mrs. Ramlal called me into Studio 4 to do my practical assessment. Mr. Sharma explain the whole process and there was a camera their video recording the whole thing. I had to say my name, Student’s Id and the names of the pieces that were going to be played. I didn’t get nervous about it because I was prepared to do it again like if it was the recordings I did for CXC, in the Paper 2 Performance section.

    When I was finished, I took the pan back to the Pan Theatre and Justin called me over with my Tenor Pan. He told me to come and play with them and he asked me if I knew how to improvise. I told him a little bit. Gosh, I wish I knew how to improvise well.

    So, then I played the chords since I didn’t know what they were playing. They then changed the melody to “Stand By Me” which I figured out by ear. I could see the guy (John) in the back playing the bass guitar with them smiling at me because I knew he realised that I figured it out.

    They then came to end it and while I signed for my pan to return back to the room, I walked back out with Justin and we went by Mr. Sharma. He wanted to find out when the results for the exam would come back out. Then Mr. Sharma took me to the other side of the building to walk with him and then he told me about reaching late for the exam. He then told me that he would email me the score for “Ave Maria to practice.”

    While dad picked me up, we gave Justin and Jaid a ride on their way out. And we all talked about the English course and how it is, and how hard it was.

 

Daryl Zion M. Ali

Preparatory Academic Writing (Final)

 Date for Entry: (Thursday 3rd December, 2015)

Actual Date of Online Entry: (Thursday 9th September, 2021)

 Dear Diary,

    Today was my Preparatory writing Exam. I was too nervous. Aunty Vangy friend Jeannine was helping me but at the last minute, I decided to leave what she had taught me in so many long hours from last week Monday up until now, to do my own separate thing. With this, I had my own sense of confidence writing the exam.

    Andrew and I walked through JFK to a place called MP3 because I didn’t know my way around the campus. Then after some time, I chased off behind my friends to keep up with them to put my backs in the spaces it was supposed to be. Andrew was coming behind me as I was jugging down the flight of stairs and then while I was now with my friends he told me he was going to school on Gordon Street at the Huge Wooding Law School.

    I took out two pencils and my ruler with one black and one blue inked pen. I was only worried if I was going to forget the sub-points I made for my four controlling ideas of the essay. Reaching upstairs again, it was time to join the line with all my music friends from school to enter the examination room. It wasn’t that much coldness but the scenery was most beautiful. It gets nicer when the sun starts to set. It helped me as I was steering outside and all around the mountains to think of other points to add. 

    There wasn’t any scrap paper to use so I used my question paper to put in my workings. I took up the whole three hours to do the paper. Thank God I remembered the essay plan sheet I had to fill out. Without that, I would have lost a good set of marks. I had to hand in my exam paper to the examiner without checking over. The time was running by too quickly. Each paragraph took up more than a quarter of an hour but it was good to me. The feeling of having it over was good. I just didn’t understand why there were so many stick rules and police officers everywhere in the room.

 

Link(s):

1.  Preparatory Academic Writing - Candidate's Receipt.

Daryl Zion M. Ali

General Musicianship 1 (Final)

 Date for Entry: (Wednesday 2nd December, 2015)

Actual Date of Online Entry: (Thursday 9th September, 2021)

Dear Diary,

    Today on my way to school I saw my friend Monique walking up to school so I asked dad to stop and give her a ride. Then as we both came out mom asked her if she knew about the English that we had to do for tomorrow. Monique and I walked slowly down the corridor and we talked about how it is supposed to be. She told me that if I was going to do the Performing Arts, then I should write it in a way that it is explaining the whole thing as if the reader is someone who’s not familiar with the music before.

    Although I knew all of this already, she gave me some big inspiration and a new point of view to look at it in my mind as I listened to her speak. The two of us stood outside for some time because when she had finished talking about English, I decided to help her out in return for the exam in a while. She didn’t understand the differences between some of the minor scales and why they stayed on the SOLFEG note “la”.

    I told her that it starts on “la” and ends on “la” because it’s the same as calling out the letter names of the scale-like from A to A. The next thing I told her about it was that it starts on “la” because in C Major you would have to count a 6^th up the scale to get the relative minor. That is why it starts on “la” since it is the 6^th SOLFEG note.

 

    After this, we went inside and I helped her out a bit with two other scales of page 17 from our workbook but we didn’t bother with the Chromatic Scale part.

    Mr. Murray came in and asked us to leave the room and to put our bags in the percussion room, while the invigilators prepared for the exam. I wanted to carry in my water but they didn’t allow it. One of my friends was sent back because he didn’t have his Student’s ID card to enter the room. They were a bit strict with the Exam. I find that today was a day of 7’s in it. The 7 was smudged and another thing with 7 happened.

    The theory part was good but I find that the last question forced a lot of thinking because it required a lot of ledger lines and counting, which was so difficult but I just took my time and did it as best as I could. The worst part of that particular question was that I didn’t have my ruler in my pencil case but I did it neatly enough with another pencil together. 

    At the end of the exam, I spoke with other friends about the exam went until dad came for me. I took out a blank sheet of paper and began to formulate my essay plan for tomorrow’s English exam. 

 

Link(s):

1. General Musicianship 1 - Candidate's Receipt.

 

Daryl Zion M. Ali