Ayana Samuels
MYP Personal Project Period 6 11/18/14

Ayana Samuels

Samuels1

Mrs.Briscoe
11/18/14
Geography MYP Personal Project Essay
The Goal
­The goal of my project was to learn to play a classical or modern song to its entirety on the piano. ­The process I took on picking my topic was all my life my grandmother has tried to get me to play the piano. I have had countless times where I had a piano teacher but nothing that the teacher taught me stuck So I decided I would self teach myself and achieve this goal. Another reason I choose to, to learn to play the piano was my grandfather plays the piano at church and he plays every sunday for every choir. By learning to play songs on the piano I can soon be able to take over for him and play on some sundays taking off the load.
­ My prior learning to this subject was taking three years of music theory in middle school. This provided my background on knowledge of music and how to read it. But there was a small difference between reading music to sing and reading music to play on the piano so thats what needs to be worked on prior to the presentation.
Selection Of Sources
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http://lacefieldmusic.com/ This source was used to help my decision of the song I wanted to play for my personal project. The source was a very helpful source due to the fact that it had a selection of seven choices with the name and video on how to play the song. Each video provided a ten minute explanation of what chords to play on the piano, with the piano in the video.

­ http://www.musictheory.net/ This source was a reliable source to help provide an overview of how to read music. Though I have taken music theory for three years I needed a review on specific areas such as: steps and accidentals, scale degrees, major and minor scales. I already had knowledge about this site so decide to continue to use it to help reach the goal.
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http://www.pianolessons.com/ This source was accomadating to continuely practice my piano. This site provided practice with simple songs that could keep your hands moving when not doing anything, I could go on this site and watch a simple video to help play simple quick songs to adjust your hands to the piano.
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http://www.true­piano­lessons.com/ I decided not to use this source because though it provided the thought that it would bring forth info on how to play a song it just lead me to an advertising site.
Application of Information
­My sources greatly influenced my decision on what song would be played for the project because it helped choose what song I played. I made my decision of what song I played based on the lacefieldmusic site.
­ There was no need to alter my goal other than learn to play by ear other than have the music to read right in front of me making the song increasingly difficult. But due to the constant practice of playing simple songs on the piano it help to train them and get them comfortable on how to play certain chords. ­The info founded helped my final product by helping train my hands to be familiar to play the simple songs son when I wanted to play ,“Stand By Me”, it was an easier task to do than just playing the song off nothing but notes.
­ The connection between my research and final outcome are tightly wrapped together. Without my research my goal would have been difficult to achieve because my hands would not be familiar with the chords and I would have to memorize how to play

Achieving The Goal
­I achieved my goal by doing research on a weekly basis during the summer. I would first go over my music theory then ending my session with practicing the piano on the simple songs found on the sites founded on the internet.
­Problems I ran into during trying to achieve my