End of 3rd Quarter Blogging!

Well we are down three quarters, and one more to go! We have done a lot this quarter with blogging and posting on other people's blogs. We have become friends with people on the Ning and have even skyped with their class. We are looking to be skyping a lot more this up coming quarter and I can't wait to complete Read for a Lifetime. Five Flavors of Dumb was a good book, and I enjoyed getting to read it this quarter. This curriculum for English has definitely been new, and I can tell you coming into the year I was not expecting it, but I have liked it a lot. It is a great alternative to writing essays, and takes a more modern vibe with the adding of pictures, links, and videos. As the year has progressed we have been given more freedom to do what we wish with respect to our blog themes.

In the beginning of the year every week we were given a blog prompt to complete. This was during first quarter. In the second quarter we were given a list of about 15 blog prompts and could pick and choose as we saw fit for our book. Now in third quarter we had complete freedom so I tried to challenge myself by creating my own topics. I am interested to see what Mrs. Hayes has in store for us fourth quarter, and I am excited to complete my final book. Well I have now finished my blogs for awhile, but I will be back soon!

Dumb Picture Blog

Dumb is a local high school garage band, who plays in front of their school to try and build a fan base. It is a group of people who don't mesh well together in real life, but all share a great love for rock music.
Piper's USS Immoveable. Her 1987 chevy caprice classic brougham is what gets her everywhere. It sucks gas, bound to breakdown at any moment, and drives her crazy, yet she still can't imagine not having it.
Piper and her younger sister Grace are both deaf, and with their family not having much money, getting the most up to date equipment for the both of them is impossible. Her parents decided to spend Piper's college fund on getting a Cochlear implant for her little sister, which has caused a lot of family tension.
Dumb wants a gig, and Piper is working her butt off to get them one. She finally gets them a oppurtunity to record with man named Baz. Thier first recording does not go very well, but eventually they can begin to pull together.
When the band first plays together and finishes their first recording studio it does not go very well, and they are all down in morale. They need to pull everything together and need to do it fast in order to pull a gig together.

Piper manages to land Dumb's fist gig on a soft rock radio channel. It is not what they normally play, but it is a paying gig, so they try it out. It does not go great and Kallie begins to appear as the band's "face" bringing new tension.



Piper and her little brother Finn are complete opposites. Piper is a straight A student and overacheiver where as Finn always gets in trouble and doesn't care about school. As the band evolves and Finn begins to help out they develop a bond that makes them inseperable.
Someone is emailing Piper random musicians from a screen name of ZARKINFIB who sends her on a chase to Kurt Cobain's house to experience a bit about his life and how he grew up.
Jimi Hendrix is another famous musician who ZARKINFIB sends Piper on a  mission to find out more about. She begins to realize more about the love for music they had, and it builds emotionally in her. It makes her a greater musician and she begins to discover her own inner rock star.
 Dumb is finally coming together. Their sound has greatly improved and thier gigs getting bigger and better. Dumb is no longer the small garage band who played on the front steps of thier high school just to get their sound across. They came a long way, suffered through a lot, but all their work and dedication payed off in the end.

Being deaf in a hearing world.

What is it like to be deaf in a hearing world?

Being deaf in a hearing world would be extremely difficult, and I can't even begin to think about how hard that would be to cope. Reading Five Flavors of Dumb gives a bit of insight into a world where the main character Piper is a manger of the band Dumb, and has one of the greatest obstacles. She is deaf. Some of the things she has to go through are heart breaking, her struggle following people's conversations and her parents spending of her college fund to buy cochelar implants for her baby sister. Something she has wanted, but her parents never had the money to get for her. I decided to look further into what it is like to be deaf and came across this website:
http://library.thinkquest.org/15390/sstart.htm,
this website gives a lot of good information on many different questions you may have.
       
The website I linked gives you basic information, reasons for losing your hearing, sign language tutorials, and frequently asked questions. It is a great resource and I learned a lot. It shows how tough and strong you must be if one of your six senses does not work properly. In the book I am reading Piper shows she is strong, persistant, and is unstoppable as a manager even with a slight drawback. Her life isn't always easy, but she keeps going, and proves she can do anything she wants, and nothing can stop her.

Music Blog

      For my music blog I chose the song Eye of the Tiger by Survivor. It is a hard rock song so it's genre matches the band Dumb. It's lyrics also have a huge similarity to Dumb's attitudes. It talks about never giving up, putting in time and determination to get where you want and not stopping with a "will to survive." They are willing to go through thick and thin to make their dream of becoming known as a hard rock band. Starting from almost scratch they built their band, adding new members such as Ed, and Kallie. They also had to work on playing together a tough task to accomplish with their mix of attitudes.
     They have Kallie, who is the look of the band. Tash who has the attitude of the band, is hard to get along with. Ed, the new and understanding drum player who really helps pull the band's rhythm together. Then there is Josh who is the head of the band, and has a crush on Kallie. Last but not least there is Will; the bass guitarist who is more quiet, but is extremely humble. However, later on there are some big changes and the band starts to fall apart, but like in the song, they "get back on their feet.. and don't lose their grip on their dreams of the past."

Hard Rock vs. Soft Rock

Piper becomes the manager of her school band. The band is a hard rock band, but in order to get a recording made to be played on the radio, Piper had her band perform a soft rock song. Complete opposites! Piper realizes her band is not made for soft rock, so she plans to have them re-debut their hard rock side, and it makes them famous. Here is a bit of back ground on both types of music...

Hard Rock:
                                         
        Hard rock had its earliest roots in the 1960s and it is usually played by the electric and bass guitars, drums, vocals, and sometimes a piano or keyboard. It is a loud, and aggressive form of rock music, with guitar emphasised and often distorted. Drumming is done with strong rhythms, and works with the bass guitar. The vocals are often a growl or raspy. Usually involves a kind of screaming. Some famous bands that were hard rock bands are Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, and Guns N' Roses to name few. This is the kind of music that appealed to the high school where Dumb was enrolled as well as the members of the band.

Soft Rock:

         Soft rock also had its earliest roots in the 1960s. It's typical instruments are electrical, bass and acoustic guitar, with drums, and a piano. It uses the techniques of rock music and combines them with folk rock and pop for a more toned down sound. They focus on love, everyday life, and relationships in their themes. The electric guitars are not as prominent and are more high pitched. The acoustic guitars, pianos, and synthesizers are more heavily used. Major bands and songwriters in the soft rock genre are Cat Stevens, Journey, Billy Joel, Chicago, and James Taylor. This is what the band turned into for a radio debut, but it was a disaster.

Here is a bit about hard rock and soft rock. If you ever read Five Flavors of Dumb it really will help, and I hope you found it informative and interesting!