Learning Projects

Singing in German (Week 3) – Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’

On October 18th I had my third singing lesson. At the beginning of the lesson, I usually share with Patrick the challenges I encountered during the last week of practice. Sometimes I focus exclusively on a new thing and forget the last one 😅. I know it’s difficult to think about everything we need to get better at all at once. The idea, in any case, is to integrate the past learning experiences with the most recent ones.

In a sense, this skill building project is very similar to the first project of the year (Chess in Italian). I’m taking a lesson in a foreign language (German now, Italian in the first quarter), and during the week I practice the skill, but without much language content. In the current project, I could say there’s a bit more German during the week (the text of the songs is in German).

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Singing in German (Week 2) – Morgen

By Walter Freiberg

This week I had my second singing lesson. I feel quite comfortable learning and practicing in German. As I expected, one of the challenges is the technical vocabulary. In the first couple of lessons, I noticed that I didn’t know very important words for a singing student, such as Lunge(n) [lung(s)], Kehlkopf [larynx], Kiefer [jaw], and Stimmbänder [vocal chords]. But I’m learning on the go 😃.

Some of these words can give rise to big misunderstandings. I need to be extra careful with anything that contains -spannung. For example, Verspannung means tension, and Entspannung is relaxation. I tend to confuse them all the time 😅. Thanks, Patrick for your patience! It’s good to have such a forgiving teacher.

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Skill Building Project #4: Singing in German (Week 1)

By Walter Freiberg

Singing in German will be the last skill building project of 2021. The idea of taking lessons of something in German was appealing to me from the get-go. In the last two projects (Cooking in Italian and Pen Drawing in German) I had used videos and an e-book, respectively. For that reason, this time I wanted more interaction. Also, as I started the year taking chess lessons in Italian, it made sense to me to close the year in the same fashion 😀.

During the next three months, I’ll be practicing German Lieder, that is, classical songs in German. This is part of what’s commonly known as classical singing or lyrical singing. The German Lied as a genre is mostly associated with music compositions for voice created during the nineteenth century (think of composers such as Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, and Strauss).

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Pen Drawing in German (Week 13) – Bleibende Erinnerung

By Walter Freiberg

After my Elvis pixelated portrait of Week 10 and Week 11 (yes, I like to think of him as Elvis, even if it’s someone else!), I wanted to try my hand at a second one. This time the subject of the drawing would be the German poet Matthias Claudius. The idea was to get started in the Fotorealismus technique, which would be further developed in the final part of the book. Unfortunately, I didn’t make to that part in this project. Maybe I will in a second part 😊.

Something I thought almost since the beginning of this skill building project: should I make drafts of the works? Is it okay to erase or to redo certain parts of the drawings? I’m not sure how most pen artists go about it. My decision for this project was to go straight at them, to just start drawing and try to be precise from the beginning. Maybe there’s a better way! I guess if I were to do a bigger project I would divide it in smaller sections and practice the big shapes beforehand.

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Pen Drawing in German (Week 12) – Kritzeliges

By Walter Freiberg

What’s the best way to trace an image? Before trying the method I used in the Shakira image, I thought the only way was getting tracing paper. It turns out nowadays there are other ways! In fact, after learning this new method, I went to YouTube and found other techniques that involved the use of a smartphone and certain opacity filters. It was a nice reminder that, sometimes, all it takes to find a new way of doing something is just going to YouTube 😄.

In the second half of the week (when trying the ‘intervention’ of kids’ drawings) I was a bit skeptical about that. I thought it didn’t make much sense to be drawing like that, considering I’m not a kid anymore. Why should we do it? Well, I guess that also could be helpful to limit perfectionist tendencies. Kids just draw. They don’t ask themselves if the drawing looks good, if it’s well-balanced, and if they’re using good technique. They just draw! That’s something we can learn from 🙂.

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Pen Drawing in German (Week 11) – Pixelkunst trifft Hollywood-Ikonen

By Walter Freiberg

The pixel-art project was by far one of the most entertaining drawings up to this point. It’s like drawing and painting at the same time. The good thing is that I had to use graph paper. The bad thing? I had to use graph paper 😅. I mean, I had to count squares and calculate shades of blue all the time. That was somewhat tedious, but it was also quite liberating. If I followed the patterns correctly -and if I painted them carefully- I should be able to get a good result. It was a work of patience and endurance!

As a rule of thumb, I tried to start with very light blue. Throughout this project, I never erased lines. For that reason, I needed to get it right on the first try. Or, at least, not getting wrong! The safest way to avoid messing it up was to start lightly and cover the darker squares only when I was super sure about what I was doing. That was helpful!

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