welcome!

Hello!

I'm Sebastian, I'm 22 years old and I study composition at the Faculty of arts of the Universidad de Chile.
My weakness in English is speaking, because I should know more words. When I speak, I try to think in English, but I get confused with German, because I know more words in German than in English and if I don't know any word, inmediatelly the word in German goes to my mind... I hope that I could get separate in my mind those languages, because I cannnot do that like when I write. And I think that my strength is the grammar, because it's similar with the German grammar (a few things).
To practice listening, I watch movies in English, for example. Even so it is not easy for me to understand English in the different accents, for example, It is very difficult for me to understand the English from India, but the British English is more familiar for me.
For this semester, I hope that I would be better by speaking and know more words to not confuse German and English...

LEVEL 4 - Second term 2015

My experience with the blogs

Well, I found this experience good, but, for my, was a little boring xd because I don't like writting about what I think or what like. That's a very personal opinion. Even so, this activity is very original to learn a language, because you can reading the post of the other studients and you can make a "online interaction" in english with them too... When I started to learn german, I had writting anything in a paper, and after reading that to the class. We didn't give a opinion about what we wrote, then we hadn't a dialog in the class... With the blogs, we can do that... Other thing that I found important of this experience is when I write in english, I must thinking in english, and not trying to translate. That's is very important to manipulate a language. When I began to speak german, I traslated all. That's was not good because something I maked grammatical mistakes or nobody could understand what I meant. For this reason, I found that's important, because when I'm writting in english, I'm thinking in english. Even though, when you can writting fluent in english is more easy reading in english, I think... (that I i find that writting be important to learn a other laguage, not mean that for my is not boring, becuase even so is boring for my xd).

I find that this semester I could be better by writting, because I felt me relax and I could thinking faster in english as before. 

I think that maybe in the future we could make a video in english about any topic. For example, a cooking video. I find that interesting and funny! and we could upload to youtube (or to a blog), and the studients could to give a opinion about that too... I don't know xD  

My favorites movies

Today, I'm going to talk about movies.

I have two favorites movies: one for them is "Forrest Gump".I like this movie. because show to you a way of life very special, where the humility that's important. Forrest could get his things, because he didn't have a propose for the life or something similar, but for two reason I think: 1.- he did the things because he wanted doing those 2.- because for him the little things were important like the big things. That's why he told his histories without exaggerate, I think.
And the other movie that I like is "The pursuit of Happyness". What I find very cool for this film is that Chris Gardner (the protagonist) shows to his son that the life could be hard even thought you should to be happy. Chris had a hard life, very difficult who he had to exert himself to get a better life for him and his son. This thing caught immediately my attention when I saw this film, because I think that's important to be always happy without be important the problems in the life, and because Chris maked a special effort to get something in his life.... I haven't a favorite genere, or actor, or director. Normally, I watch a movie when someone tell me about a movie, which it watched before; or I watch the trailer of a movie, and when I find good the trailer, I watch the movie... so easy xd... But I like better movies about mystery, or movies when you after are pensive watching the movie. For this reason I like those two movies :)

Music = my life :)

Hello everyone!

I'm going to talk about the most important thing in my life: the music. For me, the music means all, that is a way of life, way of thinking, way of feeling, etc.

When I was a child, I lived with my grandparents. My grandfather had a "cumbia band" (he has even this), and I listened when they practiced. My uncle played drumms in this band, and he maked a drumm for me with tins and wood boxes (I liked playing it). That was my first approximation with music... Besides, my uncle showed me songs by Silvio Rodriguez. For this reason, I like very much his music! I think he is one of my favorite popular musicians... I grew up with music around me. For example, at 18th september, my family improvises a "fonda" for us, and we play cuecas and very known songs (for example, "puerto montt", songs by Buddy Richard, Pollo Fuentes. I don't like this music, but all in my family know ther songs).

After, when I was 10 years old, I started to lernning cello in a conservatory of my city (La Ligua). I remember that the cello was bigger than me xD that was very funny when I walked with the cello in my back, because that liked a cello with legs haha. In this year, I knew Apocalyptica. It's a metal band, and the members are 4 cellist. The music is very good. They have covers of songs by Metallica, for example ...
However, I was very happy when I played this instrument. I practiced every day, 2 or 3 hours per day. I was lerning very fast; I could play in one year my first cello solo in the orchestra of the conservatory. That was an unforgettable experience for me. Since this first experience, I like play in concerts, in orchestras, in ensambles, solos, etc... After that, wehn I practiced, I liked improvise, and one day, I decided my writing my improvisation. That was my first composition. Some time later, I started to study composition with my cello's teacher (he was a composer too), because I liked writing music... For those reasons, I decided to studying composition, and I think I'm one of the happier persons of the world, because I do what makes me happy (as a clam :)).

Food!!!

Hello everyone!

I'm going to talk about food =)

When I lived with my partents, I cooked never, because I haven't any idea about that... That only waht I could cooking was fried eggs. After, when I moved to Santiago to live alone, I had gone to learn cooking. First, I started to cooking spaghettis, because it's very easy and you can mix this with waht you like (meat with sauce, tuna with cream, etc.) (normally when the students live alone, they cook easy things, because the culinary techniques aren't good ;) )  . But I didn't start to cooking spagetthis because that's easy, but also I like pastas! That's is my favorite food =)

I love spagetthis, lasagna, ravioli, etc... The more I cooked spagetthis, I noticed that the sauce is the most important thing in the pastas. For this reason I started to make in different ways the sause (with naturals tomatoes, with some herbs, etc.). also the most important is how do you flavour... waht I like most cooking is lasagna. I love lasagna. When I have been in Italy, I ate the best lasagna in the world! For this reason I love cooking lasagna. I cook rhis with cheese, tomatoes sauce with meat (I don't talk about how I do the sauce, because it's a secret), ham and olives. The only wath I don't know how cook that is the pasta ( I use the pasta, which you find in the supermark, to cooking lasagna), but I want start to do that =) And I want try to cooking a vegetarian lasagna, but I don`t konw clearly which ingredients I can use for that, have you any idea for that?

                            

About a big musician!

Hello!!!

In this post, I will talk about a great french musician (one of my favorites composers). He's name is Oliver Messiaen.

Oliver Messiaen was born in 1908, in France, and dead in 1992 at the age of 81. When he was a child, exactly 11 years old, began his musical studies in the conservatory of Paris. Between his teachers were Marcel Dupré (organ) and Charles-Marie Widor (composition). He was organist Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris and he teached harmony and compisition at the Conservatory of Paris until 1978. He had very distinguished students, some for them were Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen (they were important composers of the 20th century). In 1940 he was capturaed at prisoner in the second world war, and then was taken to Görlitz the same year. Where he was, he wrote one of his most important pieces: "Quartet for the end of time". This work was written for musicians, they were at prisioners too.  

In "Quartet for the end of time", for example, he used the modes of limited transposition and rhythms very specials. On one hand, the modes have a particular harmony and you can transpose the mode to limited notes, for example, the first mode you can transposing only to one note; the tirth mode only to three notes. And On other hand, the rhythm  (it he often used) was abstracted of the "gamelan" (music of Bali). He had analysed this music to undertand how function that, and then can write with this new method to compose. For this reason, rhythmically his works are difficult.
And something important about Messiaen is that he transcribed the birdsongs. That's is other important thing in his work. You can se that in different Messians's works, for example, "Catalogue d'oiseaux". In this work, you can find differents birdsongs, in differents ways.
With his "tools" to compose, he could make his own musical lenguage, and with that distinguished betweet the composers in his same time. He wrote the book "the technique of my musical lenguage" in 1944, where you can find how he "run" in his music. That I find notable, because is very dificult for a artist getting a own lenguage, with which one can be most notable between the composers.
I consider this composer very imporant, because he used things, they are around me, for example the birdsongs. That is so daily, that isn't important fr me, but when you pay attention to waht is around you, you could find more interesting things, they could use for a composition, for example. And, because his music is easy how composed it is, it's easy to listen too. His music has a special color for the modes and for the instruments. He used a little bit of his tools to construct a big piece! For example, in the piece "Praise to the eternity of Jesus", he used only one rhythm in the piano over the piece, while the cello plays a beatiful melody.