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The Power of Music

by Cecy Ransom

Everyone loves music. 

It's a way of connecting ourselves with the creators through their lyrics, feeling what they were feeling when they were writing those songs. Music has its own diversity, too. There's a great amount of different genres in music and I think that's awesome. If you don't like pop then there's rock, if you don't like rock either there's indie and so on. There's so many songs hidden in the world and so many artists that are yet to be discovered. 

Listening to the songs in your house and jamming to them it's amazing but it's even better to go to concerts and feel the rush meeting your idols in person. Going to concerts with friends it's a fun and unforgettable experience. The next big concert here in Monterrey is the one of Justin Bieber and it's on February 15 in the BBVA stadium. The fans are camping outside the stadium since last week, that's crazy but fans do anything for their idols. 

Music connects people. Music makes you experience things. Music is art.

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Of tastes and preferences

by Ale Jahuey

Hi, my name is Ale. I wanted to talk a little bit about my preferences in music. When it comes to it, I’m not very picky; just give me an attractive, danceable, rhythmic melody and I will hold it dearly until I can hear it in my head at anytime. Well, there’s one genre I just can’t seem to stand, it doesn’t matter how much my friends and relatives try it, I won’t find myself liking “rancheras”. Pitifully, because it's kind of one of the characteristics people tend to relate with my city and I really don’t know why I don’t like it, so don’t make me explain, please, I beg you.

Uhm… where was I? Oh, yes. My taste in music. Since I don’t know much about composition and sounds, the other condition I use to choose my songs, is the lyrics and the meaning behind them. You know, singers are artists, which means they work to transmit an emotion, to make us feel something. And singers who manage to do just that, with their voice and the words they choose, win my heart without any hesitation. Let me explain this a little more. You know that feeling, when you are listening to a performance and your skin shivers when the artist’s voice reach the note with the precise amount of deepness that it almost feels like broken? Well, that’s exactly what I mean. Let me hear the emotions that moved you to write, sing, compose or play, and my admiration will be yours.

Now you have learned something, as small as it might be, about myself, did you relate to what I wrote? Did you not? Why? I’m curious about other’s people opinion, if you want, let me know~.

Have a nice week, bye!

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Violin: Preconceptions and Afterthoughts

by Liz Flores

The instrument itself caught my attention way long ago, always there in a little drawer inside my head. I didn’t make any move to get one that early on though, but that didn’t stop me from admiring from afar. I was still fairly young at the time, so I didn’t really think much of it. 

Fast forward to middle school. I remember seeing this little series online about the main character being a violin player, and he was very charismatic, although he was technically the antagonist too. And that very moment I remembered, “Hey, I want to learn this instrument”. And given that I was at the pesky, no-one-understands-me, phase of being alive, while I asked to get a violin and lessons, I also grew irritated when my parents questioned me on, “why I wanted one”, and “why until now?”. My edgy 12 year old self, wasn’t the most tolerable person to be around, so whenever they would ask me if I really wanted one, I would get angry and shoot back at them for not believing that, “I really wanted one”. There was not a lot of progress, as one can tell.

 A couple of years go by, and whoop dee doo, 14 year old Liz, gets a violin for her birthday. I remember being overjoyed and grateful, that I wasted no moment, going to my room, and busting the thing out of its case so play it. However, getting a violin, does not mean you become Mozart instantaneously, so I grew sadder and irritated that I couldn’t even get to play a single note (while there was a little box of rosin included, I also did not know, I had to rosin up the bow to get to play any notes). So even after I got the violin, I was also presented with another challenge: actually being able to play any gosh darn songs. 

So the whole-violin playing agenda I had in mind meets yet another impasse. And then I actually got lessons. From a really great teacher too! He is someone that one can really tell that he holds a true love and passion for the instrument. He has tolerated my preteen moods and tears of frustration whenever I would not progress as quick as I would like, and I don’t believe I would be able thank him for everything he was ever done for me. 

So, what do I think of the violin now? While I thought it was a beautiful instrument, and was probably pretty straightforward, there was in reality a lot more to it. It is a very nice looking instrument, indeed, but is was also the paintbrush of many of the music masterminds of the past, and getting to learn how to play it from the right tutor, has brought me to appreciate its difficulty, complexity, and all its ways of being played, because there are dozens of different ways to play a certain melody, and I don’t believe I can stress enough, how much I have fallen in love with the instrument, and how I won’t stop trying to understand it, no matter how much it takes me.

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CCU Sings!

by Ivette Vázquez

The Music Room in Prepa Tec Campus Cumbres has seen its fair share of talent, but that’s nothing compared to the kind of hard-work it has been a witness of. It is in that room, with the small windows and the sleek, black piano, where the CCU department of Cultural Diffusion (led by Carolina Hernández, beloved coordinator) offers to its students a singing workshops every Monday and Wednesday. Filled with laughter and learnings, the workshop goes on for two hours that fly by to anyone that’s had the honor of sitting through them.  

The class is given by Jimena Gallardo, a lawyer graduated from UDEM that was always called by music and everything it had to offer. She handles the workshop with kindness and encouragement, always supportive of her students and their goals, and has become a trusted advisor to some of them.

A personal singing class would normally go on for only one hour, most of which would be filled with vocalization exercises, but since the workshop is open for anyone attending Prepa Tec Campus Cumbres, classes don’t focus on just one student. Jimena breaks down her two hours into two parts for efficacy: vocalization and repertoire.

She focuses the first hour on helping her students vocalize, by doing simple exercises that will help them adjust to the changes their vocal chords will allow during their individual performance. During this time, Jimena likes to fill the air with small technical things that help her students understand their own voices a little bit better. It is also a time to relax and warm up to your classmates; a time for mezzos to bond over how high a note is, for sopranos to tell them it’s not even that high, and for all the boys in class to wonder how everyone else even reaches those notes.

Once the second hour comes around, Jimena usually does one of two things. Either she starts putting together a new ensemble or she calls someone up for individual repertoire. Most of the times, if there are no important events coming up, someone ends up at the front, with an instrumental track, and sings their hearts out for the rest of the class. What follows after is the round of feedback, and a small personal session with Jimena to work on the parts of the song that you fight the most against.

However, if there are any important stages in sight, Jimena will do her best to prepare the group to perform an ensemble. She starts out by giving the base melody to everyone, and once she is sure the entire class is following, she starts breaking down the rest of the song. She gives out different tones to every voice group, and helps them learn it until it’s engraved in their heads. Next, she will ask them to sing it all together, and then works out the kinks on the songs to make it sound better. Ensembles are hard to perform, especially since voices tend to adjust to whatever it is they’re hearing, but Jimena does really work wonders.

The class is also a good place to practice for auditions. Jimena likes to invite her students to always participate in events in and out of Prepa Tec; to showcase their talents in places outside of the Music Room. She’s said on many occasions that presenting in front of the crowd is, easily, one of the most exhilarating and frightening moments anyone could ever go through, but that it is always worth it at the end. She has listened to and coached more than one of her students to brave an audition, and while not all of them have come out victorious, Jimena likes to remind them of the learning opportunity hidden in every little failure. She showcases strength, passion and perseverance, values that she hopes her students are always learning from and putting to good use themselves.

I’ve had had the honor of attending this class for the past year and a half, and there are no words that could explain the kind of joy it brings me. Singing can be one of the most beautiful things to share with others, if one only knows how to convey the right message, and this workshop is precisely the kind of place that you go to do just this. It becomes a certain type of safe space to vent, sometimes, when people come with their songs full to the brim with feelings of joy or sadness. Or it can be a place of dedicated learning, when everyone sits around Jimena’s keyboard to listen to one of the experiences life has brought to her through song.

At the end of the day, however, Jimena’s class is more than just a class. It’s a place where singers and lovers of music alike meet to learn from each other and grow together. A place where magic happens in the form of melodies, and there’s always kind encouragement to keep you going.