If you've just joined 'us', my name is Daryl Hockin, and you are reading my blog.
Why a blog you ask ?
Well I'll tell you, but after I have told you a little about myself.
Once upon a time back in the early mid-naughties, a strapping young lad picked up the guitar and tried to fathom out how to use this feat of engineering. Further on down the road he went to 'study' the guitar and do some more fathoming at college. That boy was me, Daryl Hockin.
I have survived two years of music at college to obtain my HND. However I 'craved' more of this and now here I am typing this blog for my 3rd year, my Bachelor of Arts degree. If you were an avid fan of my first series of blogs (from the HND graded unit archive), you are sad but you will be satisfied with this second series.
Now to answer that question of yours, I have a blog because I don't like writing but also I have many classes in college which require me to keep a logbook. Besides, I can't check Facebook with a regular old pen and paper, so an electronic version is more suitable.
In this blog I will probably talk about my classes and experiences chronologically, unless something really cool/shit/important has happened then that will take priority. Also social events will probably precede college stuff, just to get the ball rolling (but in no means overshadow it).
OK.
Let's do this.
Alas, back to college. It's been good to see everybody again after Summer, where pretty much across the board nothing happened to anyone. My main qualm over the past few weeks has been trying to find somewhere to live. I would say that being 'homeless' has affected my first week of study, but that won't be a problem for long as I have found somewhere to live and hopefully will move in next Saturday. Whoop. I would also like to thank my fellow collegiate, Natalie, for letting me sleep on her floor the past two weeks.
Anyway, the week before we started officially, I went into college to help with inducting the new HNC students. And I'm not going to lie, I had a good time. It was cool to get to meet new people and more musicians. It also let me step into the shoes of people from the other side of town, aka the lecturers.
The next day was our inductions, not a whole lot to say on that matter. A couple of new faces and a shit load of old ones. Signed some forms, looked at sheets, no biggie. Went home.
Ok, now to my actual days of college. First up was a class called Research and Management Skills, with a name like that I was expecting lots of crazy antics like making animals out of balloons and some light disco dancing, but I was severely disappointed. In the class we actually talked about our various choices on topics for our dissertations. This included a sheet of previous dissertation titles which we had to rate. Very interesting. We also talked about deadlines. We also talked about our ensemble and individual performance projects, but I'll get to that later. I know what the question on your lips is right now: "What are you going to do your dissertation of Daryl ?!?", and the answer is that I'm not so sure yet, I'll get back to you on that one.
I'm not going to lie, there is a lot of work to do. I'm pretty sure if I fart I'll have to write a proposal for it.
The next class was called Digital Audio Production Multimedia, another spin-off of DAW. Initially I thought I had this class in the bag, but really long winded speeches with long words and no jokes really threw me off the understanding trail. I'm not really sure what I have to do for that class, but all I can fathom from it is that I have to put music to a piece of film or something. I mean by the end of the class I was thinking of writing a short film that was set in Dundee, what's that about ? I really don't know what's going on. He got me worrying about catering for my film crew... I don't know how that happened. I will need some more clarity on this class before I can really talk about it properly. I also have to write a load of proposals and logbooks for this class too.
The next class was the practice time for our ensemble projects, finally some actual playing of instruments! For our ensemble we will doing songs from The Blues Brothers. This tickles my fancy. We plan to watch the film(s) together at some point as part of our research. However because we didn't know any of the songs, we decided to learn a few for next time. This time was not 'wasted' though, as Tiffy, JP and I jammed the Commodores smash hit Easy, that was good old fashioned fun. You may be wondering what I am planning on doing for my individual project. Well it's slide guitar, I'll elaborate a different time.
The next day we had our advisor meeting, all we really did was sign into Blackboard. Then we had a class called Presenting a Personal Portfolio. It was kind of the mystery prize of the classes. We had a brief for that class and I getting from it that it's somehow linked to that DAW spin-off. However I understood the jist of this class a lot more as it was quite well explained. We basically get paired up with a designer and we make a promotional package about ourselves; posters, CD covers, mugs, coasters ect. I am photogenic, so this will be easy for the designer.
Finally the last class this week, the choice class. We had two options, Instrumental Instruction or Production. Despite Lorenz's persuasive charm, I chose Dave's class production. I have an interest in production, hence the choice. But I also chose it because I have an idea for a project in that class. Once again I will elaborate a different time.
Well, that was my first post for my BA blog.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Or at least read it.
I'll type for you next time.
Daryl Hockin
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