Me, Myself, and I

My name is Taku and I was born in Mexico City. I've been living in Puerto Vallarta since I was nine years old and have switched houses over 4 times. Puerto Vallarta is located in Jalisco, if you don't know. It is on the west side of Mexico besides the Pacific Ocean. You may think that my name isn't mexican and you are guessing right. Both of my parents are from Japan and it is quite exotic having descendants from there. Since I was little, I have been thought Japanese cultures and traditions, which is very nice and in some simple words cool. Two years ago I used to play tennis but i stopped for a while because of school stuff that have been taking a lot of my time. This year im starting with athletics with a P.E. teacher here that studied in Italy. He is very strict and I think that in physical education being strict is the number one best quality someone could have.

Normally my summers are boring. I just stay here in Vallarta and hang out with friends, which I find more entertaining that going out with my family else where. Here in Vallarta there isn't much pollution but the beaches aren't the most nice beaches in the world. Puerto Vallarta's beaches are very dirty and full of trash. Green Peace has even come here to try and clean beaches. I think that beach cleaning is also very important because in winter whales come from the Pacific Ocean and we are supposed to take good care of them. There are laws that say that we are not supposed to get any nearer than about 100 meters but people don't mind and just enjoy themselves. When I go having fun to the beaches with my friends I mostly go to Nayarit, which is like half an hours from here. The beaches there are WAY more beautiful and less dirty. My favorite one is called Bucerias, which is also the name of the town. If you ever come here to Vallarta I bet most tours would be going over to Nayarit's beaches and not Vallartas.

In my school there are various different activities going on. For example, last week ther was this anual thing called the "Talent Show' whch involves everyone who wants to participate. The student council is the main organizer and every year they make parody of nything they want. Any student who wishes to participate is welcome to and you may sing, dance, act, or anything you want. Some teachers also enjoy the Talent Show by making funny dances or random things. This year the science teacher, the two P.E. teachers, and a english teacher, danced the song "Single Ladies" by Beyoncé. I was payed to make a skit of the video in Youtube of "William Hung - She Bangs". I found it pretty funny but when I got on stage I kind of forgot the lyrics. It didn't last for much but is was fun. I enjoyed more last years Talent Show than this years because the student council this year isn't really well organized. Another activity that is going on in the American School of Puerto Vallarta is the Vallarta Verde. That involves separating the trash by organic, unorganic, and aluminum cans. This event hasn't been going on very well because people are really lazy and don't empty their Cokes before throwing the can away. I think I may be included in that category of lazy people. xD

Well, this will be my final paragraph. it will be kind of lame because I don't have much time left. This paragraph will be about all my favorite stuff. My favorite food is Italian food. Since little I've loved pasta and spaghetti. My favorite music type is soft rock and alternative. Some of my favorite bands are Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, and Green Day. I really don't like much heavy metal or Pop but I can handle some reggaeton. I actually don't have any favorite subject in school but my best subject is math. I am one year advanced and I think that is my only class that I like. :3

Listening

Today in class we listened to everybody's Music Projects for about two minutes each. What i think that made the projects better were sounds that we, recording, put in our project. I think that Rodrigo´s project was really creative because it is mostly, i think all, beat boxing. In my case my project was both sounds that i made and sounds that i got from the internet. I think that, to make my project better, i would need to organize more my sounds. Paola told me that my project was really cool but that the sounds repeated a lot. The biggest problem that i faced was that my headphones did{t work well as a microphone so, when I tride to record with them, the product would have a really low volume limti and when i raised it through Audacity it would sounds really bad. Maybe I could just change the earphones because something I also noticed in my song was that you could hear the air being recorded, so to erase that error I could change the earphone angle when being recorded. I really liked this project and would really like to do one again but with real songs and with more organization. :)

My Audacity Project

Mr. Picketts asked us to make a song with our own imagination using sounds that he gave us via internet or sounds WE could invent. I really liked this project because I beat boxed and because we got to use plenty of class time with Mr. Picketts’ help. I started with the sounds that I got from www.partnersinrhyme.com and like I didn’t like them much, I started doing my own sounds. They are kind of just mashed up together but then I put them in sort of an order. What I found most frustrating is that when you were trying to record something, people would start screaming and making sounds with the result of YOUR recording being ruined. I think we should do a remix of songs that already exist being mixed together instead of making our own sounds. I think the resulting song would be way more cool. I think people could make a better effort, counting me. I would really like to do this project being able to use songs that already exist.

Mash ups

I enjoyed hearing others Audacity Projects because I saw that you could not only mix sounds, but also music. I liked how you can mix singers voices with cool songs rhythms and vocals. I think that I will make another Audacity project but with more effort and not with a Halloween Theme but more of a Techno Remix song. Today I heard Fernanda Corzo's, Jorge's, Paola's, and Pedro's mash ups. I liked Fernanda's the most because it has both the original and the remix version of the song "Hot n Cold" by Katy Perry with a background of a techno beat. I also liked Jorge's a lot because it has a mix of video games, showing you different sounds like a gun and people fighting. I liked it because it remembered me when I was smaller and I used to play those games.

I enjoyed working in audacity because you can mash different sounds that you like, making the perfect song for you. My mash up had a Halloween Theme because it was the day before Halloween and the computer is full of different scary sounds so I used some of them, with a background of the movie Halloween Theme Song. I really liked mine because it Is kind of scary, with the Theme Song. I would really like to use Audacity once more but instead of Halloween music more of a rap - alternative kind of mash up.