When we got to choose what art subject to take in year 10, I immediately chose to do music. Music has been with me for as long as I remember and I have always taken an interest for this creative subject. Now haven taken music for 4 years, it is truly something I understand and have studied quite in depth.
The MYP music course was a lot of fun but I was also able to expand my musical knowledge in a wide range of styles. This was also the first time I got exposed to composing my own piece of music. This first piece was based on “the Four Chords of Awesome” which is the tonic, sub-dominant, dominant
and sub-median notes of a scale. Then using these chords in the key of D, I wrote a nice simple pop song. I was able to obtain a high grade for this composition and reflect my composition abilities. You can listen to it here:
Also in year 10, I took my Trinity College Grade 8 violin exam. The Grade 8 exam is the highest level exam for amateur musicians like me. The original goal for my violin study was to pass this exam. The pieces were at quite a high difficulty for me back then and I would practice a lot to make sure they were perfected. With a lot of effort in practicing, I passed the exam with distinction. I also managed to place second for that year’s exam in Thailand, which was quite shocking to me as well. Here is a picture of my award:
Year 11 was an interesting year for me in my musical life. This was the first time I got some experience in writing music for a moving picture. I decided to put Tom and Jerry to music which is rational because there isn’t speech in the cartoon. I chose a scene of where Tom and Jerry was at the beach. It was a short 2 minute clip, but without any music, the cartoon was very dull. As there were quite a few characters in the clip, I decided to give each character an instrument and theme. It sounded chaotic at first, but after listening closely it becomes much clearer. You can listen to it here:
I also got my first dose of Jazz music in this year. Trained as a classical musician all my life, I never got to know how to improvise on the violin. So in this unit I got to get a deeper understanding of jazz music and how to improvise on the violin. I listened to a lot of jazz violinists improvise such as Stephane Grappelli and Zbigniew Seifert , trying to borrow different techniques from everyone and eventually creating my own improvisation style. This unit allowed me to step into a new style very different from classical which increased my knowledge in music. For my final project, I played Blue Moon with two of my friends. There was some improvisation and I am pleased with what I achieved in the end. Here is the video of our performance.
In the diploma, I got to study world music in depth and also really set down to compose 3 different style pieces. My first piece is a program music about a fisherman composed using the Chinese pentatonic scale. The second piece is a pop song with a sort of gipsy feel to it. My last composition is an electronic music in the style of dubstep. These three different styles of composition show my ability to compose a wide range of styles.
Over the 4 years of my music education, I have been exposed to a wide range of musical styles and genres. I have accepted these new styles of music and tried to work with them to the best of my abilities. Since having music class in year 10, I have always been consistently achieving a grade of 7 (please see pictures below). This is something I am very proud of and I wish to sustain until graduating NIST. It shows my love and commitment to this creative subject.
Zeyu Hu 
Excellent work Zeyu and an outstanding musician both in terms of performance and academics.
Mr C