#boomwhacker

Today I'm going to be interviewing my little sister and how music plays an integral part in her life.

So just starting off can you give us your name and what instruments you play

My name  is Kelsey Riley and I play guitar, ukulele, piano, and I sing.

Was there any reason you chose to pursue any of those specifically

I learned ukulele first, learning it at camp because everyone else was learning it. But it became too easy and I switched to electric guitar. However since the one we had in the basement was missing a string I learned to play songs that didn't involve the high E string. I started learning piano seriously two years ago alongside that, and Dad bought me a new string after a while and fixed the amp that we had. I was also playing piano on a half keyboard which is like the worst keyboard.

And do you think any of this helped you become a better musician?

Any of what?

Teaching yourself from scratch with limitations on what you can do.

Yeah... well for guitar I guess I learned a lot without a capo or a string for a while, and for piano I didn't have weighted keys or a pedal which is like.... harder to play piano without weighted keys. Harder to give it depth.

Now this is just based on me knowing you but would you like to talk about how learning music has helped you in other areas of your life.

I guess it has helped me cope better with things, helped me process emotions that I have. I have dyslexia and its been really hard to learn how to read music, so I played violin at my elementary school and I was really good initially when we were allowed to annotate our music sheets. After they moved on from that I became discouraged because I couldn't keep up with everyone. I also played piano at that time with a piano teacher and I quit because I couldn't read music after a year and a half of trying to learn how to read music.

How did you eventually find out that this hurdle of not being able to read music was something deeper?

Well I wasnt diagnosed with dyslexia until sophomore year of high school so when I learned that I had that I decided to give music another try after learning new reading techniques because Ive been singing my whole life.

Can you describe some of these techniques and how you found out about them? Well Mom and Dad had me do an IQ test I guess and they told me I had dyslexia and after that I had to go to dyslexia tutoring. What connects back most to music was being able to train my eyes to be able to read from line to line which started the process of being able to get back into music. My piano teacher that I have now told me about the Boomwhacker technique.

Can you go a little bit more into depth about what that is and what it entails

Basically it color codes the notes and connects them to a note on the piano in a rainbow order starting from low C to high C. And it basically just like shows you on the line what note you have to play and its really helpful. Memorizing the colors came to me so much easier because I could memorize the colors.

...That it?

Yeah I guess I reached my word count thanks for your time.