TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS IN TAIWAN
台湾的乐器种类

In my opinion the second vlog was much harder to do than the first vlog. In a lot of ways, you are bound by the first vlog. In the first vlog you had so much leeway in terms of what you could do. If the idea changed by any degree while making the first vlog you could make that change. While in the second vlog if you wanted to change things up it still had to fit in with the first vlog otherwise the project starts to make a lot less sense.

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With my second vlog as I was filming, my original idea was to do a comparison between the cultures surrounding instruments here in Taiwan and back home in Canada. I would take an inventory of what instruments were played, at what age did they start, why did people start playing such instruments, etc.

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However, that changed when I went to the instrument shop to ask the shop owner a couple of questions. I was trying to get an idea of what the most popular instruments were here in Taiwan when her answer shocked me with a ukulele being the most popular.

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With that being the most popular instrument in the store, I realized my folly where I had been probably falsely been operating under the impression if someone played an instrument in Taiwan it would likely be one of the more traditional ones.

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Because of that it dawned on me that a lot of people probably wouldn’t actually know a lot of the traditional instruments I might have listed off-hand in the first vlog and in the original script of the second vlog. So the second vlog became more of an introduction to some traditional instruments and hopefully relating them to perhaps more familiar instruments, especially for a Western audience.

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Like it was shown in my vlog, no one on the street even knew what a hulusi was, nor did most of the teachers and language partners I had talked to, even ones with musical backgrounds. And so this was how my second vlog took shape with the objective to hopefully introduce some basics of the instruments in the vlog.

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Though the absolute hardest thing for me to do for the vlog was actually going out to interview people. It’s not that I didn’t want to go out and ask people in Chinese, if the entire project had been done in Canada instead, I would have had the same reservations about the interviews. I just don’t like going on the streets and bothering people for a few questions and it made me feel rather uncomfortable, even more so because it was in a language I wasn’t very familiar with. So I am very grateful that 周老师 came out with me to help with the interviews. It was thanks to her that I was actually able to film some interviews.

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Because of the way the things played out, I realized for my next vlog, I feel like I should take a little step back from honing in on traditional instruments and talk about instruments in general. This way I feel like I can actually get a solid grasp on the music culture here because it feels like I’ve been doing this project grounded in my assumptions.

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So my next vlog’s goal is to provide a solid foundation and draw a clear line between traditional instruments and Western instruments and look at where the line can blur. That way it will be easier to make comparisons and hopefully do the culture here the justice it deserves.

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My plan to do that is to ask people about which instruments, had they had a chance to learn, which ones would it be. And which instruments they don’t like to get more of a sense of which way people lean.

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我觉得第二个视频很难。问路人问题让我紧张的不得了，所以我要先跟周老师说谢谢帮我录音。这个视频难是难，但是我很喜欢我这次做的视频。我觉得我的视频越来越好。下次的视频有一点儿不太好，可是那是因为我不太知道这么用iMovie。我很喜欢这次的视频的音乐，我找音乐找的很高兴。Rose of Kelvingrove是我的最喜欢的风笛歌儿。