Wallitner Weekly 3

Hello everyone! Thank you for being here for the third Wallitner Weekly! Your support means the world to me.


A lot of productive things happened this past week.

I have started releasing music theory videos! I plan to upload a theory video every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This will give me Tuesdays, Thursdays, and the weekend to record and edit the videos.

I have decided not to do the Wallitner Weekly podcast, and instead make theory worksheets. I think that these worksheets will be critical for learning music theory beyond just a surface understanding.

I also created a TikTok! My handle is chriswallitnermusic. I am trying to post a short video everyday of a song I’ve written, or a beat that I’ve made. Yesterday I wrote a song about my cat and made a video of her doing cat things. If you don’t have a TikTok, these videos will also be going up on my instagram.

I have a lot planned for next week too!

Starting on Monday I will be recording more in depth theory lessons and compositional tips for the Members page. So if you’re interested in learning music theory in more detail, be sure to sign up to be a Wallitner Music Member! (Hoping to launch that part of the site the end of next week)

I am also looking at creating the Wallitner Weekly Archive. Which will be where I post all of the previous Wallitner Weekly’s in case you miss one. And so that when new people sign up they can read the old ones.

This week was a trip down memory lane.

As you may know, I write poetry. I have been doing this since I was a senior in high school. I had just gone through a bad breakup and a friend had suggested that I journal my feelings every day. I decided to write sonnets. Why sonnets you ask? Because Shakespeare has 154 published sonnets and I thought, “If I write one every day I’ll have twice as many as Shakespeare by the end of the year”. So I set out writing poems about my day and my emotions.

I am telling you all of this because someone recently suggested to me that I compile all of my poems and create a book. So I have been rereading all of my poems, including these sonnets to see what poems I should include in said book.

It is strange to look back on such a detailed record of myself after 5-6 years. It’s not quite the same as looking through a scrapbook of family photos. These are words I never thought anyone would ever read. Honestly, most of it is not worth reading. It’s funny to see how absolutely awful I was at poetry, too. I am not saying I’m much better now, but it is interesting to see where it all started.

I think I will call my first book of poems “Graduation Day”. It’s named after a poem I wrote two days ago. I wanted to write a poem that was long enough to take up two pages in the book. I wanted to tell a story. And I didn’t care if it rhymed, because I’ve found that some of the most poetic things do not rhyme. Here is “Gradation Day”:

Graduation Day

When I was in elementary school,

I dreamed of middle school.

When I was in middle school,

I dreamed of high school.

When I was in high school,

I dreamt of being in college.

Once I was in college,

I feared graduation.

And now that I have my degree,

I am afraid of becoming an alumni

Graduating from this earth 

Crossing the stage of life

To shake hands with death

And receive a paper with my name on it listing my accomplishments.

To meet with my friends and family who have graduated before me.

To become an alumni of life itself.

Yet graduation is meant to be a time of celebration.

I long to look back on the trials and tribulations.

To reflect on the moments of greatness and romance.

Yet still I fear becoming an alumnus.

To sit and chat with the other alumni all wearing shirts that say “I lived” and reminisce.

To talk about the good old days like they happened yesterday, and not a millennium ago.

I’ll drink beer with a man who’s favorite story is “Shakespeare and I were in the same generation” 

Or his friend who says, 

“Well Einstein and I share a re-birthday”.

And all the other people who believe they are such high class simply because they went to an Ivy League school like Earth.

Of course some alumni make donations to that school.

They volunteer their time behind the scenes.

They are genuine good hearted people.

And yet no one there ever sees them, or says thank you.

Now let me say, I never cared much for journaling, or writing the sonnets while I was doing it. The rhyming was a distraction but the process was important. And now that I have done that, I can look back on the times that were in a more intimate way than just a picture. I highly recommend doing it. Even something like leaving a journal in the guest room so that when people are over they can write why they came, and how it felt to be with family/friends.

And if you do decide to write sonnets, or any style of poetry, write often. Write often and clever will happen to you.