Last Post Continued...

At the end of my last post I mentioned having previously written, recorded and performed a song. It's not something I tend to talk about or mention to people as it was so long ago but having mentioned it in my last post I went onto YouTube and found it. 

Imagine me, three years ago. A naive 15 year old girl just starting her GCSEs. I was offered the opportunity to take part in a program called This Is Creative Enterprise. The brief my group chose to follow was to write a song for One Direction and record and perform it live at the show TICE put on every year called the event. We wrote and recorded the song in three days and then a CD of our recording was sent to One Direction's record label for them to give us feedback on. Anyway, here it is... 

8th October 2014 - Musicianship Week 3...

The beginning of this lecture was all about presenting our work from the past week and give feedback to the pieces. 

This is the piece Donna and I created based on the poem Hayley gave us last week. I was very proud of our piece, as we're two people who don't play any instruments and don't really class ourselves as song writers. 

Here is some of our feedback from the rest of the group:

• good vocals
• meaningful lyrics
• change of dynamic in voices
• good harmony together
• good change from verse to chorus
• no backing/accapella was effective
• confident song - great structure & memorable melody
• tambourine gave chorus drive and purpose

• try and add chords - even just one note
• use different instrument which fits theme of song?
• include harmony line
• tambourine - sync
• simple piano to accompany/compliment lyrics
• more contrast

Having the opportunity to write, perform and record a song again was amazing and it reminded me how much I love singing and how little I do it now as a hobby. 

 

The King's Singers - Appreciation and Envy!

From my previous post, you will know I talked about Paul Phoenix, formerly of The King's Singers. This post, more than anything is an appreciation post, however I also love this song - the cover version and the original - and I think it also highlights some of the features from my last post. From this video, it is clear that the singer (Paul Phoenix) is looking at the audience and telling the story through his facial expression and eyes, as well as through the lyrics, and he is focusing on his breath control and shaping the phrases how they were written. 

1st October 2014 - Paul Phoenix Visits Wallsend!

In my extra-curricular activity, I am part of my local choir; Wallsend Community Choir. I love being part of the choir as it gives me the opportunity to explore different types and genres of music that I wouldn't normally look at or sing. We look at a mixture of arrangements, from my normal go to repertoire of musical numbers to classical choir arrangements. We have recently had the opportunity to work with Paul Phoenix of the King’s Singers. After dedicating 17 years of his adult career to the King’s Singers, Paul has recently resigned, setting up a business to now occupy his time. His business is called Purple Vocals and was set up for Paul to give back some of his expertise and help others better their singing and performance skills. We within the Wallsend Community Choir were lucky enough to work with Paul as he was travelling through Newcastle on a bike ride he has recently done to raise money for charity. In our masterclass/workshop with him, we looked at a few small things that would help us better our performance and keep our audience engaged, whether they knew of the piece of music we were performing or not. 

One piece of advice he gave us was to give our audience more eye contact. In a choir it’s very important that you watch your conductor, which is the one thing that has been really drummed into us as a choir. Paul, however, suggested that we try to look at our audience as well as our conductor. He also told us that instead of focusing on one person in the audience, or a specific point of the room, look around the room and shift your gaze, telling the story through your eyes – as well as through the words – to each person of the audience.

He also told us to know our music and not have the sheet music held up to our faces, as it prevents the sound travelling far into the audience. Instead, he said we should each find a comfortable position to hold our music in to occasionally glance at. This means we can look at the audience more instead of staring at our music, and we can project our sound further into the audience.

Finally, he told us to focus on our breath control while singing. When you’re singing a piece of music that requires you to sing a full phrase in one breath, it can be hard to do. Paul suggested that we need to focus on improving on our breath control as a collective to give the phrases the shaping they were written to have.

From the workshop with Paul, I have set myself a personal target to work on my breath control while I sing. I feel this is a weakness I currently have and I need to work on it to improve my singing. To do this, I will look on YouTube and see if there are any exercises that can help you with breath control.

1st October 2014 - Musicianship Week 2...

First of all today, we discussed some of our views on the reading set last week. 

One quote from the text that stood out to me was: "Music is organized sound." (Levitin, 2006, p.14). When I mentioned this to the rest of the group, they agreed that it was a quote that really stood out and almost perfectly defined music. Another thing that caught our attention was the fact that the Catholic Church, at one time, banned music that contained polyphony, fearing it would cause people to doubt the unity of God. 

*JARGON BUSTER ALERT* Polyphony means more than one musical part playing at a time.

After we had discussed the reading and had passed our views around about it, we moved on to looking at the fundamental basics of music. 

To make a piece of music interesting, composers tend to incorporate the fundamental basics into their piece. The key fundamentals are:

• Pitch
• Key
• Harmony 
• Dynamics
• Lyrics
• Melody
• Tempo
• Rhythm 
• Structure
• Themes
• Instrumentation

We then looked at how songs are built up. There is no right or wrong way to build up a song, it is up to the composer of the piece as to the structure of it. 

Some people follow this structure when they're creating a song to help them distinguish where they're going to use a different chord or change the beat or change the melody. 

We also learned how to use Audacity today which is a program that can be used to record your own music. This will come in handy as our work for next week is to write and record a song using some words Hayley gave us and then present it to the rest of the group next week. Donna and I will be working together to create a piece of music. 

24th September 2014 - Musicianship Week 1...

"What is Music?"

In our first lecture, we were asked to think about what we thought music is. Some of my ideas were:

• music can trigger a memory
• music shapes you as a person
• music represents your culture
• music is everywhere, it surrounds us
• music gives people a sense of belonging
• music aids emotion

When asked to expand on one of my points, I chose the point that music shapes you as a person. I believe that music influences people in different ways. Throughout high school you're subjected to an eclectic mix of music and you sort of pick and choose which pieces you prefer. When you look at the 'cliques' within high school you'll see that there are the typical Gothic/emo kids who like rock and heavy metal and sometimes depressing music. There's the indie rock/pop group, the rave/club/house/EDM adoring people etc. There is a huge mixture of genres to choose from. The music you listen to and the 'clique' you belong to not only influences your musical taste but it also affects your choice of clothing, style, favourite colour, hairstyle. EVERYTHING. Music is everywhere and it has an influence on every aspect of our lives. It helps you find your identity and moulds you into the person you are and become. 

After a class discussion about "What is Music?" we formed two groups of 3 and thought of a concept and made a short piece of music to reflect the concept. My group had the concept of music aiding emotion and being able to show your emotion through music. Reece played piano, Ashley played drums and I used my vocals in the piece.


We performed this piece for the rest of the group and then gave feedback. One improvement I was personally given was to increase my volume as it was hard to hear my part in the piece. Another improvement I gave myself was to stand up as that would help increase my volume.

For next week, we have to read pg 13-19 of Daniel Levitin's This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding A Human Obsession.