lessons and assessment

singing

23rd january 2013

in todays lesson, unfortunately Sapphira was absent from class, however we where able to carry on with our songs without her. 

First off we started with the class warm ups, before getting together and running our two class songs. 

once we had run these through a few times we split into our smaller groups and looked for the songs which we where going to pick. 

In my group we looked through many different songs mainly to do with the topic of love as the performance is near valentines day, looking at different styles and genres including jazz, musicals, rock and role and many others as well. in the end we picked the song Elvis Presley = can't help falling in love. because it fitted into our genre, and into the 1920-50's.

6th february 2013

in todays lesson we learned a new warm up technique, using all of the vouls, AEIOU.

this exercise helps us with breathing technique, pronunciation skills,  rhythm and to warm up our vocal cords, waking us up and getting us ready to sing, reducing the risk of hurting ourselves. 

in the lesson we learned and further worked on "why do fools fall in love" adding the backing vocals to the main duet. also in this lesson we started working on the movement of the piece, further improving it and making it more entertaining for an audience.

in todays lesson i further worked on my breathing technique, as it is my downfall due to my  asthma, as it is extremely bad. my prononciation skills are improving with each lesson. I need to work on my pitching, this is my main improvement point.

6th march 2013

today warm up was focused mainly on vocals, improving speed and prononciation. we needed to work on rhythm and tempo, in preparation for working on our class songs.

we started off singing me and my shadow through, and then we added our basic movement that was created by Billie and Louise. we as a class worked longer as the breathing exercises built up stamina for singing and doing movement at the same time. these breathing tasks helped me especially due to my asthma which generally holds me back. 

in our small groups we went off and worked on our songs, my group worked on how we would sing "cant help falling in love" creating the harmony and who would be singing which part of the song 

6th-13th march

At home i have been learning the lyrics to my small group song as i havent been present for all the lessons due to illness and family problems. Each day after college i have been working on breathing exercises to help improve my lung capacity, to further improve my singing.

13th march

the main improvement that i need to make, along with the techniques, is to build my confidence.

todays lesson consisted of us working in our small groups. we worked on who is singing which part of the song and how this affects the harmonies, we split ourselves into particular ranges, me being in the middle, making sure each person in the group was confutable  with the role they where given.  

we found a backing track which would work perfectly with our piece. 

19th march

for warm up in todays lesson we repeated the warm up tasks we have been learning throughout the term, improving prononciation and breathing, increasing stamina and breathing capacity.

in the first half of the lesson we completely learned the choreography to "me and my shadow" and then perfecting the harmonies.

in the second half of the lesson  we once again where sent off in our small groups, me Hollie, louise and Nichole all now know the song so we could properly work on the harmonies, we atempted to add the song "wonderfull world" into the song, so it would be like a mashup, but we found out that with the backing track it didnt work properly, and as we were not alowed to do the song acapela, we thought this idea would no longer work. 

we showed our progress to the class, who agreed that it wouldnt work with the two songs together. my indervidual feedback was to have more confidence. 

27th march

as our assessment is tomorrow we where really focusing on the "performance" side of things. so we worked on perfecting the movements and MOST importantly the fact that we all need to smile and ENJOY what we are doing, so that we look confident and not show any nerves that we have.

i found it easy to pick up the movements and learn them, and i work well in the chorus. my weakness however is my personal confidence singing infront of a audience  although performing infront of people i am confident with, has helped me immensely.

28th march 2013

ASSESSMENT DAY

At the beginning of the lesson we practiced the songs, in running order, for one last time, within this run-through, we perfected harmonies and movement so that the performance would look and sound great!
The assessment took place in the second half of the lesson. we performed, in the given order, infront of NESCOT's music department as we could no longer perform at the Home. this fact was very disappointing but something we took on well.
overall i believe that the performance went well, we ran the whole thing, intime and with perfect choreography, as a whole class.
my small group song went well, we did the song perfectly in time, my main critic would be our confidence as a group may not have been very strong, but we worked hard to smile and use our nerves to our advantage.

  

Singing

16th jan - 31st jan
1.

In singing today we had our first lesson as our new class.

we started out with doing warm up, to warm up our vocal cords and diaphragm, by doing breathing techniques as well as singing vowels and words. It is important for us to do this as it stops us from causing injury to our throats, vocal cords and diaphragm, as well as warming up before we start to sing.

In todays lesson we went over the group song for when we go to the nursing home next month. Today was the first time we did this in our new class, and considering we have never sung together in this way before, we got into the two groups and harmonised the lyrics efficiently and quickly, working well together, aside form a few minor "hiccups"

2.

after practising the song we where put into our smaller groups where we are going to be doing another song, I am put in a group with only members of the class whom i worked with before, and have never sung infront of before so i will find it a challenge. We have been set the task of finding an appropriate song to sing in this group, to fit in with the time period we have been given - between the 1920's and 1950's.

Also we have been given the opportunity to do solo or duet songs, which i may strive to do.

3.
over the last two lessons we have been working on our group songs, my group have desided to perform "cant help falling in love" Elvis Presley. we have been learning the lyrics and aplying what we have learned in the lessons in the past, to addapt the song to our singing types. we have been learning the song and practicing it. also in lesson we have been doing vocal warm ups to prepare us for what we have to do. we have taken what we have been taught and furthered it to help us practice. ive found that i strugle with the dynamics of the song that my group has chosn as i strugle with the timing of certain parts of the song and the diffrence between mine and the other peoples vocal tones, but i am slowly getting it.

     Singing

in singing we are doing solo performances and group work for the trip to the home in feburary. within singing we have been learning the basics of singing. For example we have been learning vocal warm ups including what we done last lesson (21st november 2012) which was "abcd" and "1234" but in previous weeks we have looked at "me, baa, la" and others, along with breathing in and breathing out to "shhhh" and hums. we do these to warm our vocal cords and diaphram. aswell as to improve pronounciation and other factors of singing and even just speech. For our trip to the home in February we had to research music from the 1940's and 1950's. My group researched "easy listening" and found many artists, frank Sinatra being the artist we focused on.   
 we belive that this is appropriate for our performance because Frank sinatra is one of the most famous and memorable artists from the time, he is a singer who they will probably know most of his songs. we are aiming to sing songs which remind them of when they where younger, and with his songs i belive we can achive this. 
We are also performing solos as part of this project. i am performing the song "love the way you lie part two", but the skylar gray vesion instead of the Rihanana and Eminem version as, as much as i am a huge fan of Eminem i thought that as the project is on singing i would be better off doing a full song instead of the version which contains a Rap within it. 


I have had to work on my pitch, making sure that I put effort and power into the corus, I also have to work on my confidence when singing as I am extremely nervios and dont like my voice to be heard. I find singing fun in groups or when not taken seriously, but the solo I am finding extreamly hard as I lack confidence in this area.  This is a song that i can relate to and therefor i thought it would be a good song to pick to do as my solo...
In lesson we are focusing on the songs for the trip to the nursing home in Banstead, we as a group are doing the song "my shadow" byFrank Sinatra, where we are doing harmonies and working together to create our own version of the song.i personally need to revise my range as i was ill during the period where we done them and think i can improve it greatly, which is a target for me by the end of the nursing home project. I would love the opportunity to do a solo or duet at the nursing home but am not sure if i have the confidence to do so, although my confidence is built up week by week i still do not believe that i can sing well. I enjoy the lessons immensely and hope to improve my skill and confidence levels so i am able to do so.