Term 2- Lesson 5: 04/01/15

4th of January 2015

What did you do this week?

This week I did a 10 minute warm up, this included doing exercises like lip trills, which help develop my diction and articulation because it gets the lips moving to prepare when saying words/sounds etc. I find this helpful before practising because it allows me to relax into the song and focus more about the initial technique, range and performance etc. The scales, I often use scales when warming up because it helps me become more familiar with different pitching and developing a good ear but also it really helps me to focus on my range. I also did other warm ups like the witch sound and humming.

This week I have been working on my finalising my set and also starting to break down an individual song, I want to ensure I can understand it, both technically and emotionally (I know the story etc.) This week I have been breaking down the songs 'the letter' from Billy Elliot and 'i'm going down' by Mary J Blige. In my opinion they are both emotional songs, yet have very different stories:

With the song 'The letter', I asked myself some questions which our music teacher told us about. 

Who are you: In this song I portray myself as the Mother, although in the stage musical its split up into 3 characters, I decided after trying it this way  it would be difficult for me to present too many characters all at once and therefore if I channeled the same story but using one character, I could project the story better.

Who you singing this song to: The way I view this song is that its the letter is a spoken voice, in the initial stage musical the character billy, sings the letter to his dance teacher, yet it's his mother words. The way I want to present is that the character Billy is imagining his mother singing to him. Therefore Im going to play this character singing to her son Billy. 

Overall this week has been really useful, I feel like i'm understanding my songs better, also i can now start to focus on them technically, I have started this week and used warm ups like the witch noise to bring the sound forward also singing 'The Letter' on an ahh to make it seem more fluid. My next step is now to perform this song as much as possible, I want to get as comfortable when singing them.

What did you do in class?

In class today we started with the same warm up as last week, which got my voice ready to sing, I knew i wanted to sing straight after because my voice was ready to go and perform. We also started to talk about how we were going to present ourselves and songs to the audience, so as prep we had to prepare our song and mic, then sit back down, then go on stage and introduce it and then sing. I feel like this helps with performance quality and engaging with the audience. I found it really helpful and from now Im going to do this (introduce myself). Going back to singing first, i choose to do an experiment on a mash up of both 'we found love' and 'thinking out loud'. I felt like it didn't work so well however it was a good experience to have, I feel like trying different songs helps me expand my rep, it allows me to explore different styles which is good when choosing recital set lists. Once again this class has been useful, watching other people sing gives me a chance to appreciate their voices and performance styles but also opens my eyes to different types of music. 

Feedback from rehearsals:

1-mic control- if its slipping away take it off and hold it

2-Be sure of the backing track

3- make sure you reach all the notes

4- great confidence

5- you look comfortable on stage

Overall view on feedback:

After performing that song I have decided that I’m not going to do it in my recital, it was a last minute experiment which although could work, I don’t feel like it fits in my set. However it was a good experience because I got to work on my performance in front of an audience which helps me build confidence.

What you going to do next: 

I am now going to break down my individual songs, find out what I want out of them both in regards to technically and the story. I have decided my set list so now its about rehearsing and practising them as much as I can. The more performances in front of people I do the more confident i will get with singing them. Also next week I want to finalise my backing tracks so I can focus on the actual songs and work on them properly.