Unit 1 - Skills development in performing arts

Monday 12^th September 2016

To start off the session we started off with a short physical warmup to ensure our bodies were warm and that the blood was flowing quicker around the body. This warmup consisted of moving our legs in circular motions from the ankle to the knee and then up to the hip. Then moving on to the upper parts of our bodies, we circled the hips and the arms one after another. 

Once we had completed the warmup, our performing arts lecturer, Cara explained to us what the neutral position was. This position is when we stand with our feet shoulder width apart, our arms loosely by our sides and our chest slightly forward. The neutral position is also known as the position of readiness. Cara also ran through why the natural position is important in performing arts. It is important because it shows that you are ready for the tasks ahead.

Once we were stood correctly in the neutral position, we started a singing warmup. Our warmup consisted of holding a long note on la. We could pick any note that we felt was comfortable for our voices which made this exercise slightly easier. This type of exercise helps to open up the throat and prepares the voice for singing. We then moved onto singing major scales which were accompanied by the piano. We sang through a few sets of scales before moving on to something a little more complicated, these being arpeggios. For this activity we had to sing the words “I am on top of the world” in an arpeggio scale. This consists of singing the 1^st, 3^rd, 5^th and 7^th notes in the scale once ascending and once descending. This activity helps us to improve our tuning, timing, internation and breath control. I found this exercise quite difficult as I am not used to this sort of exercise and my voice isn’t used to singing very high notes. 

Once we had completed the exercises, we chose a song to sing as a group. The song that we decided to sing as a group was “Do ah dear” from the musical ‘The Sound of Music’. This was our first song that we had sung as a group together. We had no preparation for this. I found this quite easy as my voice was nicely warmed up and ready to sing to its full potential. After the song, our lecturer gave us some feedback of that we had strong singing voices and that the whole song was in tune.