Unit 1 - Skills development in performing arts

Thursday 29^th September

To start off the lecturer, we began a singing warm up. Firstly, we started with our intercostal diaphragmatic exercise breathing in for 4 counts, holding for 6 counts and then breathing out for 12 counts. Once we had completed this several times, we then carried out the extension to the exercise which we had learnt in the previous lecture called the abdominal press. This consisted of breathing in for 4 counts but with short separate breathes, holding for 6 counts and then breathing out for 8 counts in short separate breathes. Once this exercise had been repeated three times, we moved onto a singing warmup. The singing warmup consisted of singing different notes and tunes whilst our lecturer, Cara accompanied us on the piano. To start we sung some major scales with different pitches. When we sang the notes to these scales we sang on the word ’la’ which was the easiest as we had only done this exercise a few times before. After the major scales we moved onto arpeggios. The words that we sang were “I am on top of the world”. An arpeggio consisted of singing the 1^st, 3^rd, 5^th and 7^th notes of a scale. However once you have sung up the scale up must sing back down the scale. After completing this exercise, our voices were warm enough so we could move onto the main part of the lesson which was to start to learn the lyrics to a song.

The song that we were learning was ‘Seasons Of Love’ which is from the musical RENT. We needed to learn the lyrics to this song quite quickly as we needed to perform the song for a ceremony of achievement within college. However, instead of performing the song live, we are recording it in the recording studio here at college and filming a music video to go alongside it. However, due to the ceremony being in a few weeks, we needed to learn the lyrics quickly so we could record the music within the next few weeks. Luckily, I already knew the song and the lyrics so this was not a problem. As we didn’t need to focus on learning the lyrics, we jumped straight into learning harmonies and decided who was going to sing which harmony. Once we had finished singing the song through twice, our lecturer gave us some feedback. She said that overall the song was sounding very clear and in tune. The only piece of advice she gave to me was to sing a bit louder as she was unable to hear me as clearly as the others in my group.