Unit 64 - Singing techniques in performance

Wednesday 14^th March

With only one week until the singing performance, we thought that it would be good to now put on some extra rehearsals in preparation for next week. However, this proved very difficult because everyone in the group has very different timetables and it was hard to find a time where most of the group were free to hold an extra rehearsal. We came to the conclusion, as a group, that we were all able to make a rehearsal at 5pm on 14^th March (today) apart from Robert who is not currently at college. Holding this rehearsal means that it would give us a chance to rehearse in the space at which we will be performing in.

Today the rehearsal was being held in The Chapel. This is where the singing performance is going to be held next week. The reason why we are practicing in The Chapel today is because the acoustics are very different in this room to what they are in the performance studio. Therefore, practicing in The Chapel will give us a taster for what it is going to sound like next week when we perform and we won’t be thrown off when we come to perform.

To start off the session we carried out a full vocal warmup. This included some body shakes, intercostal diaphragmatic breathing, scales, arpeggios and the technical exercise. This full singing warmup therefore ensured that our voices and bodies were nice and warm ready to rehearse the whole way through the performance.

The space was set out like it will be for the performance next week. 4 chairs will form a semi circle where each of the performers will sit whilst they aren’t singing. In front of them will be 1 lead microphone and 2 background microphones and behind them will be places for Cara and Sam to play their instruments. Today we were able to practice with one of the microphones. I have only ever used a microphone in the recording studio and never in a live performance. Therefore this is a new experience for me and I found it really useful to rehearse with it a week before the show so that I could get used to it.

Once we had carried out the warmup, we were ready to start a full run through. It took us a while to complete a full run through of the show because we had to keep stopping and starting to make sure that both Cara and Sam were playing the songs in the right key and that the tempo of the songs was correct. All of the songs are sounding really good, especially the harmonies. One thing that we did change during this rehearsal was the key which ‘The Sweet Escape’ is played in. This is because Sam was finding it hard to play in the key that I was singing it in and it would make it a lot easier for him if we dropped it down a semitone. This now meant that I needed to change the key of which I was singing in otherwise the song would have been out of tune. I found it quite easy to change to the new key, however I am finding it quite hard to remain in the key. This is something that I will work on before next week.

After having this rehearsal, I am now feeling more confident about the performance next week. I found it really helpful to practice in The Chapel so that we can begin to get a feel for how the performance is going to shape. One thing that I do need to work on is the transitions between the songs. At the moment, the transitions that we have put in, aren’t really working so I need to script some lines so that the group can learn them for next week.