Thursday 8th
February
We
started the session with a full vocal warmup and then we moved on to practicing
the songs for the singing performance.
I
firstly practiced ‘Mr Blue Sky’. I worked on a few things today to help to
improve my rendition of this song. Firstly, I worked on the power of some of
the lines. If some of the lines in the song have more power than others, this
will add some dynamic to the song and will make it sound less flat. This will especially
be important during the chorus of the song. Another aspect that I worked on was
the harmonies. There a few places in the song where I will be accompanied by
Molly and Kellyann who will sing some harmonies. Cara and I tried out some more
harmonies today in different places. We then decided which ones sounded the
best and would then go on to teach Molly and Kellyann. We decided to keep the
first 2 verses free of harmonies because I thought this might be a good way to
start the song and then bring in the harmonies a bit later. The last aspect
that we worked on for ‘Mr Blue Sky’ was the crescendo. This is in the 3rd
verse on the line ‘Welcome to the human race’. This crescendo also adds dynamic
to the piece and makes the piece a bit more exciting.
The
next song that I worked on was ‘In the summertime’. I mainly worked on the instrumental
part of this song because we have had the idea that I will perform a small
dance in this part of the song. Therefore, I spent some time coming up with
some choreography for this section of music. I had to make sure that the style
of dance was in the same style as the song and I have therefore chosen to do a Charleston
dance. I will be wearing character shoes for the show because these also fit in
with the theme of this song. I will start practicing in these shoes from now
on.
As
you can see from the types of movements that I am carrying out in these songs,
they are 2 very contrasting pieces. ‘Mr Blue Sky’ is a very static piece with
no movement whereas ‘In the summertime’ is a very lively piece with lots of
movement.
The
last song that I worked on was ‘The sweet escape’. The main focus for this song
was working out where I am going to breathe before the fast verses. I was
struggling to sing the fast verses in the song because I was running out of
breath. This is because I wasn’t sure where to take a breath before this part.
However, I spoke to my lecturer, Cara and she advised me on where she thought I
should take a breath and once I practiced using her advice, I didn’t have a
problem with running out of air.
After
having a discussion with my lecturer, we have come to the decision that we
would like to perform another group song. We have decided on the song ‘The lion
sleeps tonight’ because I think that there is potential for some really good
harmonies which all the group will be able to participate in and it also fits
in with the theme of the performance. We will start working on this after half
term.
Towards
the end of the session, we went downstairs into one of the computer rooms to
look for some potential costumes which I could wear for the performance. We
have been looking for a straight down dress which fits in with the theme of escapism.
We didn’t manage to find anything but we are still looking and hopefully we
will find something before the show.
Your approach to preparation for the singing performance is an holistic one. Not only are you thinking about the material itself but also presentation, using dance and movement, costume.
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