Bibliography

Bibliography

TUTS +[online]. (2014). Available from: <http://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/understanding-harmony-part-1--audio-23066>. [Accessed 14/01/2015].

Inspired song-writing tips [online]. (2012). Available from: <http://www.inspired-songwriting-tips.com/writing-lyrics.html>. [Accessed 14/01/2015].

Pentatonix (2013). Evolution of music -Pentatonix. [online]. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lExW80sXsHs>. [Accessed 28/12/2014].

AnnaKendrickVEVO (2013). Anna Kendrick - Cups (Pitch Perfect's "When I'm Gone"). [online]. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmSbXsFE3l8>. [Accessed 28/12/2014].

Music Theory [online]. (2014). Available from: . [Accessed 25/10/2014].
Poem Hunter [online]. (2013). Available from: <http://poemhunter.com/poem/still-i-rise/>. [Accessed 26/11/2014].

Original Composition

Lyrics and chords!

Open your eyes,
to see what you may find.
Cant you see you're tormenting my mind.
Why cant you see, I'm so sick of your lies,
maybe its time to say bye.

With your other girls, I wait for you to call,
blinded me from my future goals.
I say leave me, oh ive lost, oh ive lost my soul.

Open your eyes,
to see what you may find.
Cant you see you're tormenting my mind.
Why cant you see, I'm so sick of your lies,
maybe its time to say bye, maybe its time to say bye.

Things aren't always what they seem,
guess I was just part of your scheme.
I played life blind,
you were unkind,
oh I'm sick of your lies.

Open your eyes,
to see what you may find.
Cant you see you're tormenting my mind.
Why cant you see, I'm so sick of your lies,
maybe its time to say bye.

Open your eyes,
to see what you may find.
Cant you see you're tormenting my mind.
I'm so sick, I'm so sick of your lies.
I'm so sick, I'm so sick of your lies.
maybe its time to say bye.
maybe its time to say bye.

Open your eyes,
to see what you may find.
Cant you see you're tormenting my mind.
Why cant you see, I'm so sick of your lies,
maybe its time to say bye.
Maybe its time to say bye.

Open your eyes,
to see that this is wise.
Look to the skies,
its time to say goodbye,
no more tormenting my mind,
its time to say goodbye, goodbye!

Critical Evaluation

In this post, I will be evaluating my original piece. I will be talking about the aims for the piece and the process of how my piece came together. I will also consider what went well during my piece and what could have been improved.

Creating my piece was a longer process than I intended it to be, I went through various ideas which involved trying out a lot of different ways that my song could sound. I found that creating the lyrics for the song was probably the easiest thing in comparison to making the backing for my song. Once I decided that I wasn’t straying more towards the jazz music style, I definitely found it easier to come up with a melody and music for my piece.

Looking at the positives, I would say that the lyrics were probably one of the strongest things within my piece. I feel like although they are very personal to me, they could relate to a lot of people because the lyrics could refer to many different things for example, getting rid of people who put a negative effect on your life or it could sort of be classed as a typical love song. ‘Writing lyrics from the heart is a very personal experience. It can sometimes be uncomfortable or even nerve-wracking baring your deepest feelings.’ (Inspired song-writing tips. 2012).   I did sort of struggle with creating the lyrics at first, however once I knew I wasn’t creating a jazz style piece I found it a lot easier as I knew it would be pretty easy to create a slower style love song if I drew from personal experiences and thoughts and feelings.

Something I wish I could have changed was who actually played the music. Although I created the chords myself and knew what sort of melody I had in mind for it, I didn’t actually play it myself. At the start of the module, I wanted to be able to play the piano for my original composition but learning how to play it is a lot harder than I thought, I can play the basic notes on the keyboard and basic songs, but actually playing a whole piece I found was pretty difficult. I definitely wish that I could have learnt it in time to actually play it myself as more of a personal goal because I feel like it means I can write my own pieces of music more often rather than writing lyrics and chords and relying on somebody else to play them for me.

Overall, I feel like my piece could have been improved if I had more time as it would have allowed me to play the music myself. I also think it would have been nice if I could have actually created a jazz piece as it’s something different and out of my comfort zone, I feel like I need to look more into jazz techniques and practice more of those before I attempt to actually create a Jazz piece. One last thing I think could have added to my piece was if I added a harmony line, I think the piece would have sounded fuller and just added something extra to the piece. ‘Melody is the most important part of the music. It is the tune of the song. But harmony can add so much depth and meaning! It is the interplay of tones or chords that accompany the melody.’ (TUTS+. 2014).  I am happy with how my piece turned out though, I just think if I was to of added those in my piece would have been a lot stronger.

TUTS +[online]. (2014). Available from: <http://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/understanding-harmony-part-1--audio-23066>. [Accessed 14/01/2015].

Inspired song-writing tips [online]. (2012). Available from: <http://www.inspired-songwriting-tips.com/writing-lyrics.html>. [Accessed 14/01/2015].

Original piece

SOLO PIECE PRESENTATION

Week 11: Individual piece

In terms of creating my original composition, I've just completely hit a wall. I had so many ideas about what I wanted to do for my final piece but none of them have seemed to work out well at all. I have tried creating music on a music application i've downloaded called mixcraft 7 using my voice for the backing which kind of followed on from the ideas we used for our group piece. This is still something I think I want to use however I just don't know where to start again. Lyrics are the thing i'm struggling with the worst, I just can't think, my mind just goes blank everytime I try and write them. I must have wrote about 70 lines now and nothing seems right, they just get crossed straight out.  I definitely find it alot easier to create an arrangement rather than actually come up with my own original song.  I want to create a song that is personal or actually has a meaning to it, not your stereotypical pop song and as I said at the start of this project, I still want it to have a jazzy feel to it, however trying to create this by doing it completely accapella is proving to be pretty difficult.

Week 10: Live Performance

Evaluating the performance..

Ok so our performance went pretty well considering.. I think we started off slightly shaky but our confidence grew as the piece went on and our vocals sounded better towards the end when we all came to together in unison. The backing track really helped with making our piece sound more full, we definitely needed something along those lines otherwise us just doing it completely acapella, I feel since there was only 3 of us, it wouldnt have sounded great because although we all have different vocal ranges, we still have sort of similar voices so it was hard to create a very strong harmony line so the added backing was really helpful for us as a group.
Watching the piece back on a recording was beneficial (also very cringy!!) to see how we could improve on group performances in the future, I think on behalf of my group, we are proud of what we created, as the concept of our idea was pretty strong and different to what the other groups had come up with, I just think that we needed more time in order to create stronger harmonies and to ensure that all of those were in key as some of the notes sometimes sounded abit off. Confidence was another thing, although it grew throughout the piece, it would have made the audience feel a lot better if they could tell the performers were confident about the piece they were about to perform and not looking very nervous and sort of just standing there. By adding things like clicks or claps would have allowed for some sort of movement which would have helped I think as we wouldn't have been so focussed about what bit was coming next or when we needed to harmonise and so on..
So yeah, overall it went well just a few minor things that could be improved on if we were to create the piece again in the future.

Week 9: Group performance

Week of the performance and our piece is finally finished. It's not really gone as planned.. BUT we've managed to somehow sort of pull it together! The backing track was created (not with ease might I add) on an Ipad recording device and after multiple times of trying to make sure the timings were all correct for the start, going into each song and for all the extra harmonies we added in; making sure they all fitted with the harmonies we were performing live.
In terms of the performance, its just time for us to keep at practising, mainly to ensure all the timings are right because if we mess up even just one of the things on the day it will mess up the timing of the whole piece and just wouldn't go down well! Practice makes perfect..