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..

Week 8: Continued

So for our group piece, we came up with the decision of creating an acapella Sam Smith medley. We didn't really have much time to come up with what to actually create for our final piece however we think our concept is pretty good and its coming along pretty well.
We're using 4 popular Sam Smith songs 'I'm not the only one', 'Like I can', 'La La La' and 'Stay with me'. Each of us has a solo with us all coming together for the end. We're using harmonies throughout for added emphasis and so it doesn't just sound really monotone.
For extra backing, we've come up with the idea of creating our own backing track with only our voices. We're planning on just recording a track with the harmonies in the background primarlily to make the piece sound fuller so its not just vocals, more of an actual backing track; but its to also help it flow properly throughout the whole performance as a whole acapella piece can be pretty difficult in regards to timing and so on.
So the next thing for us to do now we've got the running of which song goes where and so on, theres just the creation of the backing track, hopefully this is gunna run smoothly!!

Week 8: Group Piece

Group Piece

For our final group assessment, Me, Levy and Nat have came up with the idea of creating 1 original song and 1 arrangement of an original song. For the arrangement, were thinking of doing it acapella as none of us can play instruments well enough for a performance so we thought using our voices would be alot more beneficial for us. The original song, we are thinking of using a program such as Garageband to help us create a backing track for our piece as we don't really want to have two acapella songs as acapella can be a very difficult technique to portray well so I think for us as a group it would be better for us to focus on one acapella track and get that up to scratch and then for our original, make our own backing track for that. It also adds abit more variety, shows we don't always stick to the same things and use the same techniques etc.

In terms of what songs were actually using, we haven't actually thought that far ahead yet. As part of last weeks task, we all created our own short arrangements to help gain a better understanding of what an arrangement is. I really enjoyed creating and watching these and I think for this assessment, it would be a good idea to sort of expand on what we created last week. I would like to expand on the idea of doing a medley of songs, this would be a good idea for our arrangement, it would mean that each of us could have solo parts whilst us all showing other skills like harmonising and so on.

I would like to do something like that shows changes in music or shows different styles of music and merge them together. The vocal group 'Pentatonix' are whats inspired me to want to create something which shows a change in something because of their arrangements. I really like the way they arrange their pieces, they're so unique in terms of their beatboxing and the way they use their voices as the backing for all the songs. I don't think our piece would be quite as complex as theirs, one because none of us can beatbox and two the differences in voices, we dont really have a range of high and low voices, the majority of us are alto voices so we dont really have a vast range of voices, but were going to do our best at playing around with harmonies and so on to create pieces were going to be impressed with at the end.

Week 7: Arrangements

Arrangements

The focus of this week was arrangements and authorship. We basically looked at what an arrangement was and how its different to a cover. An arrangement can be anything to do with changing up the original song, for example: using only the voice rather than instruments, the style, different instruments and so on. A cover tends to be a lot more similar to the original piece. We looked at various videos to analyse whether they were covers or arrangements and what they done to make them an arrangement or not.
Our task for the following week was to come up with our own arrangement of an original song. Me, Levy and Nat came up with the idea of using the cup song.



The reason we decided to use this was because you could literally do anything with it, if you got the timing and the tempo etc right, you can literally put any song onto it. We messed around with quite a few songs until we came up with the idea of using 'I need your love' by Ellie Goulding and Calvin Harris. We wanted to change it up abit more though rather than just having one song, we decided to add in another, this was a bit more of a struggle trying to find a song that would fit in with the song we had already picked. We found one eventually after trying out a good 20/25 songs that just didnt really fit, we came up with 'Call your girlfriend' by Robyn. Once we had these, we figured out timing and the best way to merge the two then focussed on harmonies. For the second part of the song, we decided to have it all in 2 part harmony as it was something different which we thought sounded a lot better than it just the two of us doing the same line sounding monotone.

Week 6: Individual piece

Individual piece

I'm actually really struggling with what to create for my individual piece. The only thing I know I want to do is use my voice rather than creating an instrumental piece because i'm not the best on a keyboard, literally can only play a few chords so my instrumental piece would be far too simplistic and boring. I find it quite difficult when it comes to having to create an original composition because I just never know where to start, I'm so used to just singing covers of songs and changing them up to suit my style, rather than having to create my own songs. I think i'm going to take inspiration from our lecture when we had to create a piece based on what we thought music was because I really enjoyed how we created our beat from just everyday objects rather than a typical instrument, im obviously going to expand on that as we created those pieces within about 10/15 minutes, but i definitely think for me creating different noises using every day objects and my voice is definitely going to be the best option for me. I really want to try and incorporate a different genre into this piece as well, I always stick to the same style like pop or musical theatre style songs so i want to change it up abit, I think I'm gonna try and make this have more of a jazz feel to it, I looked at older artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy lee and Nina Simone then onto abit more current artists such as Norah jones and Amy winehouse. Each of the artists have a completely different style but all have that jazzy feel to most of their songs. I sang 'Fever' last year as a duet for one of my modules which is when i decided i really wanted to look more into trying out more bluesy/jazzy songs. Basically, I want to create a piece that is more out of my comfort zone, something i'd not typically write (so something not depressing), I want it to have a jazzy feel to it and I only want to use my voice and sounds you'd hear every day or just everyday objects rather than a keyboard or a guitar. https://soundcloud.com/kirstymusicianship/fever

Week 5: Challenges!

Challenges

This year i really want to challenge myself and learn new things, one of the main things i want to do is work on my theory. I really struggle with the theory side of music and i've not really tried to learn it because its always seemed so complicated. I feel like it's something thats really valuable knowing though as it really helps when it comes to learning instruments such as the keyboard which is also something i want to expand my knowledge on. I found a useful website which has lessons on as well as short activities which seem pretty childish but are actually pretty useful when it comes to identifing notes and so on. I tend to go on this website at least once a week to try and expand my theory knowledge, it's taking some time but I'm slowly starting to come to grips with it finally. Music Theory [online]. (2014). Available from: . [Accessed 25/10/2014].Another thing I really want to try my hands at is songwriting. I've only had the odd few tries at writing my own songs and they've been in groups so I've not really done it individually. I sort of struggle with the idea of creating the music for a piece, writing the lyrics isn't so bad but having to actually put music to the words is so hard considering I can't play an instrument. Every time I write lyrics to a song, they always seem really depressing, I always seem to find it a lot easier to write about sad things rather than creating a song thats gonna get everyone on their feet. This is something I want to try and change, I feel like its more versatile if you can create more than just one genre of music.

Week 4: Improvisation!

Improvisation

This week we looked at improvisation, what we thought it was, what it actually is and how its done. The main things to think about when creating a piece is to have a collective goal, have a pre-discussed set of rules and allow 'space' for the improvisation to happen. Being in an enviroment you're comfortable in will also be helpful. After discussing our thoughts on what improvisation was, we then looked at examples of different performance pieces including music, dance and ragu. We reflected on each pieces and came t the conclusion that the majority of music or dance pieces are pre-composed, take for instance, a dancer would have hundreds of routines they've learned stuck in their heads, thousands of moves they've learned in the past, so they are able to put together bits and pieces to create a perfected piece of improvisation. From this we were giving the task of creating a short piece based around the concept of a storm. We then chose instruments and just started playing around with what sounded good and fitted the brief. We literally just played around and kept adding in instruments until we came up with what actually sort of resembled a storm, with it starting off slow like a rain sound, then buildin and building to a huge storm where the drums kicked in. This piece of ours, intitially was completely improvised, however by the time it came to having to perform it, we had gone over it about 3 times to the point were it had been pre-composed so everyone knew who came when and what bit came next so it no longer seemed improvised.

Week 3: continued

Our Lyrics
Just like the moon,
along with the sun.
Your bittersweet lies occurs often.
Crushed dreams and a broken heart,
I guess its time we do depart.
You can shoot me down with your words,
i've had enough.
Carry on with other birds,
I'll get through this cos i'm tough.
Look to the skies, you're torturing my mind.
Bowed head and lowered eyes,
brings me closer to saying goodbye.

Week 3: Original composition

Original Composition

Coming up with our original piece at first we definitely thought we were going to struggle, we did kind of take a bit of time to actually get into it. We created the music first by experimenting with chords and then just looping them. After making the music, we played around with lyrics, we picked out certain lyrics which we thought we could make the most from. Listening to this helped us to decide which way we wanted to go in terms of whether we wanted to create a more sad, depressing style piece or a happier piece. Once we had the lyrics, we found it pretty easy to fit in the lyrics, however we did find that some of the lines or words didn't quite fit, so we did have to change a few bits and pieces round to make sure it sounded like it was more fluid. We each performed or played our tracks and then critiqued each others pieces. We looked out for things such as musicality, whether it sounded like music or just random noise. Looking at whether it fitted the assessment criteria, use of dynamics and harmonies etc. The feedback we got back was mixed, we didn't play the whole piece as we messed up the recording so when it came to playing it we only had the one of our initial ideas. We did get good feedback, we got comments like 'good vocal melody', 'liked the piano chords' and 'nice combination of lyrics', some of the other comments we got were things like 'perform with more confidence' and 'expand more'. This feedback was really beneficial since we ended up losing our first recording of it so were able to expand and add in the feedback we were given so it sounded better.

Week 2: Techniques

We started off by recapping what music is. After going over last weeks session, we then moved onto what techniques are needed to create a piece of music. We each came up with a small list or diagram of what we thought techniques are needed to create a song. Each of these are the fundamental keys which are needed to put together a piece.

After each contributing ideas to the chart, we were put in pairs to make up our own composition based around some lyrics given off Hayley. Initially thinking about this task, I thought we were really going to struggle in terms of putting together chords since none of us are piano geniuses but it was a lot easier than I thought once we actually got into it.

Week 1: What is music?!

What is music?!
As an introduction to the module, we started with a discussion on our ideas of what music is. Music is something we find ourselves using/listening or creating in everyday life whether it be on the radio, in the supermarket or at a production. One of the tasks we had was to do with a list based around different musical scenarios. With this, we had to pick out which was the most musical and which was the least. Each person has their own interpretation of what music is, so we found that many people had different opinions on how the order should go. After this we had a discussion on why we thought each of them should go in that order, from that we found that music is a part of everyday life and people can create it without even realising.
This led onto our next task were we got put into groups and were told to create a short piece based on what we thought music was. We initially came up with the concept of creating a piece based around stevie wonders song 'music is a world within itself', however within the short time we had to put together the piece, we realised it was a bit to complex. We then changed the concept and used the lyrics from madonnas song 'Music'. We started by just creating sounds within the room using objects like the door handle, the walls as well as simple things like clicks and the voice. We used the lyrics, 'music makes the people come together yeah' and just repeated those lines pretty much. We each performed these and then gave each other feedback. I really enjoyed this task, getting to see what each group came up and their concepts behind it was really interesting.