EVALUATION

The reason I chose to play the piano as I personally thought that it was my biggest strength to date in music. I also found it easy to pick up little tunes and also basic chords as most of it I taught myself on how to learn things on the piano. To help me in this process I bought my own keyboard to help me when I was not at University as I could learn in my own free time and also not feel as under pressure by others listening in to what I was doing.

 

I knew from the start that singing would not be involved within my final piece as it is a very weak point in my music history; however, to improve I would keep on practising my breathing techniques listed below as I felt as if I did slack a bit because I did not feel as confident in myself because others were so much better at me because of their music history. Its hard going into a place where you feel as the outsider which is exactly how I felt because of my poor music history.

To improve my piece in the feature I would try adding in different instruments and record them other the top to make it sound a lot better. I would use instruments such as base guitar, tambourine, drums and also an electric guitar. Even though I can’t play any of these instruments bar the tambourine I would take it upon myself to learn these instruments by doing lessons or even asking my friends who knew how to play them if they could teach me in their spare time.

To help me compose my piece together I decided to look for inspiration, an inspiration of mine was a group called ‘The Piano Guys’. These guys are simply amazing as they do a mix of all different songs put together using different instruments such as the piano and also the cello. By listening to these on youtube and also doing research about them it helped me to choose what I was going to do for my final piece. I also looked up different composers to help me build u my confidence for playing the piano.

After doing my performance there is a lot of things that I would definitely do different. I would try and add more difficult chords in to challenge myself as I thought what I composed was far to easy for my ability. Even though I have so little experience in music I felt as if I could push myself more if I pushed myself that little bit further. I would also pre-record my piece earlier rather than on the day as I fell into technical difficulties which made me really nervous as I did not feel as confident playing my piece live especially since I could play both hands at the same time.  I would also try adding in singing to my piece to make it that bit more unique.

INDIVIDUAL PIECE

So individual piece is fast approaching and PANIC MODE is BACK!

So am thinking to myself what can I actually do for my assessment. I cant sing , I cant write lyrics, I can only do basics on the piano, I cant play any instruments! PANIC MODE IS DEFINITLY KICKING IN!

After calming myself down and actually thinking of what I had already done I decided to do a melody of songs! I didn't want to do too many songs as I didn't want to over complicate the songs and also my piece. so I decided to take my Passenger piece and combine it with other chords with my left hand.

I decided to add in chords such as C,D,Em,Am. I thought it would be good to combine these together to create my own piece as I would add in other bits that I have created.

ANOTHER BREATHING EXERCISE.........

Lying on the floor

1. Lie down on the floor or bed with a heavy book on your abdomen.

2. As you inhale, you should see the book rising up then lowering back down as you exhale. If you don't see the book moving, notice what's moving as you breathe. Feel the sensations in your body. When you inhale, your lungs expand and take in air. Your body, specifically your abdomen, moves out as you inhale.

3. As you exhale, the air is leaving your body, and you should see or feel the abs moving back in. This movement happens because of the air moving and not because you move your abs. You can bounce your abs without breathing, but that won't improve your singing.

 

available at - http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/breathing-basics-for-singing.html - accessed on 19th January 2015

BREATHING EXERCISES

Here is some exercises that I found useful:

Inhaling to sing

Singing songs requires getting a full breath quickly — a quick inhalation — because the orchestra can't wait five minutes for you to find the air.

1. Pretend that air is really heavy as you inhale. Visualize it weighing 50 pounds and let it fall low into your body.

2. Let it fall lower than your belly button. Explore this sensation.

3. Then let the breath fall in faster. Still visualize it being heavy but let it fall quickly into your body.

4. You can also fill your lungs as if you were going to blow up a balloon. You will feel your abdomen and lower back expand.

 

Exhaling to sing

Singing means that you have to control your exhalation. You want to have a sustained and smooth exhalation.

1. Try to blow the feather really high up in the air and use a long stream of breath to get it to go up.

2. Try not to collapse your chest as you blow the feather.

3. While chasing the feather with your breath, notice what moves in your body as you exhale. You should feel that your abdomen has slowly returned to normal and that your chest has stayed in the same position the whole time.

4. At the end of the exhalation, you should feel the need to immediately inhale again.

 

I found these two techniques really easy to follow as they really are broken down and are easy to follow.

 

Available at - http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/breathing-basics-for-singing.html - accessed on 19th January

LEARNING HOW TO SING........WELL ATTEMPT TO

My first thought was what am I getting myself into?!

Even though I haven't learnt how to sing before I was willing to try! On one of the first things that Hayley taught us was some breathing exercises. She explained that it was very important to warm up our vocal chords before actually singing as it can really damage your vocal chords and really strain your voice which can damage it in the long run.

ANYONE CAN SING........WELL CAN I ?

So my singing isn't up to scratch as much as what others are, I have never had the opportunity to learn to sing and I have always wanted to be able too. Ive never felt as confident either singing by myself which I felt like it brought me down when doing school productions because all the main parts included singing. I didn't mind singing in a group because other peoples voices over powered mine so I didn't feel as intimidated.

When coming to University and I choose music as one of my modules I wanted to attempt to learn how to sing as Hayley said 'ANY ONE CAN SING'!

LEARNING MY FIRST SONG

Since I was learning my first song I decided to choose a simple song with a few chords in. When looking through ideas of what song I could learn, I decided to go with the song 'Let her go' by Passenger. 

When looking at the chords they did seem pretty simple so I decided to go with that song. To help me with remember where the chords were placed on the piano I got little bits of paper and ripped them up small so they could fit on the keys and wrote down what chords was what. 

The chords for this song were;

A,B,A,D,G,E,G,E,B,A,B,A,G,D,E,G,E,B,A,A,B,A,G,D,E,G,E,G,D,B,G,A

While learning this song I found it really easy as I started off with breaking it down into different sections and slowly putting them together to play the first part of the song.

Available at - http://www.piano-couture.com/passenger-let-her-go-part-1/ - accessed on 19th January 2015