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

LEARNING THE PIANO

The only piano lessons I had done were back in high school pressing the DJ button and listening to the other daft songs that they had on the keyboard. 

I also had the chords written on the piano in whiteboard marker because I could never remember where anything was. 

Anyway going back to this period of time I decided to ask Reece on simple chords on the piano. He taught me the basic chords such as Am, C, D, Em and also others. He also told me how to work out the spacing between the chords to place my fingers. 

After being told some basic chords i decided to take it upon myself to learn a basic song.........

WHAT DO I DO NEXT?!?!?!

So since song writing was not for me I did not have a clue what I wanted to do! PANIC MODE IS ON! 

I kept thinking to myself what could I do next? Once again I was getting brain overload because I did not have a musical background! I actually started to question my degree by this point! 

Everyone else knew what they were doing and I felt like the outsider; However, it was nothing Donna couldn't fix! 

Donna helped me get back on track and made me realise that just because I didn't have a musical background didn't mean I could not achieve something.

That's when she gave me the idea of trying to learn the piano........

SONG WRITING CONTINUED

So I gave song writing a go and it did not turn out too well. It just seemed like song writing was not for me as I did not understand how it was done properly. No matter how many times I tried writing a song based on an event that happened in my life or listening to many songs that I loved I just could not get my head around writing down lyrics and putting them to a tune. 

I guess song writing is just not for some people, well it definitely wasn't for me! 

I also guess that idea was also out the window for my final piece!

GOALS

I briefly mentioned in my last post about my goals for this semester. When having my first few lectures I kept on thinking about what I would actually like to achieve. My goals were; 

1. Attempt to write a song 
2. Learn basic chords on the piano 
3. Learn new breathing techniques for my singing
4. Try abit of acapella 

During this semester I am going to try and reach my goals, I know I might not get the chance to reach all of them but I am willing to try and attempt my goals. I have only set basic goals for myself because I do not have much of a music background so I wanted to start of small and simple and slowly progress. Weather I do achieve these goals or not I am willing to give them a good go and really try my best. 

TIPS ON SONG WRITING

Since on of my goals was to try and write my own song this semester i decided to look up on some tips about song writing. 

When doing my research I found that alot of different people have their own different ways of writing songs. 

Things that I found: 

• creating a mind map 
• listening to popular songs for inspiration 
• write lyrics on a true event 
• base your lyrics on a social issue 
• write lyrics about something that happened in your life 
• find out what kind of style you want your song eg pop, rock etc 
• decide what musical instruments you want to use eg. do you want it to be acoustic, piano, guitar etc 

By looking at these tips I decided to try all different ways to find out which one suited me best. 

Available at - https://www.udemy.com/blog/how-to-write-a-good-song/ accessed on - 19th January 

SONG WRITING

For a long time I have wanted to give song writing ago for a long time now but I have never been sure on how to actually create lyrics.....

On of our tasks was to create a piece of music with lyrics, we had to pair up and come up with ideas based on certain words and phrases. I was partnered with Reece which I was pleased about because as I knew he could help me with this task as I was new to music.

We were given a poem to look at and break down into what we thought the poem was about. Myself and Reece had ideas of being trapped in something, for example war. We also had ideas of it being about someone breaking free from something.

With our ideas sorted we then arranged to both write a bit of the song each and break it down into two verses, one chorus (repeated twice) and also a bridge. Once the song was complete we discussed each others ideas, Reece had shown me the cords that he had decided to use for this piece.

Since I a not the best at singing, I did not feel confident enough to sing the song to be recorded. Once all the songs and chords on the guitar we had our final piece!

Our feedback was:

·                     Good: Rhythm, Structure, Guitar compliments voice & words, clear message

·                     Improvements: Change In Dynamics, Harmony, define verse & chorus a little clearer

ED SHEERAN

Ed Sheeran is a someone who inspires me alot! I recently learned about how Ed Sheeran became who he is today. His talent was created by him self as he learnt himself how to play the guitar and he also wrote his own songs. When he was a teenager he moved to London to try and pursue his career as an artist; However, it wasnt a record label who made him famous it was actually his youtube videos online where he got No 1 spots on the iTunes chart. 

Ed Sheeran inspires alot of people because he is such a true and genuine artist who always has an issue to write about. All his lyrics are true and meaningful!

Available at - http://www.biography.com/people/ed-sheeran Accessed on - 19th January 2015 

MUSIC.......WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO ME?

What is music?


Music is many different things, EVERYONE has their OWN opinion on it. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, everyone has their own interpretation. 


To me music is a lot of things, music isn't just one tune, their is a variety of different music style. Every song that is a created has a meaning. Take Taylor swift for example she only ever seems to write about boys, break- ups and even relationships! Since she has done so many it just gets boring and just really shows who she is as a person. But on the other hand you have other song writers such as Ed Sheeran who I absolutely adore! His songs are so real and wrote with meaning which just makes this amazing! 


Music can also show what mood you are in and it can also put you into a certain mood, for example if a song comes on that reminds you of your past, a person you were once in a relationship with or even a lost relative can bring back so many memories and thoughts. I know plenty of songs that remind me of the amazing memories I had with my granddad which will be with me forever! Their are also songs that I can relate to the good times through University with all the friends that I have made. 


I don't think that some people realise what music actually is until you hear other peoples opinions that actually make you think they actually do have a point. Not a lot of people appreciate music these days, which is fine but they don't know what they are missing out on. 


Before I started this course I did not have a wide range of what music actually is, but over the weeks I now understand a lot better what music actually is and I know have my own opinion on it.......

INTRO

For me music has not always been a main subject of mine. In the past I studied music at high school and also primary school but at a very basic level. 


During primary school I was part of an orchestra in year 6. This gave me the chance to learn an instrument that I was really interested in. Obviously with the flute being the most popular instrument I was given the clarinet. I did enjoy the clarinet but I was never fascinated by it. I have also learned to play the violin when I was younger but once again at a very young level. 


As I got into high school I studied music for two years and decided not to take it as a GCSE. during the two years I learnt simple stuff on the keyboard and also other basics about music, such as a quaver, crotchet etc.... 


From my experience if you couldn't sing then you were not good enough to have a main role in a performance, which in my case I was that person. I never had the opportunities to have singing lessons as I was not 'good' enough. 


Since coming to University to study Performing Arts I wanted to try something different in my degree, I wanted to be able to say I had learn things that I never had before. 


As studying music now as part of my degree it has widened my knowledge a lot on what music is. I am now learning to 'try' and hold a note and be able to recognise a melody or even a harmony. 


What I want to get out of this subject is to be able to have some knowledge of how to play the piano and also try to do some acapella. I am going to try and teach my self different cords on the piano and give this a good shot. I may find this journey hard but I am willing to give it a go!!