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For this solo I did a cover of "Drown" by "Bring me the Horizon".  I had already done vocal warm ups for a different song I had performed on the same day and so I decided to do another video from my vocal warm ups playlist and this time its was for learning to sing with the diaphragm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he6v96SAbNw&index=1&list=PLsg3mqqKrRjtfuTna_gZSgPaY2WBdrkP3

Within this warm up I learnt how to not strain my voice having already found it difficult to not strain it due to a cold. It helped refresh my voice for the next performance and gave me an insight into what it would be like performing at a gig as a solo artist and needing to refresh your voice between sets.

When performing this song I sing as well as play the guitar, changing cleanly from one strumming pattern to the next while singing in time and to a decent level. I didn't make any mistakes during this song and because of this I believe it is an example of how I have developed as a soloist.

I believe that I have also developed at warming up my vocals as due to watching all videos on my hour long YouTube playlist I have taken what I personally found useful from it and adapted the warm ups so I can practice them before every performance that I do in the future. An example of this would be that I have carried on doing the warm up from my last Padlet for Resonance and Breath control. This is because It helped my reach notes using different voices (as in head voice and throat voice). I have adapted it by humming to noted in my head rather than notes being played on a keyboard because if i could only use a keyboard for the Exercise it would be very unlikely that it would be possible to do before every one of my performances.

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For this solo I practiced by choosing a video from my usual vocal warming playlist off of YouTube. The video I chose was for Resonance and Breath control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGhiWroCuQ0&index=5&list=PLsg3mqqKrRjtfuTna_gZSgPaY2WBdrkP3

In the warm up I had to hum in order to activate the resonators in my face, nasal cavity and throat. I had to move around at the same time of matching notes with the hum. I chose this video in order to accomplish a high note using my throat voice in place of my head voice.

The song I chose was "I walk the Line" by Johnny Cash however I was doing a cover of the song by "Halsey," altering it by adding verses from the original song and also adding octave changes (which was what I used my vocal exercise video for). You can hear my voice strain at the change in octave during the last chorus of the song however this was due to me being ill at the time instead of just improper warm ups. In this song I sing and play the guitar with just one mistake however I do not usually play the guitar so for me I believe this was progress as a solo artist. Due to the only instrument being a guitar I tried to make the sound in different parts of the song vary instead of just a straight strumming pattern. I did this by playing just the top three strings at times instead of all of the strings. I believe this helped in creating color for this song as it was quite a repetitive song anyway however it did lead to a mistake where I accidentally just strummed the top string on the guitar which sounded way too empty.

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For this Padlet me and Ellie did a cover of the song "Youth" by "Daughter". Within this we distributed parts in a way that could be considered as solo's in order to show that we were able to perform a solo as part of a group or in this case, duo. Despite this we also harmonized together showing we could work as part of a group too. Before we started the performance we both did separate practice routines we had been building up during this term. I carried on with my usual YouTube playlist of different vocal training exercises however due to the different low and high ranges that I had to hit in order to perform this song correctly I chose this specific video to focus on from my warm up playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSOn-b3V6rQ&index=3&list=PLsg3mqqKrRjtfuTna_gZSgPaY2WBdrkP3

I found that the video helped me reach the high and low notes I needed in order to harmonize both higher and lower than Ellie when she was singing the main melody of the song. The harmonies were technical to work out as we both switched from either high harmony, main melody or low harmony in order to show off our technical ability when organizing a performance. There were no errors in my performance and so I believe I would be classed as a successful soloist.

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Week 6: Loz, our own genreI was in a duo...

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Week 6: Loz, our own genreI was in a duo with Ellie this week and we did a cover of Youth by Daughter, this being in the indie genre; it's origional genre. She sang the first verse on her own as I sang the second on my own, and then I joined in with the lower third harmony in the chorus as well as sang the second verse.

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This week my band wasn't here for our lesson which meant I was in a room on my own so I decided to do a cover of "No light, no light" by Florence + the machine. I decided to make my aim for the lesson to be to have it recorded by the end and I'm now uploading it to be marked as a solo performance.

The song I chose was reasonably challenging and quite contrasting to the other solo pieces I had planned to do as this was in the genre of alternative/indie pop and was quite hard to navigate around due to there being long held notes and many words squished into one verse. The challenge was controlling my breathing and working when the best place to breathe was so I would have enough breath for each part of the song. As well as this, I also had to play the keyboard and perform with a sense of flair all at the same time.

During my performance I feel that I added as much flair as i could by getting lost in the song but due to having to stay at the keyboard this made me unable to make any hand movements or move around too much. I also then had to keep an eye on what I was playing on the keyboard which meant I couldn't make any eye contact towards what would be an audience. Despite all this i feel i had enough flair due to my situation as I sang the song without lyrics and stood up in a presentable manor.

As for my breathing, I had practiced the song in the room for a while before we'd recorded it and worked out how big my breaths had to be at what parts and although at some points you can tell I struggled to hold a note on, it did not ruin the performance and was only due to how long I can personally hold a note for. You can hear all throughout the song my breaths, big and small, readying me for harder parents or easier parts of the song.

While playing the keyboard I managed to hold it together decently as I never usually play it and sing at the same time. There was only one wrong note around the end of the performance but I kept it going and carried on playing as it didn't sound terrible and to an audience wouldn't have been noticeable.

I hit the wrong note on the keyboard at 3:27 on the video

An example of struggling for breath would be the note i held on at 2:53 on the video. An example of flair would also be at this point where I shake my head while singing giving the illusion of being lost in the song.

(I have linked the right florence and the machine cover, it just says adele on it)

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Before this performance I practiced by doing a set of vocal warm ups that I followed off of the internet. Here is the link to the guide that I used to warm up my vocal chords: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsg3mqqKrRjtfuTna_gZSgPaY2WBdrkP3

The feel of this song to me was that it was pretty stripped back, the drums not overpowering like in some more heavily produced songs and the use of chords being reasonably simple too, using only three different chords up until the chorus. The drums are played in ¾ which is unusual, however makes the song sound more natural and less like most popular, overly produced songs that are usually in 4/4.

The song starts with the drums and then the bass comes in afterwards, the guitar following after a while and then the singing. The long pauses in between each instruments first appearance in the song sort of gives you the feel that the song is laid back, even the instruments sounding laid back which how they entered the song; slow and one after the other.

This song was reasonably challenging to perform as we had only just then managed to write the lyrics and that explains why I had to mess around with the sheet of paper while I was singing, despite this fact I found that it was helpful as it prepared me more for performances under pressure. Because of this I did end up singing the wrong words at one point, singing "I can't blame what I said" instead of "I can't blame today" at 2:30.

To improve this performance I could have learned the lyrics more and could have come back to record the track again and if I were to do this then I would sing them correctly as well as without sounding like I don't know where I'm going with the melody.

As a band we worked very well together and due to the problems I had faced in the last padlet I had ensured that my mic levels were balanced correctly to ensure I could be heard but my voice wasn't overpowering. Together as a band I believe that our levels were pretty good. The only reason we failed as an ensemble to me was that we had hardly practiced, having spent most the lesson struggling to come up with lyrics however that said, when I had been struggling to come up with anything other than a chorus, another band member stepped in and helped me so that we could have the song done in just enough time, displaying great traits of successful ensembles.

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QS16 2 Wk8 Room 2 Response to own stimulus

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QS16 2 Wk8 Room 2 Response to own stimulus

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Before this performance I practiced by doing a set of vocal warm ups that I followed off of the internet. Here is the link to the guide that I used to warm up my vocal chords: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsg3mqqKrRjtfuTna_gZSgPaY2WBdrkP3

Working within this ensemble I found that since I had previous experience with working with ensembles (this being evident in my other Padlets) I finally understood all the elements of a successful music ensemble and portrayed this in my performance. Though the levels of my mic were not the best and so it was quite hard to hear my voice on the video, I was harmonizing and working together with the lead singer of the song Shaan. It is very important to be able to work well with the other members of your ensemble and if it were not for the level of my mic, I believe this would have been a great performance. We were all stood up and presented well as a band and knew our parts very well due to us paying lots of attention during our rehearsal of the song. I believe this was due to our Band leader Shaan who had the most input on the song as well as the way we presented ourselves, however this being good as it meant we were all guided as a band and the result in the end was a great performance.

This performance was in front of our peers and so our connection with this audience was good in my opinion. We had nominated 2 speakers from our band which were Cate and Shaan due to their confident mannor which would allow us to connect with the audience more.

Before the song started we had a small miss-happening with the guitar line being forgotten however our connection that had been built with our audience allowed that to be forgotten easily as soon as we got on with the song. Some of the criticism that we received notified me of the fact that our volume on the mics were off and after listening to the video back I realized that if I specifically had turned mine up our song could've sounded a whole lot better balanced.

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QS16 2 Wk6 Room 3 Response to Own Stimulus

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QS16 2 Wk6 Room 3 Response to Own Stimulus

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Before this performance I practiced by doing a set of vocal warm ups that I followed off of the internet. Here is the link to the guide that I used to warm up my vocal chords:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsg3mqqKrRjtfuTna_gZSgPaY2WBdrkP3

This week we carried on with our version of the song "Something" by The Beatles. We had been away and practiced all of our parts individually so that if would take less time to get it recorded at Magnet and so it did. We only had to wait for one band member to learn their part as they had been absent the previous week but after that it wasn't long before we had played the song through a reasonable amount of times and were ready to perform it.

As the quality of the video wasn't the best it is quite hard to tell how well we performed visually but it is clear to see that we were all stood up professionally behind mic stands/keyboards etc instead of sat on the floor and not paying too much attention to the performance side of the song. Due to this I believed as a band we appeared to have flair. The only part that let us down in the performance is the subtle use of lyrics during the song at parts that me and Ellie used and so I will not use them again in a song I know well enough.

As for the music, the song was played in the same style as The Beatles song, e.g. it was approximately the same tempo (134bpm) and had the same feel to it. The only aspects that were different to the original were the fact that we had less singers than the Beatles had in their band and so there were less/different harmonies throughout, as well as Dan's bridge which instead of playing the same melody as the original song, he played differently by improvising something himself.

Overall I believe we worked very well together as we had all stuck to our goals for this lesson and we all meshed very well together considering we had mainly practiced our separate parts apart.

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Inspector Denise

Lyrics:

(Hook)
Ooooooo
Ooooooo

(First verse)
Inspector Denise
you're on the case
you're on your way
to help to save

(Hook)
Ooooooo
Ooooooo

(Second verse)
Inspector Denise
today's the day
you'll help to save
the girl of your dreams

(Hook)
Ooooooo
Ooooooo

(Pre chorus)
When she looks up at you for help
you'll smile, and let out your hand...

(Chorus)
Denise
Denise
Denise
Denise

END OF SONG

Before this performance I practiced by doing a set of vocal warm ups that I followed off of the internet. Here is the link to the guide that I used to warm up my vocal chords: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsg3mqqKrRjtfuTna_gZSgPaY2WBdrkP3

Above is an original song that my group wrote together and performed together as a band. It is in the genre Indie and this is easy to tell due to it's unusual topic and easy listening feel. It also has it's own individual structure as it ends after the first chorus yet this still works well and only supports the idea that it is within the indie genre. The chord progression at the beginning of the song is just 4 chords repeated until we reach the Pre chorus where it changes and then returns back to the original chords for the chorus. Harmonies were sang by Ellie and I sang the lead. Throughout the song Ellie's harmony was higher than the main melody and this didn't change. It gave the song a nice cheery feel.

The challenges in this song would be where me and Ellie would sing the hook together as it was hard for me to sing some of the notes strongly as well as keep it going for as long as I needed to. Another challenge would be at the beginning of the pre chorus due to what I felt was a word missing, even though I wrote that part myself when singing it I realised it would fit the music better if there was a quick "And" at the beginning of the sentence.

Our performance standards in this video were extremely poor as we were sat on the floor and reading lyrics however our plan had been to just record this for looking back at so that we could then re-record it again in the future to a much higher standard where we are all stood up and actually performing.

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Uploaded by QS16 - WORKING AS AN ENSEMBLE on 2017-02-21.

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This week was the first week of this term and so we formed new bands.  In Mikes lesson we were given a list of level three songs to play as a band.

We decided to sit down and write our goals for the lesson on a sheet of paper and did so, our three goals being to:

1. Try to pick four songs to cover
2. Organise the parts for each song
3. Start some kind of rehearsal

As our class was only two hours long and a quarter of that was spent setting up the equipment and having the class brief at the start, we set ourself quite high goals and so did not reach all of them however did get some important planning done.

On the back of our goal sheet it asked us whether we had completed all our goals and since we hadn't we circled no and went on to explain why. which you will be able to read from the image below.

What we did achieve was to choose two songs from the list Mike gave us that each band member liked and then we also set up all our equipment for a bit of getting the hand of the chords of each song or practicing the harmonies using the mikes. The songs that we chose were:

The Beatles- Something in the Way she Moves
Pink Floyd- Wish you Were Here.

We then all decided to get on with The Beatles song and figure out who was doing what parts, this being quite brief as there was a missing band member. Me and Ellie as the singers split the song into verses each and sang choruses together so that we could harmonise, there is an image below that I edited of when each of us will sing: L standing for Leah, E standing for Ellie and the small H standing for harmony.

My target for the next lesson was to basically learn all my parts for the song so that when it would come to the next rehearsal, we would be able to go straight into the song without not knowing what we would have to play/sing. That is why I practiced my parts and my harmonies before week two and took a voice recording of me practicing that will be at the end of my padlet.

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In this lesson we were given an era of music to write in the style of. The Era we were given was 60's and 50's and so as this was our first lesson as a group, we mainly discussed and planned how we would go about it. Firstly, we discussed whether there was much difference between the 50s and 60s and then secondly we discussed the artists we thought of when given those eras. This led to listening to songs by Nancy Sinatra, The Who, Elvis and The 13th Floor Elevator (a contemporary 50s 60s style sounding band) for inspiration and ideas on how to go about writing our composition. As a singer I discussed possibly writing a song that contained call and response for me and Louis as there were just us two singers in the band and I though it would be quite fitting for the Era's we were given as it was heard in the Nancy Sinatra song we listened to called "Summer wine".

We later went on to get some material down and I wrote up some lyrics to a simple four chord song they began to play. This was not a completed song as we did not record it and were only experimenting with the chords to see what sort of sound we wanted to go for.

The lyrics I wrote are here:

Seeing her standing there
legs up there and that hair
she's the girl of my dreams
wonder what she's gonna do

All eyes on her once again
I wasn't the only one dreaming about what it'd be like to hold her hand
dreaming about a dance

She's breaking my mind now
what the hell am i to do
She's breaking my mind and it's gonna snap in two
she's breaking my mind
I don't know what to do

The structure goes like this:

Verse, Verse, Chorus.

As you can see it was not a completed song but definitely fit into the 50s vibe of the genre that we were given. Before writing the lyrics I had asked the group for ideas on how to write in the style of 50's rock and roll and they had suggested writing about dancing as well as commenting on how respectful men would write about women compared to disrespectfully they do now which gave me inspiration for my lyrics above.

In the song the guy talks about wanting to hold this girls hand while stood staring at her at a dance. This includes both suggestions from my group and so made the song seem very 50's rock and roll. Instead of describing this girl he was staring at in a objective way he politely suggests that she has nice hair and long legs before going on to say that he wishes he could dance with her, this being extremely PG compared to some songs today and further on in time.

I will record myself singing the melody I came up with of this unfinished song and add it to this padlet.