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At the start of the year we were given the simple task of outlining a goal we would like to achieve during the course of the year.

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Today we where given a brief for our Christmas Show, the class was split into 2 groups and we had to come up with 2 songs to perorm in our seperate groups plus our christmas single as a complete group.
We sat together in my group and talked about possible songs to cover, whether or not they should be christmas songs or not, I suggested that nomatter what the songs should be upbeat and have a celebration feel to them. the original songs we came up with where Christmas in L.A. by Vulfpeck and happy by Pharrel williams as we felt these had a funky feel. there was 8 of us in the group at the time so we decided on who would play what instruments and got the chords for our songs. we didnt have  adrummer so i used my mpc to provide electronic drums.
I personally made a point of sequencing a drum beat for the song which was in the same tempo and close enough to the original.

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Today we where due to work out the arrangements of our songs.
we decided to change Christmas in L.A. to merry Christmas everyone as everyone knew it slightly better. We faced a bit of a challenge because a few of my class mates that werent present in the first week had joined the group so we had to figure out where they could fit into the group. the main conflict of interest for myself was that christian was goin to play drums but I already had a drum beat for happy so we needed to have a conversation. we decided that for happy I would remain on the mpc and Christain would playcongas on the track then take over on drums for merry Christmas everyone, with me on percussion and backing vocals.
I listened to the songs just to become more familiar with the changes.

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Practiced happy mainly to finally get it sorted out.
had a bit of communication breakdown over whether or not the happy was major or minor, we eventually agreed major and by the end of the day we where sounding pretty good, we also had more new additions to the group to work into the songs. we had a problem with keeping time with the Drum machine in the bridge where it breaks into clapping then starts again so we needed a way to keep better time.
I sequenced a new track of claps on the mpc to accompany the human clapping, this helped keep us in time when the song broke back into the chorus, i also added a hi-hat after the snare on every second hit to make it more lively

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Today we focused on Merry Christmas, working out the arrangement and giving it a full practice.
we ran though both happy and merry christmas and where happy with the arrangements, the whole group then practiced our christmas single together, we had some missing members so Ryan filled in lead vocals. I also used jingle bells and provided backing vocals myself.
mainly worrying about how ready we where.

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The day of the gig and final practice. Everyone tried to arrive for 9 so we could have a final practice in our groups and all together with the Christmas single. we Where done and I think it went pretty well.

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Music skills auditions,today we were presented with the task of coming up with a group for music skills auditions
Deciding on group.
In recording class everyone went up to the board to write down which catergory we wanted to participate in. I decided I would be in the original band group along with Phil, Ryan and Emmet. My main reason for this is I didn’t want to play covers.

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Practice.
All four of us went to Ryans house to jam, we came up with the basis of our first song called "Craigavon to miami", Phil recorded his mpc parts that day so he could bring it to class when we practise and ryan filmed some of our rehearsal on his Ipad and uploaded it to the group chat.

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No practice due to bad weather.

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Song structure.
We decided to drop Craigavon To Miami because when we went to revisit it we all agreed we didn’t feel excited enough about it to continue, Emmet had some great bass line riffs, so we spent that day coming up with guitar parts along with Emmet's riffs which where leading us down the funk path! I personally reworked the drum beat and added some synth parts.

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Studio.
We went into the studio with our track and outlined the verse and prechorus. I added a tr8 to a mpc drum beat, we came up with several different ideas for synth parts on a rhodes piano sound and moog little fatty. I decided to get Mackenzie involved ith playing the keys as I new she was a much better pianist than me, we recorded it and ended up taking Mackenzie into our group.

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Chorus.
We went into the studio again and we wrote the chorus, we recorded the parts in the song again to get a basic structure outlined.

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Lyrics.
After having a rough outline of the song recorded, we went away and came up with vocal melodies and lyrics, we then recorded some of the lyrics and melodies, I came up with a brass section to give the Chorus more power and help add another stylistic funk convention to the song.

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Writing.
We will expand on the vocal melodies and making sure the brass section will work with the chorus. We will get the rest of the song structure sorted including the solo and end section and see how it flows.

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We had a full run through of the song with all the instruments, Ryan wasnt there so I had to fill in on vocals. We did a performance for the class and got feedback. We had good charisma but the song needed a bit more practice.

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This was the performance day. Ryan came in so we spent that morning going through the song and vocals, tightening up the structure. Our performance was that afternoon. Before the performance I communicated well with the engineers to check the levels of my mpc and vocals, I also talked with Mackenzie to pick a suitable electric piano sound which would fit in with our funk song as we where unable to use the keyboard from our original practices. during the performance I tried to give as much energy as I could, I had to control the drum changes and also fill in a lot of the vocals because Ryan had missed practices and wasn't as familiar with the song, I managed to get the audience clapping along and generally enjoyed myself and just tried to have fun with it. I feel like I have improved in confidence since the start of the year as before this performance I wouldn't have dreamed of adding my vocals. I believe I demonstrated good communication with my band mates and even counted them down to finish at the same time. Going forward I would like to improve my own vocal abilities and start playing the guitar more as I have let it take a back seat due to the amount of guitar players already in the class, I am currently working on this with Declan, we are practicing together with our own 2 piece with a view to go out gigging soon which will help both of our abilities on guitar and vocals.

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Today we where given the task of recording our solo piece if we hadn't already done so, for me the best option was to go home and get my guitar and film there with Declan for accompaniment. Declan and myself started working on a 2 piece acoustic set back in February to get out gigging locally so we have been playing together every week, I decided to pick one of my favorite songs which was the Jimi Hendrix version of Hey Joe. I have played my own version?arrangement of this song for years so I worked out the structure and lead parts with Declan to adapt it to a 2 piece song, I played mostly the rhythm parts and sang it and played a version of the original solo, after this was finished I changed to playing the bass style part which Declan had been plying throughout the song while he improvised a solo, both of us demonstrate improvisation and structural accuracy throughout the song, I dont believe any 2 bars where exactly the same, it had a loose blues feel as well as having the structure from the original. This was important for me as at the start of the year I said that one of my goals was to get over my self consciousness of my singing voice and be able to sing and play a song the whole way through, I believe I've accomplished this as a solo performance and also shown improvisational skills.

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In our performance class today we had to come up with the songs we would do for our end of year show on the 23rd of may. Declan myself had planned to take a couple of the songs we had played together as a 2 piece acoustic and play those at the show, however when we went to the class we realised quickly that because of the restrictions of our time slot we would have to incorporate more members of the class, MJ wanted to do an original song of his so I negotiated with him so that we would only do one song to allow him the time to fit his song into the show. Me and Declan decided the song we would choose was sat by the ocean by Queens of the stone age, and left out sweet dreams are made of this by the eurythmics. Now I had to select suitable accompaniment for sat by the ocean. I have included a video of Qotsa performing an unplugged version of sat by the ocean below, it isn't originally an acoustic song but it translates well. I wanted to stay true to this version but at the same time give room for our own spin on it. I trusted Emmet and Carl to come on board as bassist and drummer respectively but I thought female backing vocals would help with the higher notes of the song, theres also some keyboard accompaniment in the original acoustic version so Kirsty was a perfect fit for the role. With the group decided Declan started a Facebook group immediately and I sent a link to the original version before the class was over so everyone had a reference point. Later I found a bass tab and instructional video for Emmet and I sent Kirsty a tutorial on how to play the song on piano. The only difference was that Me and Declan play the song tuned a half step down, so I had to make sure everyone had the song transposed properly. Me and Declan already knew the song together so there wasn't much for us to figure out, and we decided Carl should play the Cajon and a tamborine, however this would change.

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This was our first practice together as a band at the marketplace theatre. everyone had seen the video I sent in messenger and familiarised themselves with the song, we had a couple of run throughs during our hours practice and I was pretty happy with the results, there was just a couple of issues with the stop between the 1st chorus and the main riff begging again, but I was confident we could figure them out, we also needed to decide what Kirsty would be playing on the Piano.

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Me and Kirsty went over the vocals together in the back of room 7, I played guitar and she played keys, we wanted to make sure that we where using the same phrasing of lyrics and singing the same words, we where pretty happy after an hour or so, we also took a video for reference. We decided what Kirsty should play on the Piano for the different parts of the arrangement, Kirsty wasnt very confident with playing the piano and singing at the same time so I told her if it came to it rop thepiano and sing the backing vocal instead as I thought this would be more beneficial to the song.

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This was our second practice in the market place, by this point the band had all their parts ironed out and we were sounding very good, there was still an issue with the stop after the first chorus but by the end of the session we had sorted it out.

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today we had a sound check in the marketplace, it was difficult to hear myself through the monitors but we managed to get through, to my surprise the stop I thought we had ironed out still didn't work and it was the day before our performance, the main issue was with whee the drums should end so I recorded myself singing up to the first chorus and sent it to Carl that night so he would know exactly when to stop.

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Today was the day of our end of year show, we had a final soundcheck and Carl nailed the drum stop, we still had some issues hearing ourselves on stage. when It came time for us to play in the theatre we were ready and waiting in the wings, we came straight on in time, I started by introducing the band as I felt this gave a more professional approach, I added a bit of humour because talking to the audience actually puts me at ease, we went for it and we played the song very well, the band kept together very well and I tried to exercise more microphone control than I had been previously because I'm unable to project the higher notes as well as my deeper range, so I tried to get closer in those parts, I could hear my voice in the monitor but I couldn't hear my guitar at all, I think we played a really good version of the song and I made sure to turn to Carl during the performance just to give him the nod for the dreaded change stop we'd been struggling with. Judging by the video after Im not sure that it had the right sound at all as my guitar and Kirsty's piano seemed to be completely missing but the compliments we got after the show put my mind at rest and I know it had very little to do with how we performed the song, people seemed to have enjoyed it and we all felt very good about it.

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At the start of the year we wreaked what we would like to accomplish this year, I think over the course of the year I have accomplished my original goal and a lot more. I wanted to finally sing and play guitar for a song and I accomplished this at the end of year show with leading the band for "sat by the ocean" I also managed to incorporate the hip hop element into my music skills performance with the use of my MPC. At the end of year show I believe I excercised controlled instrument and vocal technique as well as musical accuracy in my performance, I also managed to demonstrate improvisation with my solo cover of "Hey Joe" (1.1,1.2,1.3).
I displayed positive communication skills, confidence of control over performance and demonstrate critical listening skills to evaluate group performance, I achieved this in my ability to lead my band at the end of year show with very little disruption, making sure everyone had what they needed to perform the song properly and being able to hear when a part was out of place and be able to fix it, like the dreaded stop in our performance with the drums or knowing when it was time to scrap an idea in my music skills group. (2.1, 2.2,2.3).
Throughout the year I created and performed a varied repertoire of music with a considered and controlled approach according to stylistic conventions of each genre, whether it was providing an appropriate drum track for our cover of "happy" for the Christmas show, using synthesisers and slap bass styles for the song Satisfunktion from music skills or being able to develop Blues playing techniques for an accurate acoustic cover of Hey Joe. (3.1,3.2,3.3).
I demonstrated the creative process of directing other musicians in my end of year show group, swell as contributing ideas to accomplished group performances with my writing and arrangements of satisfunktion, I produced suitable rehearsal material for covers and original works which can be clearly seen in making the appropriate tabs, video lessons and even recording myself available to the groups I was involved with so they did not miss a beat. (4.1,4.2,4.3)
Over the course of the past few moths my 2 piece work with Declan has contributed greatly to my own personal development which is evident in the playing of my solo piece "hey Joe" with Declan as accompaniment. (M1)
With performing different genres this year from rock, pop and funk, I was able to identify and develope a range of technical skills, whether it was the appropriate drums, synth sound selections, slap bass, the use of particular scales in my own playing or just being able to select the right person for the job in a group performance, I was able to demonstrate how my own technical skills have developed and improved at the end of year sow performance, referring back to my initial goals at the start of the year. (M2,M3).
Throughout the year I have been developing my skills as a performer, I felt in the beginning I was very much afraid to sing, In the Christmas single I felt I took a back seat and found it hard to find a place that I fitted into. forming my 2 piece group with Declan and practicing regularly really helped bring me out of my shell, it gave me confidence and the more styles of music we covered and experimented with the more my voice and confidence in it grew. A big test for me was composing the song satisfunktion, I love funk music and knew it would be a worthwhile experiment, I had never planned to sing that song but after being let down on few occasions by one of the group members I stepped in and experimented with vocal idea, I ended up singing the song with Ryan for music skills and giving it as much showmanship as I could while controlling the MPC and singing, although I wasn't happy about the overall performance this was a boost to my confidence in ways, I knew I could doit with more practice and kept throwing myself into it, by the end of the year the experimentation and ups and downs paid off as I was able to lead a band and sing and play guitar with them in a calm, controlled and professional manor, Me and Declan are still working together every week and already have gigs lined up, Im not afraid of this anymore because I know it'll keep getting better, I learned so many valuable lessons this year, some of the few things I would have changed about previous performances are the people that I selected to play with, by the end of year show I think I had managed to group together the perfect balance of talents and knew I could rely on all of them. Ive grown as a would be producer and a performer and its very much down to experimenting with different instruments, genres, groups and situations, its helped me develop the next step which is to be out gigging frequently as part of a 2 piece, something I never thought I could do.