Pathways in musicianship Online portfolio by

Lesson one

torinjb2 — 2025-01-16 21:08:42 UTC

We started off the lesson with showing my teacher some of the pieces I had already learnt and enjoyed playing. These selection of pieces included pieces like Chopin's Nocturne in C minor and Liszt's Liebestraum no.3 as well as Rachmaninoff's Italian polka arranged by Gryaznov for piano solo. Characterising these pieces as luscious, she went on to recommend a few options for pieces I could learn throughout the semester. One being a Brahms piece followed by Mozart's fantasy in D minor. Mozart was the choice we ultimately decided on due to my familiarity of the piece, having heard it before. It was also because my sight reading isn't the best so arpeggios, runs and simpler/ repetitive parts were easier for me to read and learn by heart- which the piece consists mostly of.

torinjb2 — 2025-01-16 21:16:26 UTC

I had learnt just over a page and received the feedback from my teacher that I was playing Mozart if it was written by Chopin. This I found extremely insightful to me as I have a lot of history with Chopin and is mostly what I played when progressing in skill, it did prove a slight challenge to rid of this subconscious mind set. How I over came it was listening and reminiscing on performances of Mozart that I've heard over the years and hearing the stylistic differences and the strictness of the classical period. I also was peddling the whole piece which I was later told this is another Chopin tendency and that with Mozart, you don't want to hear the peddle. This meant when I was playing preciseness and clarity of the notes was my priority, not showing off the colours and expressions of the piece like I'm so use to.

I was also corrected on some misread notes and helped me realise how the melody should be phrased in the triplets. Making sure to hold the suspension and emphasise the top line.

torinjb2 — 2025-01-16 21:35:23 UTC

The arpeggios at the start of the piece proved easy to play with lots of potential to express behind the chords. My first hurdle was peddling, when to peddle the descending semitones without having the notes clash too much and without sounding too dry and disjointed. I tried a few options including pedalling each note but was too quick to be peddled like that so I ended up peddling through each leap (thirds or fourths) to join them up smoothly.

Choir

torinjb2 — 2025-01-16 21:56:39 UTC

My first choir session I had no idea what to expect since I had never been to a choir rehearsal before and had essentially no previous ensemble performance experience. The vocal warmups I took particular interest too, becoming comfortable with being loud as well as of course opening your lungs and voice; including making strange noises at each other to normalise sounding off/ making mistakes. One thing that surprised me in the warmup was the physical aspect of relaxing the body; rolling your shoulders, stretching your neck to encourage a state of relaxation for your voice. Taking from this is, how important mental state is as well as physical warm ups and how attempting to reach sufficient relaxation aids the physical aspects of performing. An issue that came up however for me was the need to 'block out' the other vocal lines and focus on my own. However since the tenor part to this piece (Finlandia) was fairly straight forward it became easier as the rehearsal went on to memorise and become familiar with my line.

Concert assistance

torinjb2 — 2025-01-16 22:15:08 UTC

I assisted a tech rehearsal for third year students of the uni on January 15th from 9:30 until 12, I was responsible for changing over equipment between performances, changing the height of the piano stool between performers, lowering the piano's lid and stand, moving sheet music stands. I was also considered for a page turner on one of the pianists performance however struggled to keep up with the complexity and fast paced tempo of the piece so ultimately decided I wouldn't be appropriate for the role. Demand for changing in lighting between performers was also interesting and how low lit it mostly was. Some needed a spot light since they were out of the light zone or even needed to change due to there not being enough light on their sheet music that they were reading from.

torinjb2 — 2025-01-17 05:29:49 UTC

To warm up our voices we learnt parts of three songs, swing low, oh when the saints go marching in and I wanna sing. These could be sung in canon and was an exercise to aid us hearing other parts but sticking to our own.

Most of the pieces we rehearsed were religious hymns or pieces of national pride like Finlandia. When learning our second piece 'Tomorrow shall be my dancing day' I started struggling with singing the wring octave and was singing it an octave below written. It seemed harder to make sure I was sung the right octave in a choir because of all the other voices and bass singers being right next to me. This helped me practise tuning into what my other tenors voices and being able to focus on them to attempt to copy them.

torinjb2 — 2025-01-17 06:31:35 UTC

Later rehearsals I found reading lyrics as well as the notes to become an increasing issue for me so realised I had to learn one part by heart or get better and reading ahead of the line and anticipating what is coming up since this was a skill I struggle with similarly to my piano and playing two hands. I overcame this with very conscience efforts to try it out, but took time to get use to. It did help however when I could do it effectively and can transfer over on to my solo recitals.

I also found keeping tempo in a quick, sometimes syncopated, piece like tomorrow shall be my dancing day to be another challenge. I had to very actively feel the beat of the piece to stay in time with my fellow singers. This is something I am mostly unfamiliar with since I have all my background in solo reciting piano and am use to using as most musical lenience in rhythm as I can for additional emotional effect. This was a practice I had to quickly unlearn for this ensemble by being very strict with rhythm and tapping my foot to feel the beat.

Concerts I attended

torinjb2 — 2025-01-17 13:26:19 UTC

The first concert I attended was October 11th, at 'the cause' with a line up of 20 artists: Nine8, PVA, James Messiah and lots of other artists performing a variety of rap, dance pop music and live DJ ing.

Second concert was 25th October at Boileroom, with Pixie McCann playing her own songs on a live guitar loop.

Next was another gig at Boileroom, 1st November featuring small artists from around the area.

Another was at Pews bar and courtyard on the 23rd November also featuring local artists, most from the uni ACM.

The last concert was December 13th at Warwick arts centre performing all three movements of Rachmaninoff's piano concerto no.2, Aswell as Brahms' Hungarian dance no.5, Bizet's Habanera and Brahms' Ave Maria. This was performed by students of the university and a choir open to the public.

torinjb2 — 2025-01-17 13:46:11 UTC

There are three runs in total for the piece and all of them I learnt and could play quickly since I was well practised in the technique of flicking your fingers to play quick runs and learnt this when previously being taught another Mozart piece- Alla Turca. This technique was very useful and helped this difficult part of the piece to not be a challenge. Challenges of this piece arose with preciseness and phrasing. Since I was a Chopin trained pianist on Chopin nocturnes melodies weren't usually so defined and were more colourful. So expressing a major theme that didn't have the same desire of expression was new and unfamiliar. I overcame this by listening to other performances of the piece and taking inspiration and deciding what I wanted to take from each different performer.

Warwick arts centre

torinjb2 — 2025-01-17 14:36:34 UTC

The performance started with a formal applauded walk onto stage followed by a bow from the first violinist and the conductor to communicate the start of the performance to the audience. All performers were dressed in black and were quick to sit down and wait for the conductor to communicate the start.

When Habanera was performed the vocal soloist was applauded on and off stage before and after the piece and while performing stood in front of the conductor with their back to the concoctor facing the audience having a much more personal performance from her than from the orchestra. They were also the only one not wearing black, possibly to stand out.

Pixie McCann

torinjb2 — 2025-01-17 14:52:05 UTC

Pixie McCann was a solo performer with a guitar and microphone connected to a loop machine. She live performed her guitar parts and vocal harmonies to create a thick textured song with many layers and melodic lines involved. While being able to strip down the loop to vary the texture so it was not just a building texture getting more and more dense. She started her performance with an introduction from one of the organisers and followed onto stage to talk to the crowd. She made her online persona known promoting her music before performing it, while making a few jokes to connect with the crowd and create a more personal interaction between audience and performer. While singing and playing she would be looking at the audience and around the room creating an acknowledgement of us as an audience. Between songs she would also introduce the song and talk about it in a sentence or two to give us an understanding of the song and not just going straight between them without applause like you would expect at a classical concert between sings. Because she was a solo performer, performing a whole song she had to recreate and utilise as much of her recorded version of the song as she possibly could and thanks to the loop she could, using her guitar and hitting it in all types of ways to create a percussive loop, as well as the lower less idiomatic end of the guitar to create a bass line, and vocal parts to act as a counter melody or even an accompanying harmony.