Exposition and performance

In the exposition of my activities and work I was more comfortable than the first time I talk in English in front of an “audience”, and beyond my improvements on the language, I think the fact of being familiar with the people who were listening to me and that I was talking about something that I knew pretty well helped a lot.

My biggest problem was the time, because I was focused on not use more than what I should so I stopped the videos soon without knowing if it was enough for the listener. I skipped a few videos and explanations conscious and unconscious and I tried – sometimes – to speak faster, but the perception of the time in that situation is different than the real time so I end up without knowing if what I said was enough.

Another problem that I personally have is that I try to be “friendly” in my expositions, sometimes forgetting that is an exposition and I have to be formal. So when I was speaking about a study and forgot the name of the leader of it, I could have just avoid to reference it in my speech, but instead I said that I have forgotten it. The second time something like that happened was with the name of a book that I had in a chair, so I took it to remember the title but I drop it before I could see it. Therefore, to avoid awkward moments in future presentations I will write down the names or be sure of knowing them.

The song finally had two full verses and another verse chord sequence with a cello solo and few lyrics at the end.

I think that is good enough but I will probably add a better intro later. And change a couple of notes in the cello part.

I have to translate the lyrics to Spanish, because the point of it is that my god-daughter listen to it, so I will change some phrases that sound too “cheese” for me.

The performance in general lines was the best I could do in those conditions. I finished the work the night before, so I didn’t knew well the melody – of course, it would have been impossible to play the cello – and didn’t sleep enough which is why my voice was not in the best conditions for singing.

But beside those things – that can be easily arranged – there is something that I have to learn to manage and is performing in small crowds (really small). All the opposite to the exposition, when I perform in front few familiar people, I get shy, avoid eye contact and sing or play quietly, almost without moving. Even though there was a battle inside my mind, because I knew that I had to at least look at somebody when I wasn’t singing, I was terrified of doing it.

All those things come out now in here, things that I knew before and thing that I realized now, so I think I am more able to work for solve them and get better.

The song

The creation of the song was easier and harder than I thought.
First I create the sequence of chords what come out as the verse music which could be divided in two sections A= Bb - Gm - Ebm - Bb and B= D- C- F- Bb but I wasn't sure if I should leave it just like that or add a chorus, so I read about lullabies in ...............book and it says that they repeat the melody over and over because that work for babies so I end up leaving it at the way it was.
the lyrics were a little bit harder and I spent a lot of days thinking about it and coming up with nothing, but when the hand out day came closer, the words came out much more easily.
Unfortunately, at that point and with all the work for the other classes, I didn't have time for going to the university rooms to use pro tools and record myself playing cello, so I wrote everything in Sibelius and transform the midi to mp3 for a better sound.

A)
           Bb
Little creature
                     Gm
How could I knew
             Ebm
All the love
                              Bb
I have inside for you

            Bb
When I hold you
         Gm
In my arms
                     Ebm
Seems like nothing,
                             Bb
nothing could be bad

B)
                     D
And even if it did
                      C
You know that I'll
       F                    Bb
be always by your side

(Repetition of the chords sequence)

As the years pass by
you will start to bloom
Shining like the sun
And soft like the moon

But life's also hard
It can get you down
Make you feel like
there's no way out

When that happens
you have to look up
And see us around

(Cello solo)

And you always
Can come back to my arms
little treasure of mine

McCormick, C., White, K. (2010) Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art. 2nd ed. California: ABC-CLIO.

resume and ideas for the song

For my personal project I had to create a piece of music. As I had already created an instrumental piece for strings for another class, I thought about do something different.
Hayley told me that my project had to include in some way the things I have been working on so far which I realized was singing, playing cello and composing.
I also thought about a song that I wanted to create months ago for my god-daughter so I took all those elements for my project.
As my god-daughter is a baby, the song should be some kind of lullaby, soft, warm and tender. The cello fits perfect on this description but the operatic style of singing not so much, so I change it to popular style.
As the music has to fit that description too, I thought the best style for this was something like blues, what doesn't have a lot of changes in the mood and is usually quiet.
The lyrics - which was the hardest part for me  - would have to reflect my feelings for her in a impersonal way, so not just me but anybody else could sing it to her; speaking about what she means to me and what I hope for her life.

My inspirations:

Requiem

Well...it happens.
Since I saw the request for altos for Mozart's Requiem I could not resist to apply for it.
And they chose me. I guess it was not a hard decision considering they need for altos, but I was in anyway.
I didn't sing the Requiem before, so I had to study it all before the rehearsal and some parts were a little hard.
For the rehearsal day I had a basic knowledge of the score but by singing in the right tempo I get lost in more than one phrase.
I didn't had much time to re-study in the week so I just read some lines a couple of times.
Surprisingly, by the concert day I knew pretty much everything - I sang everything but with doubts more than once - and even read the solo parts quietly.
Have participated in this felt great, it has been years since I sang in a choir and only a couple of times with an orchestra so the power the music of the requiem already have get intensify with that, I could feel it through my body

Performance on Sunderland college

The performance was great in a lot of aspects.
One of the things I enjoyed the most was the environment of partnership and the feeling that everybody wanted to help the other, all the smiles and the fun backstage. I think that was one of the main reason for all of this to work out well, because everybody knew what to do and tried to solve any problem.
It felt great to be on stage again because I lived the last 4 month with any kind of performance so I was starting to miss it, all the process and preparation that involves and play music live for a lot of people.
Our performances were pretty good; we solve the problems we had on the rehearsals and played the songs good enough. Of course is a long way to become that into an outstanding performance but that involves more time, people and experience.
Finally, I think we all enjoyed being there and do what we did, which I think is one of the most important things - and the reason - in the choice of becoming a musician/performer.

My favourite one:

Disco song rehearsal and class perfomance

The disco song was musically more challenging than the psychedelic one.
The tempo was faster, there were more chords, more words, more changes and a totally different mood than the other song, therefore, it became a challenge.
Playing according the time of the backing track was a lot harder this time and we lose the tempo often. For Natalie this was worse because she had to play the chords in the keyboard really fast, so she practised a lot.
I had to learn the lyrics what I did not thought was complicated until I realized that there were a lot of words in each verse sang fast and that had no story lead for me to hold on, so I ended up learning by repetition.
The last but not least thing we had to worry about was the performance.As it was a song about dancing and having fun, we should not stay petrified, but with all the things we had to sort out first, there was not going to be a performance already.

Psychedelic piece rehearsal and class performance

We had to present our 60's piece in the class in order to have some feedback, so we played it a couple of times before that.
One of the important things that we had to achieve was play according the timing of the backing track, which is the only not living thing in the play, and will continue playing at the same speed no matter what, so that's what I focused on first.
It took us more than one try to set the right volume in order to not lose the beat and listen to ourselves at the same time. We loose the tempo in a couple of times but after a while we started to play more accurately.
In the performance, the most absent thing was that: performance.
We didn't do a lot and, to be honest, a psychedelic state is not easy to represent - for me - without looking sleepy and absent minded, so that was one of the important things to work on for the performance.