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.

Sing sing sing (8)

During my spring break, I went to London and took a singing lesson while I was there.
Why?
Because when I wen to cheer one of my friends to the Concurso Internacional de Canto Lírico Ciudad de Trujillo, we meet the teacher in a masterclass and I really like his method. Fortunately for me, he's living in London so I contacted him and we set the meeting.
I practiced some exercises for the control of the air pressure: say "pr"going up and down through the scale as many times as posibble, for the inside opening of the mouth: touching the upper grinders with the back of the tongue, and for the equality of he sound in every vowel:holding a clothing peg with my teeth while singing every vowel .
I was really inspiring because now I have the feeling that  I can take this more serious.
I wanted to upload the video of the class but I couldn't because it was to big.


I just love her...

Summary of 70's work

For the 70's group work we created a disco song (8)
Again, Reece made the music and lyrics, because he's so good at it, and together made the drums and bass backing track (it's disco, so the bass it's to hard for my tiny knowledge). I'm not quite sure, but I think I'm gonna sing all the song in this one...and play the ambourine (very important!!!)
As we haven't rehersal that much, I can't say a lot of things of it, but I like the mood it has so far, and of course, I like to sing :)

Summary of 60's work

I have been really lazy with my writing during the last....month...sooo...I'm gonna make a summary.
As a group, we have to make a musical piece that represent a part of he essence of the 60's and 70's musical period. We determined we wanted to create a psychedelic rock song for the 60's and...that's what we did......well...something like that.
As I'm not very proud of my writing skill, Reece created the music and lyrics of the song. I made the drums backing track and he added some other stuff to the track to make it more psychedelic.
We made a rehearsal the last week before easter break and even though we have a lot of things to improve, I think we're on a good way.
I'l be playing the bass on this piece, which is a little bit weird because I thik is actually the second time that I'll play it in front of an audience...so that means that I have to train harder.

What time is it? train time!

Lot of 70'

So...I didn't write about last week....and I don't remember a lot which is why I'm goin to write everything in here ...means last week and this week(yes, lazy girl).

Now we are in the 70', the first class we listened different genres from that decade and tried to recognize them...I must say...I was totally better at this period than in the 60'.

For the assesment number 1, my group is decided to do something psychedelic, and probably we will have to write song about drugs and that kind of stuff which will be weird but fun I guess.

In this class week we talked about Queen and Pink Floyd, more precisely of "A night at the opera" and "The drk side of the moon"..........awesome albums.........The first one has the best song in the world (I don't care what Rolling Stone Magazine says), the one that makes my mind explode every time I hear it; and the second one has the songs which I had the pleasure to meet Pink Floyd's music....so...happiness all over the place.

But, every rose has it's thorn.....I have to write a song for next class, taking elements from this two albums...
I thought this was going to be hard...but it seems to be that I was wrong...well...just a little bit.
So far I have the structure ready, all the chords, got a general idea of what else I'm going to add and half of the lyrics. Writing in english is...different because I don't not enough to get with the perfect sentences, but it says what I want to say anyway...so it's not bad....I guess...(lots of guessing in here...)

So, now I have to finish it which is why I'm going to stop this (finally!)

Wait a second...there's something better than Adobe Audition?!

Last week (yeah...forgot to write this on the right week) we were working at pro tools which is a program for recording insruments, voice etc and edit them.I used Adobe audition for that but I think pro tools has more quality and other posibilities.

This is a tutorial because no matter what, I keep forgetting how to use it.

We also talk about our first assesment and come out with he idea of making a psichedelic kind of music. So, during the week I thought about it and...as psychedelic music has a lot to do with drugs, I thought about making an arrangement of "Trippin'" by Robbie Williams.....but......that wasn't actually a song about drugs (or that's what he said) and....if that was the case....what's the point?
Then my second idea came out: a psichedelic version of "Wouldn't it be nice" by the Beach boys....because they are so happy that makes me want to throw up and I need to change that.
That's pretty much it for this lazy week.

Who?

The Who was a british band who get in the music world in 1962 under the name of  "The Detours".The band members were Roger Daltrey in the vocals, Pete Townshend in guitar and vocals and John Entwistle in bass and vocals. The three of them went to the same school. With he inclusion of Keith Moon at the drums and vocals the band was complete.

In 1964, as a suggestion from Richard Barnes (a Pete's friend) the band change their name o "The Who", but this does not last long because in April Peter Meaden became the band's publicist and change the name to "The High Numbers". Finally, in November tthe same year, the band took the name "The Who" again.

This Band is known for breaking their instrumets during the shows, but this started as an accident when Pete smashes his guitar. In another show, Keith also smash part of his drum; they were the first rockstars to do that.

The Group was getting popular and in 1965 they went on a tour through Holland and Scandinavia. The single "my generation" reached number 1 in U.K. But inside the band, the things were a little bit more complicated because Roger has a strong personality, so the rest of the group fired him, but in October the same year he came back.

They were rockstars, and rockstars usually have to face with drugs issues. In he middle of this ascending popularity, life wasn't so easy to control, and Pete find his way in alcohol what makes his compositions more depresive. But the worst came in september of 1978 when Keith Moon was found dead as a result of an overdose of pills prescribed to control his alcoholism.

After Keith's  dead, they released two more albums with Kenney Jones as drummer. Pete made public his alcoholism and left the band in 1983. Since then hey have get together for tour and shows but not to make new records. Nowadays, only Pete and Roger are alive because John died in 2002 of a heart attack.

The Who (2015)History. Available from: http://thewho.com/history/ . [accessed 8th February], 2015]

Learning

Well...this week I had the chance to do my vocal warm ups at least one day...which is good...could be better...I start from E doing usually exercises with I and O until the fifth and stop around high G. Combine that with staccatos and end with A with exercises until the octave or novena, reaching the higher C#
In the class I had to recognize some songs and try to associate them to a popular musical gender. That was fun and interesting because I realized I need to know more about the characteristics of every gender, and also realized that the training in my home university needs to open to the popular side of music.
For homework I had to find information about "The Who"....and I was really surprise when I find out that I knew more than one song of them.

Then, a flashback came to my mind and I had a really good time doing my homework

Who?

It's all about 60' and 70'

I'm a shy person...probably that's not a good start, but it explains my behaviour in a lot of situations.
My first class was one of those situations. I was in a whole new country with a whole new people trying to understand the words in british (because is not english...definetly not!) so...if that isn't scary...what is?
But, good for me, the class was very interesting and friendly. We talk about the 60' and 70' which is great, because I love that period (well...I also love 50' and 80') so I'm waiting to see what's coming.
The bad thing, I have to compose something....which is bad because I don't like the results of my compositions, but it's good because I almost never work to improve that.
The good thing.....there's a Cello in the classroom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and I can use it!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I never thought that may be possible, but it is! so I have to improve on that too....more work, good for me xD
So, it looks like this semester will be full of things...well...that's just a musicians life! <3