CHRISTMAS CONCERT

Today was the Christmas concert I believe it went well, we were all a little nervous because no.1 it was most of our first time performing and no.2 we were opening the concert this ment that we were the main focus at the beginning. We needed our performance to be the best we have done this means we needed to relax so we could focus well on what we needed to do. This ment listening out for eachother so we were able to play in time and at the right tempo.

I feel that we played to our full potential this evening and we worked hard to push for perfection. 

Practice diary 4

For the past two weeks the group has been working on the songs bridge and perfecting the song overall. However we are now performing back to black in the Christmas concert, because of this we want to create a dramatic ending to the song using a small scilence to build tention and end with one large loud chord.

We decided that on the last chorus as Daisha (singer) sings the line "I go back to.." I the drummer would create a snare build up using a crescendo which finished at the end of the word 'to'. Everyone else would also stop completely and hold the science for a moment and then all play a finishing chord on the drummers cue. this meant we needed to use eye contact for the drummers cymbal hit which cued everyone else to play the last chord. As Daisha says the last word of the line and I stop the chord with a small drum roll to finish.

This would give the audience a powerful end to our first public performance. We have given ourselves till the Christmas concert which is in two and a half weeks. We belive this is a sufficient time limmit to perfect this.

practice diary 3

Today we began to look at dynamics and tempo within the song mainly during the bridge.

We used our time this week to work on the bridge. As the bridge has a dramatic dynamic drop and a tempo change this means the group have to listen to my drumming as it is the lead of the song, And the drums set the tempo. During the bridge the other instruments drop out and drums play alone for two bars which introduce the tempo and dynamic change. when playing the bridge everyone plays a chord and holds it for 2 bars. With this we wanted to focus on everyone playing at the same time. However our main focus for this lesson was to work on the dynamics to build an atmosphere within the song to also create tention and a build up to the last chours of the song. 

as a group we wanted the bridge to sound more open, so as the drummer i used an open hi hat to create this effect. We have set our self a target of two weeks to get the tempo and dynamics up to a standard wich we would be happy to perform. 

practice diary 2:

Today we started practicing Amy Winehouse - back to black. when starting practice we each learned our parts individually, once we got a basic idea of what we were playing we came together and began to work on the intro to the song. it began to show that we had never played with other people in an ensemble before.this meant that we had trouble keeping in time with each other. we realised we had to listen to each other and communicate to work better with each other as an ensemble, everyone had to try and listen to everyone within the group and not just to listen to themselves for example the count in at the beginning. I as the drummer, need to count us all in at the right tempo so the group need to listen to me to know the tempo after the four count.