love you any less - rag and bone man practice

I began working on love you any less with Idrees, we first needed to find my vocal range to see how high i could go. We then broke down the melody into individual notes for each word this made it easy for me to pitch my voice correctly to each word and each individual line. We were only able to get through the first verse and the first chorus this practice due to the pitch not being right. Idrees said that i need to work on remembering my pitch for each line, this is what i would work on for coming back after easter. Also need to work on my breathing and my different dynamics within the song however we will work on this at a later date.

Finalised Choices For Solos

My chosen solos for my exam are:

Rag N Bone Man - Love You Any Less. I feel this song would help explore my new found singing voice, as the song has a very large vocal range this would make the song harder however still build my own vocal range. 

Picture Perfect - Escape The Fate. I chose this song because I already know it this means I would be able to sing the song confidently. However the song would enable me to work on my rock voice this is somthing I want to get better at doing which is adding a certain grittyness to my singing voice but doing so without damaging my vocal chords.

Bother - Stone Sour. I chose this song because of its varied dynamics as the songs verses are of a low soft dynamic however the chours is powerful and of a high dynamic. I feel this will teach me how to go from a high dynamic to a low dynamic and visa versa. This will help better me as a singer

practice diary 10

Today we began to work on isn't she lovely. This song is swing so the beats are something i am not used too. when we play i need to work on keeping my tempo up so that i came keep guiding the band due to the drums setting the tempo. i need to work on my dynamics this is because the song is swung it needs to have a very relaxed feel to the song this means i need to play more gentle to get a relaxed feel to the song so that the song is smooth.

I give my self about a week to work on my dynamics to create more texture within my pieces.

Practice diary 9

Today I have finally decided to do all my solos as vocals. This is because I feel like I want to better my vocal range and learn how to sing properly without damaging my vocal chords. I have only one final solo decision my first solo vocal song will be guilty by rag and bone man.

i feel that this song will help me work and establish my vocal range. this is due to the fact the vocals are at a very low pitch. i believe the song is a nice change of genre from what i normally play its a modern blues/soul mix with is a nice dynamic range. when working on this song i need to work on my breathing and being able to hold a note for a long time without the pitch wavering. at the moment i find some of the pitch is to low for me to project and perform with expression.

I'm going to try to work on projection for a low pitch and my vocal range, i will be looking at different breathing techniques to help with this. as this is a harder song i give myself till the end of this half term so i can hit the low pitch.

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.

Practice diary 1:

Today we are looking at what song choices we want to learn as an ensemble. As a group we are going to brainstorm lots of songs we think that we want to perform, we will play these songs to measure the difficulty and make sure that we have a realistic outcome for our performance in December. we would like to narrow these down to four songs, we believe that four songs is an achievable goal for us to look into as a group for starting point taking us up to the October half term.

we feel that by choosing four songs we will be able to show our technical ability and to be able to explore different genres within music, we are giving ourselves up to October half term.