Group Singing

Monday 5th September 2016

Audition (Madhouse)  (Singing/Dance/Acting/Audition)

For the audition we sang ‘Our House’ as a whole group to calm our nerves and let us settle more. I did not find this too hard to sing i believe I may have been able to sing it better. However I do feel i had a nice volume when singing. Lastly for this i would say i angled towards singing bass more as i can have a issue pitching as a tenor and bass was more plentiful and i find a lot easier to pitch. But to counter what I said I may be completely wrong and it could just be me not being confident enough. I feel this song was not too hard to learn however I maybe should have ran through it more to make sure I do myself proud. Then we split into a group of roughly 6 and continued to sing. We later then had to add some simple steps with the song. I think I could have danced it a lot better however I was not disappointed too much with my attempt. Possibly with more time I think my group and I may have been able to create a cleaner and more better quality movements with the song. There was bits where one of two of us (occasionally me) would get cut out of one part when we circled during one bit.

Finally for the audition we performed out scenes. The scene (as pictured above) was Joe sleeping in a car and Sarah notices him , Sarah has good news and Joe is thrilled even more so when he discovers she is now single and unmarried. For this scene I will be honest and say I should have looked at it more however I could not see it on Facebook and could not find it. Eventually a teacher pinned it to our Facebook page and I could print it. Something from this is I definitely need to work on my organisation. As far as the scene I did not have a strong accent which should have been used. I am not too strong at accents and can only perform very few accents. This is another thing I learn’t from today that I will need to work on. The other thing was me and my two partners  (I performed the same scene twice with two different partners) we only got paired up 10 minutes before we had to show the scene as we had no partner till then. So we had a short time to sort staging however we mainly just followed roughly what the majority of the class did for the staging of the scene. It was very obvious looking at everyones scene who stood out today with their scene.

 

Tuesday 6th September 2016

Paul’s Morning Choir (Singing)

Before getting the music sheets we first done some voice warmups such as ‘My Dog Is a Good Dog and Robin Hood. Both have very simple movement with my dog the movements are more just free up our bones and voices and have fun. it has very small scales in it and isn’t really split into voice parts just a simple warmup. For Robin Hood we would sing some words in sequences and each one had actions. Character word would be sung differently for example marion is sang very high and falsetto if you can sing in falsetto (I can but I have not practised it much and it does not sound that nice to me). this required us to listen to the sequence and keep focused as well as be quick in our movements and changing out pitch as well. Another warm-up we started off by doing a croaking/ vibrating noise on our deepest note we can reach then worked our way up to the highest note we can reach.

Also today we sang ‘Ease On Down The Road’ (As pictured above) This was a relatively easy song to learn I have never seen this song before but it was a good song to practise swelling (Bare with that probably isn’t the right term) swelling being where you move notes and slowly moving the notes up and down. The part where would swell would be the part ‘The Road —-‘ For this song I decided to sing bass next time we sing I am planning to sing tenor to try and keep flexible and improve both. I find my range personally is not too big either way and I am more known as a baritone which can be problematic as I sometimes move a lot depending on the song we sing. I found this song not too difficult and think if I needed to move to tenor part I may have been able to cope relatively well.

Paul’s Lesson (Singing)

Today we got given new sheet music ‘West Side Story’ (As pictured above) For this I sang tenor I was originally going to be bass but moved to strengthen the tenors. I found one sentence very hard to sing. I feel as though it was a hit or miss sometimes I got it then I would not. It was this line: ‘And for us stars will stop where they are! ——‘ The two main words I struggled with was stars and are. these seemed like the two highest notes we had to hit in the tenor part and I felt I could only do this if sang very loudly however when I missed it I felt a little hesitation and this may have affected me hitting the right note. Overall apart from this part this song was not too bad too sing.

 

Tuesday 6th September 2016

Madhouse Auditions (2nd Round) (Singing/Dance/Auditions)

The way the rounds worked to get into this show was Gary had two rounds after the 2nd if you are pass the 2nd round you have a part in the musical. I am happy I managed to get into the 2nd round. And am now starting to get a taste of what the musical will be like judging from todays audition and yesterday.

First we started by splitting the group into boys and girls facing each other with a split in the middle so the director could see our face while we sing. The is ‘It Must Be Love’ we only had a brief time to practise this song as we got given yesterday. i sang the song a few times today and honestly the high notes scared me quite a bit although I may be able to hit them i feel the hesitation affected my singing and therefore affected how well i did slightly.

After we listened to this song ‘Baggy Trousers’ (follow link to watch) and we had to create a small dance in a group of six. We need to make characters from the song and a small opening sequence to lead into the choreography he set. Mine was a nerd who got bullied and attempted to flirt with the girls after they laugh as he fell over. it worked well and we only had a short time. It worked well as our character almost all interacted with each other in our group. We then performed it and also watched all the other groups small dance opening. We also worked on the choreograph Gary had created I felt I did ok but I was slightly mis-cordinated in places and wish I could have had a bit longer to practise. We then had to repeat it again and once again i feel I could have done the dance a lot better. The opening scene went well as a group though.

In the end I did not get in the musical I was very open minded about it anyway so all I can do is focus on improving for the next audition show. I feel most of my skills was either average or weak. Acting was probably my strongest point but I wish I could have had a partner earlier on so we could have worked on it a lot more. My dance I feel was my weakest and i need to work greatly on my co-ordination. With singing I felt I was ok nothing too amazing. Although I wanted to interact with my partners more it was hard to do so as one was looking straight forward and just blanked me and the other was struggling to not breakdown so iI tried to comfort her. I even tried to make it more clear I was trying to interact by moving my body at a slight angle towards them but it was hard to initiate a interaction with them and  I did not want to put them off and distract them too much from singing. I am thinking of focusing on my dance skills however I am happy to try whatever is open to try and broaden my skills more and prepare more for next show.

 

Thursday 15th September 2016

Voca Choir (Singing)

Here is a video below of ‘Season Of Love’ that was posted on Facebook.

Today we practised a new song as well as warmups. we started to learn ‘Cant’ Stop The Feeling’ and recapped ‘Down To The River To Pray’. All the songs was relatively easy to learn. Something I decided to do was the teacher sings as a tenor so for certain songs I decided to join him and pitch from him. I found it easier but the problem was as soon as he sang another part I fell off slightly and found it hard to pitch myself.

 

Tuesday 27th September 2016

Morning Choir (Singing)

Today we started with a morning session choir. We done a variety of vocal warmups and slight physical (To get in a good position to sing) Today was mostly about doing a good warmup. Some excursuses included tongue releasing exercises this is one muscle people tend to forget needs to work a lot when singing and even pronouncing and speaking. The teacher also said these are not just for singing but can be used to prepare to speak or perform monologues too. We also sang a little bit of ‘West Side Story’ I moved around as usual to get in a comfortable vocal range. I ended up moving to bass and felt this was not a too hard song to sing and learn.

 

Thursday 29th September 2016

Voca Choir (Singing)

I may or may not have explained what voca is but it is a choir at a church which is local in bury it has it’s own mini performances however I am not tied to come and perform in these mini shows. Today we began with a warmup as usual and began to sing some songs which we learn’t before.