Performance | Lesson 15

In today's lesson we did the actual performance in front of a Year 7 class, and I think it went really well. We started by doing the same warm up as we did last lesson as we knew it was effective and we thought it would help us when performing today. Then once we did a quick run-through of our duets, we started the performance.

When performing Blank Space, myself and Evie had to share a microphone because we only had three available to us, which meant we had to make sure our vocals were heard equally through the microphone. I think the performance of Blank Space went really well and I was really happy with the outcome of it. I think the harmonies were heard equally and the dynamics of the song sounded balanced, which is good as that was something we had to work on when improving the song. Everyone knew the lyrics so we didn't have any mess ups during the performance. Overall, I think this song went really well and the audience looked like they enjoyed it.

When performing Up, the vocals sounded equal and the harmonies sounded accurate. When there were a view mess ups of harmonies, we managed to keep going with the song making the mistakes not noticeable in our performance. We both knew the lyrics and we knew when to come in which made the performance a lot better. The audience enjoyed the performance and I am happy with the outcome of this performance. Overall, I think this song went really well and the audience looked like they enjoyed it.

When performing Ho Hey, myself and Maddie had to share a microphone because we only had three available to us, which meant we had to make sure our vocals were hear equally through the microphone during the third verse and the last chorus. I think the performance of Ho Hey went really well and I was happy with how the harmonies sounded. Everyone knew the lyrics and were confident with what they were singing which made the performance really good. Overall, I think this song went really well and the audience looked like they enjoyed it.

Run-Through | Lesson 14

Since this lesson is the one before the actual performance we decided to do a run-through of all of the songs after we decide what order the songs will be placed in. When warming up we did the siren warm up to help us reach the high notes in the songs and also to help warm up our vocal cords. We also sung the scale of C while saying the phrase "Green Lorry, Orange Lorry" to help pronounce our words correctly.

We started the lesson by choosing the order of each song. We decided to start with Blank Space because we knew the audience, which was a year 7 class, would know the song and they would enjoy hearing a song that they like and know fairly well. As this song is quite up-tempo, we wanted a slow song to go afterwards. We agreed that Maddie and Evie would sing their duet Big Yellow Taxi as it's quite a slow song and is quite the opposite to Blank Space. Then due to mine and Amelia's duet being up-tempo, we decided to have that song next to keep the balance correct. We all agreed that we would end with Ho Hey as it is our best ensemble out of all of them and we wanted  to end a positive and calm note which this song will do.

When rehearsing the songs individually we stood in the places that we would be when actually doing the performances in our next lesson. For Blank Space, Evie will be on the end and I will be between her and Maddie. Amelia will then be on the other end of the line next Maddie due to mine and Evie's harmony being similar and Maddie and Amelia's parts being similar as well. Then for Up I will be on the left and Amelia will be on the right but for the audience I am on the right and Amelia is on the left. Then when we sing Ho Hey Maddie will be on the end, where Evie previously was, and I will in between Maddie and Evie while Amelia is in the same spot as before.

When doing a run-through of each song, we all really liked the outcome of each ensemble song and duet song. There a few things we still need to improve on slightly, like being confident with what we are singing, but other than that it sounds really good and I think we are ready for the performance in our next lesson.

Dynamics | Lesson 13

In today's lesson we decided to do more run-throughs of both of the ensemble songs that we are going to be performing. We warmed up our voices with the same warm up as we did yesterday as we knew it was effective and it helps a lot when warming up our vocal cords as well pronouncing our words properly when singing the songs.

We started by rehearsing Ho Hey because we felt this was our better ensemble out of the two we have. When rehearsing the song we thought it sounded good and we were happy with the outcome. The higher harmony needs to be a little louder but not too much as we wanted to keep the song calm and simple through the melody and the harmony. We then rehearsed Blank Space and realised we had learnt the lyrics a little better than before, and also the harmonies sounded better. We have found that the high harmony, which is what I am singing, needs to be a little bit louder to make the dynamics sound better.

To make my high harmony louder I need to make sure I open my mouth wider when singing the harmony as it helps boost the volume of my voice. However, the high harmony is right at the top of my vocal range which means that it's a little difficult for me to raise my voice, but I am going to try and sing louder to balance the dynamics of the song.

Once we finished the rehearsals of the ensemble songs, we decided to move onto rehearsing the duets. Again, myself and Amelia decided to focus on the harmonies of the song just to perfect them. We sung along with the original version of the song and the karaoke version to help us get used to the original song which can help us with the harmonies as well. After the rehearsals were completed we liked the outcome of the harmonies and we knew the lyrics of the song which helped us when singing the karaoke version.

Without Lyrics | Lesson 11 & 12

Last lesson we all agreed that we needed to learn the lyrics to both of the ensemble songs, so we have decided to do that this lesson. Before that we sung up the scale of C while singing "o e o e o" and also we decided to sing our arpeggios as well to help with any leaps that we have in our songs. Both of these warm ups were effective because they warmed up our vocal cords and also they helped me prepare me for our duet as I have quite a few leaps in the song that I need to prepare.

We started by rehearsing Ho Hey with the lyrics quite a few times in a row so we could get used to the lyrics and also so we could remind ourselves of what we are singing. Then once we had rehearsed it with the lyrics a few times, we decided to rehearse it without the lyrics. This wasn't too challenging as we all knew our parts and we roughly knew the lyrics anyway. We did the same thing with Blank Space and we found that we struggled with remembering the lyrics more. The reason for this is because the song is up-tempo and the phrasing in the song is quite fast which means we have a lot to remember when singing the song. We decided to go back to singing the song with the lyrics and then after a few run-throughs of that, we decided to go back to singing the song without the lyrics to see if we had improved. The outcome of that was good as we remember the majority of the lyrics. We still need to learn some of the lyrics, but we know all the chorus' and the bridges in both songs so we only need to focus on the lyrics in the verses.

Once we had rehearsed all the group songs with and without the lyrics we decided to go and work on our duets separately. Myself and Amelia knew we had to work on the harmonies and the melody of the chorus, fourth verse and the bridge so we decided to focus on that this lesson. When we messed up we would go back to where we messed up refresh our memory of what we have to sing and then redo it to help us get used to it and to help it stick in our memory. We still need to improve on the harmonies slightly but we are improving quite a bit and we are happy with the outcome so far.

Rehearsals | Lesson 10

In todays lesson we decided to go through both of the ensemble songs and both of the duets as we hadn't heard Evie's and Maddie's duet yet. To warm up we did the same warm up where we sing "Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry" along with the scale of C, but we also sung "Red Lorry, Green Lorry" to help us with our pronunciation. We found this warm up effective because it helped us pronounce the words in the songs correctly, and it also warmed up our vocal cords so we were ready to sing our ensemble and duet songs.

We rehearsed Ho Hey first as we all agreed it sounded really good and we were all really happy with the outcome of the harmonies and we didn't really think it needed to be improved as much as our other ensemble song. When we rehearsed Ho Hey we all agreed that it sounded really good, and we really needed to improve on was the lyrics as we don't all know the lyrics yet. We then moved onto Blank Space and we did a run-through to hear how the harmonies sounded in the chorus' and the bridge. When rehearsing this song we found that we still need to learn the lyrics and also we still need to improve on some of the harmonies in the chorus. We did a few run-throughs of this song so we could improve the harmonies in the chorus and the bridge, and also so we could learn the lyrics of the song. After doing a few run-throughs we agreed that the sounded good and we were happy with the outcome.

We then took turns to perform our duet pieces. Evie and Maddie went first and showed Amelia and I what they have done with their song so far. They have started the first part of the song and they have worked out some harmonies that sound really good in the song. They still need to work on the rest of the song and they need to learn the lyrics but other than that their duet sounded really good.

Myself and Amelia performed our duet with what we have done so far and it sounded quite good. The others said the performance is good but we need to learn the lyrics. We also found that some of the harmonies were a little bit flat so we need to make sure we improve on the melody and the harmony during the fourth verse and the bridge.

All four songs sound really good, but we have all decided that we need to improve a little more and learn the lyrics of the song to make the songs perfect.

Up | Lesson 8 & 9

Before we started rehearsing the song we did the same warm up as we did last lesson because we thought it was effective and we knew it would help us prepare for rehearsing our duet. Once we finished the warm up we did a run-through of the duet and decided that we needed to break the song down in order to get the harmonies accurate.

We found that there were harmonies in the fourth verse, the bridge and there are a few in the last chorus. We decided to start with the harmonies in the fourth verse as they were the first harmonies  we could hear in the song. Amelia found singing the melody along with the harmony fairly difficult so we  decided to sing along to the original at first to see what it sounded like. Then we started by singing the melody a few times and I came in with the harmony. However, the first I came in with the harmony I made sure to be quiet and then get louder once Amelia had caught onto the melody and could sing along to the harmony. We tried this method for the bridge as well as we found it quite effective. Whenever one of us went wrong in the rehearsal we stopped where we went wrong and kept singing it until we got it correct. We did this so we would get used to singing the part we got wrong and also so we could improve the lines that we needed to improve.

We spent the lesson rehearsing the song and just making sure the harmonies sounded accurate. By the end of the lesson we agreed the harmonies sounded better than they did, but we still need to work on them to make them perfect.

Duets | Lesson 7

I was absent for a lesson and during this lesson the others in the group tried Rude by Magic again, but they decided that the song wasn't suitable for us. Instead they agreed that we would sing two different duets. Maddie and Evie would sing a duet and myself and Amelia would sing the other duet. We decided to do warm ups in our duet pairs. Myself and Amelia chose to sing the scale of C, up and down, while singing "Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry" as we  found effective the last time we used this warm up. We also decided to do siren noises to help us reach the top of our vocal range and the bottom of our vocal range. This warm up is also effective because it helps us with any leaps we may have to sing.

Went through different songs we could do as duets and we agreed that we should choose Up by Olly Murs and Demi Lovato as our duet. We originally knew the song, so it meant that it wouldn't take us long to learn the lyrics of the song and to learn the actual song. It's quite a well-known song so we knew the  audience would enjoy the performance so we both agreed that the song would be our duet. We listened to the original song and decided that Amelia would sing Olly Murs' parts of the song and I would sing Demi Lovato's parts of the song. We agreed this because Amelia's vocal range is similar to Olly's and my vocal range is similar to Demi's. After choosing who would sing what parts, we listened to the karaoke version of the song and we tried singing our parts to see what it sounded like. We liked what the outcome was but we agreed that we needed to improve the harmonies a bit more and we need to learn the lyrics a little bit more so we could perfect the song. We decided to go away and learn our parts individually along with the karaoke track so when we rehearse the song the next time we could see how to improve.

Bridge | Lesson 6

We decided to spend this lesson working on the bridge of Blank Space as we assigned parts last lesson but we didn't have much time to rehearse the harmonies. We started by doing the warm ups we did last lesson because we found them effective, but instead of singing "Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry" we sung "Red Lorry, Green Yellow". We changed the phrase to improve our pronunciation of different words. This was effective as it helped us pronounce the words in the song correctly while singing the tune of the song.

We started by doing a run-through of the whole song to see what the harmonies sounded like and also to refresh our memory on what we have to sing in the song. Then once we had done one run-through we decided to focus mainly on the bridge. We listened to the original song and studied the different harmonies that were apparent. Once we had heard each others harmonies we spent some time singing them and finding the right notes to sing. When we thought it sounded accurate, we did a run-through of the bridge without the backing track first and then with it to see how it sounded without and with the music. When we thought the harmonies sounded accurate we did a few run-throughs of the whole song and liked the outcome of the bridge. We've agreed as a group that we should all individually rehearse our solo parts and harmonies just so we can perfect the song.

We  then started working on our next ensemble song which is Rude by Magic. We listened to the original song to try and find some harmonies within the song that we could use in our ensemble piece. We found a few harmonies in the chorus but we weren't sure if the song suited us as a group. We have decided to listen to the song individually and in our next lesson we will decide whether we want to carry on with the song or not.

Harmonies | Lesson 5

To start this lesson we did a group warm up. We warmed up through singing the scale of C while singing multiple phrases such as "Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry". This helped improve our pronunciation of words as well as warming up our vocal cords. We also warmed up through singing arpeggios while singing "la" to prepare us for any leaps that we may have to sing when rehearsing our ensemble pieces.

We decided to start rehearsing Ho Hey first as we thought it would be fairly straight forward for Amelia to learn her parts and join in with the rehearsals. We started by showing her what parts she was going to sing, and we did a run-through of the song to show her what it sounded like so she could pick it up fairly quickly. Once she picked up the song and she started rehearsing with us, we decided to focus on the harmonies throughout the song so we could perfect them. Once we thought the harmonies were perfected and we were happy with the outcome of the song we decided to move onto Blank Space.

We did a run-through of Blank Space without Amelia first to show her what the song sounded like and so she could pick up the song. Once we did one run-through we showed her what parts she was going to sing, and then we did a run-through with Amelia and she picked up the song fairly quickly. Some of the harmonies in the chorus were a bit off so we decided to focus on those harmonies so we could perfect them and move on. To do this we decided to sing our parts separately and then come together and sing in unison. Myself and Evie sung our parts together before Maddie joined in with the melody. Amelia joined in with the lower octave of the melody after Maddie joined in. Then once we were happy with the harmonies we decided to do a run-through of the song. When we were happy with the outcome of the song so far, we decided to move onto the bridge of the song.

We knew what the harmonies in the bridge were roughly, so we only needed to assign everyone harmonies and decide who would sing what. We decided that Evie would sing the melody at the beginning of the bridge and she would also sing the high note at the end of the bridge. We also agreed that Amelia should sing along with the melody after myself and Maddie have joined in with our harmonies and she should also sing the melody while Evie was singing the high note. Once Evie had started the bridge with the melody, I will come in on the second line with a high harmony, and Maddie would follow in the next line with a higher harmony, then Amelia would come in with the melody before Evie sung the high harmony. We thought this was effective as it helped build up the dynamics of the song and also it worked well with the transition between the bridge and the last chorus. We did a run-through of the bridge to see what it sounded like, and we have agreed to carry on working on it to perfect the harmonies.

Ho Hey | Lesson 4

To start the lesson we did the same warm up as last lesson as we knew it warmed up our voice well and we found it effective. After our voices were warmed up we decided to do a run-through of Blank Space to see how the harmonies sounded in the chorus. Evie still needed to improve her harmonies, so we spent the first part of the lesson going through her harmonies with and without the backing track to help her. After a few run-throughs of the song, she learnt her harmonies, so we decided to move onto our next song which is Ho Hey by The Lumineers. 

With Amelia still absent, we had to decide her parts for her, but it wasn't too complicated as we knew what she would be able to sing. To start the rehearsal we gave everyone both melody and harmony parts. Evie will sing the first verse and I will come in with the harmony at the end of the verse. Amelia will then sing the second verse with Maddie who will also come in with the harmony at the end of that verse. For the first chorus, after the second verse, Evie will be singing the melody while I sing the harmony. The melody of the third verse, after the chorus, will be sung by me and Maddie will be singing the harmony along with the melody. Amelia will sing the melody, and Maddie will sing the harmony for the second chorus. We've then split the bridge in half with Evie and I singing the first lines and then Amelia and Maddie singing the last line along with the first line of the third chorus. Evie and Amelia will be singing the melody and myself and Maddie will be singing the harmony. Then for the last line of the last chorus Evie and I will join in with the others with Evie singing the melody with Amelia, and myself singing the harmony along with Maddie.

Once we decided these parts of  the song we started to rehearse the song. Without Amelia there, it was difficult to song the harmony without the melody so we took turns singing Amelia's solo parts so Maddie could learn and rehearse the harmonies. Once we had the harmonies figured out, we all decided the song sounded really good and we liked the simplicity of it.

Blank Space | Lesson 2 & 3

In today's lesson I thought it was a good idea to start rehearsing Blank Space by Taylor Swift because I thought it would be a good starting point, and also the harmonies were clear in the song which meant it wasn't too complicated to work them out. We started rehearsal with a simple warm up of singing "la" up the scale of C, and then we did a run-through of the song. Amelia was absent in this lesson so we had to make decisions about her solo parts and harmonies without her. Luckily we knew her vocal range and we knew what she would want to sing. 

After the first run-through we disrupted solo parts to everyone in the group. I'm starting the song by singing the first verse, followed by Amelia who will be singing the second verse. Evie will follow after the chorus with the third verse and Maddie will be singing the fourth verse. We are all going to be singing the choruses in the song and the bridge with different harmonies along with the melody. We did a run-through of the song with her parts and decided it sounded really good and the parts we had given ourselves suited our voices well. 

Once the verses had to sorted out, we started to work on the chorus. Firstly, we decided that I would sing the melody of the chorus, however, as I knew the high harmony well I decided that I would sing the harmony and Maddie would sing the melody instead. This has worked out well as I can help others with their harmonies while Maddie sings the melody. 

With Maddie singing the melody and me singing the high harmony, we decided Evie would sing the low harmony which is an octave lower than what I am singing. Amelia will then sing the lower octave of the melody as we knew she would be able to hit the low notes in the chorus. As Evie needed to learn her harmony we decided that Maddie and I would sing the melody and the high harmony first to get it sounding correct and we would use that as a starting point. As Evie's harmony is a lower octave of mine, I helped her when learning the harmony. To do this I sung her harmony so she knew what she was singing and we did a few run-throughs of the song so Evie could get the hang of the harmony. We ended the lesson by doing a run-through of the whole song and we all did our own solo parts and harmonies in the chorus. It sounded good, but we still needed to work on some of the harmonies. So we decided to go away and learn our harmonies on our own to see how we have improved in the next lesson. 

Researching Songs | Lesson 1

In today's lesson we had to pick a variety of different songs that we could sing as our ensemble pieces. Before we could do that, we needed to choose an individual to be in charge of the ensemble pieces. This person needs to be in charge of taking the meetings and deciding what to do each lesson. The other group members agreed that I should be the person in charge because for the other ensemble songs we have done previously I have helped with finding the harmonies in a song. This meant I would choose what song we would start with once we had chosen three songs.

As a group we looked into different songs and discussed what we felt would be suitable for us to sing. We started off with 5 song choices. These choices were Blank Space by Taylor Swift, Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye, Rude by Magic, Wings by Little Mix and Ho Hey by The Lumineers. We decided that these songs would all be suitable for an ensemble song as we they all have clear harmonies and different parts that we could equally and fairly give members in the group. We all agreed that we didn't want to sing 5 ensemble songs in our final performance so we needed to pick 3 songs out of the 5 we had picked previously.

We chose Blank Space by Taylor Swift because it had an equal amount of solo parts for everyone and also it had a good amount of harmonies that we could distribute out to everyone in the group. 

We chose Ho Hey by The Lumineers because it had clear harmonies and we could easily distribute solo parts to people fairly. 

We chose Rude by Magic because it's an upbeat song and has a reggae genre to it which contrast to the other song. Also it has some harmonies and clear solo parts in the song.