Monday, 17 October 2016

13/10/16 Lesson Analysis

I was asked to lead a vocal warm up for lesson. I decided to stick with the idea of timing and ensemble skills and taught everyone an 'in the rounds' song, I split everyone up into three groups and to start I taught everyone the three verses and suggested that we all sing them together to understand the timing of them, and then I told on group to start singing, and when they got the the second verse I told another group to start singing and then when the second group got to the second verse my group started. I feel that this warm up was effective because it made everyone focus on what everyone else was doing and this is a big ensemble skill to learn, because we always have to be aware of what others are doing so that we can learn to fit in with everyone else.

Before this lesson we were asked to familiarise ourselves with the following songs: 
-Someone like you (Adele)
-Just give me a reason (Pink)
-Don't stop believing
-You're Beautiful

I learnt these songs and the lyrics prior to the lesson as instructed and this was effective because I was able to pick up the songs easily in lessons with everyone. We started by singing the song by Adele, and we sang in time with each other, however Kim then said that we had to split in two groups and one group would sing Adele, and the other would sing Don't stop believing. At first I didn't know what to expect and I didn't think it would work, but I trusted the ensemble and as the music for Don't stop believe started, my group started singing Adele, closely followed by the group singing don't stop believing. The first time we did this it was difficult to sing the two songs together and stay in time with the music, but we soon learnt that we had to sing in time with each other to make it work, and this was a very important ensemble skill.

We then did the same with the other songs, my group sing Just Give Me a Reason and the other group sang You're beautiful. Similar to the last time, my group started first closely followed by the other group. I feel as though these songs went much better than the last because we knew that we had to sing with each other and worked on our timing with each other. I feel that doing this was effective because it allowed me to improve my timing to develop my ensemble skills further.

In the second part of the lesson we worked on different ensemble songs in We Will Rock You, and we split up into different groups to do this. My group (Izzy, Jade, Sam and Megan) were given the song 'One Vision' which is a song by the GaGa Kids, and it is the opening to act two. To start we talked about what might be happening in the song and looked at the lyrics for ideas. We thought it might be set around the fact that the GaGa kids are still oblivious to the fact that they are being manipulated, and that they are telling each other and the audience that they should only be listening to Globalsoft hence the title 'one vision', because what they think, say and do is decided for them. We then started to learn the song as none of us knew it. When we grasped the tune and the basic lyrics we quickly worked on movement before we showed it to everyone else. We talked about using robotic movements and confusion in our faces to link to the fact that we were being manipulated but it was all we knew. Then I suggested when the guitar solo starts both at the start and in the middle of the song, I would do air guitar but then everyone in the group looks weirdly at me as if I stepped out of line, similar to a bohemian, but soon stepped back into being confused and robotic. This worked effectively because it added a sense of comedy, and the show is comedy, and it also represented the GaGa Kids characters. I feel as though our singing went well but to improve we could have learnt the harmonies to work on our ensemble skills more.

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