Live Performance|

In this music assessment Chloe, Ashley and myself worked together in a group to create a 60’s and 70’s music piece. We were to create a song in the style of 60’s and 70’s and perform them live at Sunderland collage.

For our 60’s piece the genre we chose was country rock/folk this was due to the fact that we could create something really quirky, fun and energetic but also to not stray from our comfort zones by being able to play what we feel comfortable playing. Our 60’s piece was called ‘ Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm. We wanted to keep a country feel to the song so we made a backing track to fit the genre consisting of guitar and drums. Chloe sang, Ashley played bass and I played keyboard and myself and Ashley also did harmonies behind Chloe throughout. When rehearsing the song at the venue a lot of things had changed, I had to stand whilst playing keyboard, whilst also using a standing microphone, this proved quite difficult for me as I have never had any experience in music before and I was not used to all the different equipment being used. To make our performance stronger on the night we decided to make a last minute decision t add some dancers in to make the performance a lot more up beat and energetic, playing instruments and dancing proved rather difficult for me so we thought this would help. I decided to come forward with the dancers to get the crowd going and also break away from standing behind the keyboard. The actually performance went really well, their was a lot of energy on stage and the audience seemed to really enjoy it, I felt as though I could have performed better whilst behind the keyboard as I was trying to hard to remember what to play, I also needed to remember to smile as I lost a lot of stage presence when playing due to confidence I think. The dancing section was fun to do, I did slip up on some of the dance moves due to nerves as it was a last minute decision, I tried to cover it by making it part of the song. Overall I think the performance was really strong as a whole. I need to work on my confidence when on stage. ‘At the same time, there is a hidden side to this fear, which you can only discover when you stop running from it and finally face the ‘’monster in the closet’’.’  (Esposito and MSW., 2009 p.23)

Our 70’s piece was ‘Burn’ by Ellie Goulding in the genre ‘Soul’. I chose this song as I liked the meaning of why she sings it and I thought it related to why soul singers originally sang in the 70’s. ‘Life is burning too bright to allow anyone to get any sleep. Goulding is equating love to the light and the fire that burns inside us all. She’s speaking of the passion, which keeps us going’. (Goulding . no date). The original version was too fast so we needed to create a whole new backing tract. We looked into what instruments were used in soul in the 70’s and created a backing track made up of a piano, saxophone and a basic drumbeat. Neither one of us played during this song as we wanted to focus it purely around voice and relate it back to its original form and try to make it as soul as possible, we each had parts to sing solo, and whilst we each took up the solo part the other two would harmonize. We also danced whilst singing and harmonizing and during the instrumental in the song we stepped in front of the microphones and did a small section of dance as well. This song went really well, we were all in time, it sounded really strong and I think we stuck to the meaning and the style of soul throughout. I thought our harmonies worked really well together. For myself to improve I need to become a lot more confident with singing on stage, confidence was my main down fall during the song not so much on the harmonies but when I took my solo part to sing. I also though I could have projected my voice a lot more as I tended to shy away from singing loud but that also falls under confidence I think, our dance moves could have been more in sync as we did struggle to sing and dance and project our voices whilst still engaging with the audience all at the same time. Overall I think the performance was really strong and we bounced off each other for confidence and worked well in the group.

There were a lot of things we could have improved on, such as extra rehearsals put on before the show to ensure we were confident enough, to also work on our harmonies a bit more and well as our stage presence just to make sure we stage ready. My main issue is confidence. In rehearsals I should have really pushed myself to sing and perform so that I could feel more confident when on stage, I think now that I have performed in front of a crowd for the first time and saw that I got a good reaction and nothing went wrong and that I enjoyed myself I can now push myself out of my comfort zone and start to try new things and even if things do go slightly wrong like it did in our 60’s piece that as long as you make it look like nothings went wrong it can easily be turned around.

To push myself even further and start to become more confident with singing I want to look at how to train my voice properly (miller, 1996).

To conclude I think our overall performance went exceedingly well and I do think we could have improved. I’m glad a few things went wrong because I can now learn from them next time around and hopefully it has made me a lot more confident in knowing how to deal with things when they go wrong. I have pushed myself a lot in these two performances and I am very happy with how well we worked together in a group and this had made me a lot more confident for next time around.