Final Extended Project Presentation In Action
Evaluating My Presentation Skills and Content
In my final project presentation, I felt that I presented very well however my overall idea was slightly confused. According to my own opinion and the opinions of my peers, I came across very confidently and according to my feedback sheets was clear, informative and had interesting ideas and concepts.
I liked how I related other musicians that I had seen live or links that I had used on the presentation to help explain my ideas and some of the context behind them. This helped me to create a clear concept of where those ideas would take me and what the final product could look like. Originally, I thought that a concept ep would be a really interesting way to convey my perspective of the world and would allow me to explore different sub genres of jazz and I felt that I communicated that enthusiasm really well. The sample idea for my last track was something that I had come up with just before my presentation and I think that it would be a great way to explore different viewpoints on different subjects which would bring a community element to my final project.
When talking about performing live and explaining the 3 options I could explore, I basically ruled out the first two ideas of using loops and creating backing tracks. This was useful in the development of my final project idea, however it is slightly odd to watch back as it is a few minutes of me criticising a couple of ideas that I put forward in my presentation, at the time I was still undecided as wether or not I could use a more technology based route as I had spoken with a few people who were well established with using ableton live and looping who told me that it wasn’t too hard to pick up the basics. However, after a lot of consideration I came to the conclusion during this presentation that organising a band would be the best approach for myself.
I felt that I explained my project video ideas clearly and used an interesting example to show how different editing techniques could change a simple video into something a bit more interesting without drastically changing the character of the video. I think that a simple approach often creates a great product and hopefully if I do make a music video for one of my songs it will be of good quality but not to complicated.
An element of my presentation that I am quite proud of is that I managed to put my own character across when presenting. I felt that I laid out my ideas very well and left them open for people to give feedback and doing well at managing the gaps between waiting for videos and my slide information. I purposely created a presentation with little text so that I could adapt and improvise when presenting and I think that I did this in a cool and relaxed manor.
I slightly misinterpreted my ideas on promotion , as I talked about not making an effort to widely promote a final performance and that Bradford doesn’t have the biggest gig scene. Whilst this is true, I think that I could still attract quite a large crowd with the right marketing approach as last year, over 80 people came to the evening that I performed on and the promotion for the event was incredibly limited, therefore I would like to research and develop my marketing process for my final performance in this project.
My Project plan was very limited, however I felt that it outlined a very basic structure for how my final project could work, this is something that I will need to refine for my project proposal. I will also need to create a detailed evaluation and reflective process which I will be able to implement into my final project process so as to benefit the overall process as much as possible.
Peer Feedback + Project Developments
Scanned from a Xerox Multifunction Printer
Teacher Feedback
The main feedback from Lewis and Nick was that I needed to streamline my project idea and focus on a certain area so as to do my final project justice. This was completely fair feedback as my presentation included a wide range of project ideas and different ways I could approach that goal which needed to be narrowed down.
Nick and Lewis also provided me with some great areas to research including other concept albums which were a popular theme by prog rock bands in the 1970s as well as to look at how artists have used music to develop an idea of growth for example in Phillip Glass’s murmarisation.
Reflecting On and Developing My Presentation
It’s safe to say that before doing this presentation, I hadn’t narrowed down my final project to a singular idea. The day before presenting, I still had 3 or 4 ideas in my head that I was equally excited about exploring and most of these came across in my presentation. The Friday before doing this presentation, I had gone to see a jazz band perform a concept album live which was a very interesting experience and something that influenced this presentation heavily. I have long wanted to explore composition and I have found a contemporary jazz style that I would very much like to emulate. However, I have struggled to find a set of musicians with a similar mindset in music until very recently and I am yet to explore composition and jazz with them.
Performance has been a large focus of my course over the past two years and this is where I feel that my strongest skill set and potential lies in. When proposing the concept ep, I feel that I pushed across the wrong message and instead would prefer to explore my own compositions through a final performance which could potentially be themed to explore an idea or story. I would love to record at least one composition and create a music video to a good standard. The rest of my performance would then be made up of a mixture of jazz standards and jazz arrangements of popular songs. I could collaborate with a range of musicians and vocalists to explore different genres such as hip hop, disco and rock through a jazz style or we could develop an individual style as a band to approach covering a range of material.
Although I won’t be using ableton live in my performance, I could look into different aspects of technology such as synthesisers , samples and pre recorded audio. Live art could also be a great way to create an interesting interactive performance instead of having a simple or plain backdrop and would add a unique aspect to the performance.
I will have to make a very strong project plan as well as research and understand potential problems I might face in order to counter act them. A strong and clear project plan will allow me to break down my workload and construct a strong development path as well as set milestones that I should be aiming for.
In terms of rehearsals, I will need to sort out my final band as soon as possible and check their availability. Weekly practices would be great, however depending on how well I arrange the music, we might not need as many rehearsals depending on how quickly we cover the material.
Finally, I will have to create a strong evaluation and reflection process. This will help me overcome any problems that I face as well as constantly push my standard of work to a constant high level.