Somewhere Only We Know – Ukulele:
This song was chosen by my vocal teacher, Eric. He felt that making the key higher would enable me to push myself out of my comfort zone and learn how to belt. I believe that I successfully reached this target of belting. My singing in general for this song was something that I had worked on for a long time. I was proud of this element. On the other hand, my ability to mix this together with strumming the chords on the ukulele was something I struggled with. Usually, this is a skill that comes fairly naturally to me when doing something as simple as playing chords but throughout this song, I found myself forgetting which chord to play next and made a few mistakes by playing C instead of G in the chorus. I also played this song too quickly and did not stick to one tempo. I feel as though I rushed due to nerves. If I ever perform this song again, I will practice to a metronome before the performance in order to train myself to remain at a constant speed.
Favorite Crime – Guitar:
In this song, I yet again changed the key by moving it up a whole tone. Though upon watching it back, I was so focused on the guitar playing that I did not sing it as I should have. his song to challenge my finger-picking skills. I, however, misplaced my fingers a lot of the time. This made my chords sound strange. One positive of it was that during the ending of the song I managed to hold the long notes despite being seated. I think that the reason I struggled so much was that I had been practicing this song at home on an electric guitar. These not only have narrower fretboards but also thinner bodies. So when I transferred to the acoustic during this performance, it was less comfortable and threw me off slightly.
This Is Gospel – Piano:
I had been struggling to accompany myself with this song for a while. The chord changes were difficult to make when also trying to focus on the lyrical content. However, I spent a lot of time rehearsing it until I was playing through it without any mistakes at all. Unfortunately, this streak of perfect play-throughs did not carry on in this set. Due to nerves, I made small mistakes and this left me feeling slightly disappointed. I would like to try and research methods of coping with performance anxiety to help me. In addition, attending open mic nights and other performances will enable me to grow in confidence and mean that I will be able to prevent mistakes from happening due to nervousness.