Week 1-Commencing November 1st
In this first week of project one I would like to complete my write up on community music, which was a topic explained to us all on Tuesday. In this write up I may want to include footage from multiple musical composition programmes that we watched in the session, as this will show the examiner evidence of the different examples of community music helping people around the world. At the end of this session we were also given the task of creating a presentation 2 to 3 minuet on what music therapy / workshop session we would like to create for a community, by the end of this week I would like to have created this presentation in great detail to present in front of the class. During Thursdays session we were introduced into personal branding as musicians and how different branding techniques such as websites are used, during this first week of the project my goal is to begin researching on how to create a website for musicians on wix. My final task of this week is to begin learning our third song from John’s music sessions, which will be “love yourself” by Justin Bieber. I would like to be able to fluently play all the chord by next week so that I can then learn how to play chord inversions and add rhythm to the music.
Week 2-Commencing November 8th
Since last week I have achieved many of my targets such as doing my write up on community music, since last week I have written up all the information on the community music session. However I still need to add in the videos from that session to show evidence of different music community programmes. This footage is not on teams to solve this problem I will ask Lewis, the music tutor who ran the session, for the different videos that were used in that session. I also finished the presentation for the music workshop in great detail which had a read time of 3 minuets. Last week I also began working on making a website for myself, however there was a lot of information to get through therefore I did not complete the write up. I will catch up on this work whenever I can during the week. In regards to John’s sessions I did begin to learn ‘Love Yourself’, however I have not memorised the chords yet or play them fluently to the lyrics. This is because the chord transitions are very fast and hard to play through sight reading off of ‘tabs’. To solve this problem I will print the tab out onto paper so that I do not have to constantly scroll down my phone, I will then begin memorising the chords so that I do not need any sheet music to guide me.
This week we all began learning ‘feed the world’ by Band aid, we will, be performing this song in front of a live audience around Christmas time. This week I managed to be able to play all the chords in time with the rest of the band by the end of the first session, however as I have not yet learned how to play the inversions the chords sound clunky. Therefore to fix this problem I will spend time in individual practice to learn how to invert the chords to create a smooth tone on the chord changes. By next week I would also like to be able to play all three of our songs back to back in a set, this will prove to myself that I am ready for a performance. After I have played these back to back I want to add chord inversions and add rhythm to the music through arpeggios and other techniques. I do not have much documentation on the sessions I have done with John therefore this week my main priority in terms of written work is to catch up on the write ups from Johns sessions through my evaluations. One of my feedback comments from last project was to include a reflection cycle in my work, therefore I would also like to pick out a reflection cycle to include in my work before doing any write ups.
During our session on Thursday we focused on researching different styles of business cards so that we could make our own, I do not however understand how to work photoshop therefore I must research how to develop my own art designs. Or ask for help from an art and design tutor at the college to help me. By next week I would like to be able to know how to begin making a business card confidently through research. On Thursday mornings session we did another rehearsal of Feed the world and then began learning our second song which is, ‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas’. We are performing this song with a jazz arrangement and therefore has advanced chords in them which I cannot confidently play, therefore by next week I would like to be able to play these chords for the next rehearsal. I will achieve my goal through individual practice on my keyboard at home.
Week 3- Commencing November 15th
This week we began to learn Feed the world by Band Aid along with Rocking around the Christmas tree. Both these songs will feature in the final performance for the Christmas gig. Rocking around the Christmas tree is written used many complicated chords which include flat sevens, personally I find it very hard to figure out the inversions of these chords to make the chord changes to sound more fluent. To ensure I can play these chords confidently by the next rehearsal I will practice playing through the song at home and learn the inversions, practicing this song at home will make sure that I do not fall behind in band rehearsals as I will be familiar with the song and it’s chords. The chords for feed the world are a lot simpler, therefore I have already learned the chord inversions for the song which make the performance flow a lot easier between chord transitions. To make this song sound even better I would like to learn to add an arpeggio pattern in the music to add more rhythm to the arrangement of the song and make it sound more interesting.
This week we also began planning to conduct a workshop for a youth group in the local area, to make sure this workshop goes well I will compose a detailed plan on what I want to teach in the workshop by next week. In this workshop we will be teaching the community how to produce a song on Logic Pro X. This Wednesday me and small ensemble performed a gig in the lunch hall of the college Lister building, this went very well and to hear more of this visit the ‘Lunchtime Gig’ page under the small ensemble tab. Straight after the lunch gig we went on to perform the mock exam which showed much room for improvement, the main thing I will work on throughout the week is to learn the chords to Love Yourself. As in this performance I was not confident with the chords and structure for this song.
Week 4- commencing november 22nd
This Monday we sat through a student workshop run through in order for them to practice the session before the official workshop takes place. This allowed us as well as them to see that areas needed to be worked on, therefore also alerting us to flaws in our own workshops. This week me and bassist discussed with Sunday Chaos (band) that we were struggling with rocking around the Christmas tree, to help us learn the song we moved the key of the song down a semitone which made it a lot easier to learn due to the simpler chords. My goal for this performance is to learn the chords and structure of Rocking around the Christmas tree by next week, I will do this through home rehearsals and listening to the song in my own time. Wednesday marked the day we performed the final performance for our small ensemble project, this went very well up until the last song. This is when Millie forgot the lyrics which lead to the song ending prematurely, therefore we need to re-record this song at a later date so we can perform it correctly.
This week we also began producing business cards for the professional development module of the project, this is going very well at the moment and looks very professional and pleasant. I have completed most of the design, I will finish the card in next Thursdays session by exploring different fonts to use on the card in order for it to look professional. For more information on my design process please visit the ‘Business card’ page on my professional development tab. This week we also began designing our own mind maps on Miro.com, this mind map contained all the different skills we had picked up on since joining the course last year. The task of creating a mind map of this topic required us to reflect and think back to all the previous projects we had completed at Bradford College.
Week 5- commencing november 29th
For the community music module of this project we did a workshop run through which allowed us to see in depth the greatest weaknesses and strengths of our plan, our tutor Lewis was also giving us feedback on the workshop for us to reflect on, in this workshop I struggled with defining the term melody. Therefore by next week I will come up with a simple and correct definition of melody for everyone to understand in the workshop. On Monday we also did a performance rehearsal for this Christmas gig, which showed us that there is a lot of room for us to improve upon by next week for the mock. One weakness of which is to memorise all of the songs in the set list so that we do not need to bring sheet music to help us perform on stage, as this looks very unprofessional. On Thursday I finished designing my business cards, however it is missing a website link at the bottom because I do not yet have one , therefore to resolve this issue next week I would like to begin working on making my own website, so that I can later copy the link onto the business card design.
After looking through my digital space I have noticed that I have not finished all of my rehearsal write ups, therefore over the weekend I would like to finish these write ups so that I am caught up with written work. This will prevent future stress near the deadline, as in my last project I was behind which lead to a lot of stress from trying to finish all the write ups.
Week 6- Commencing December 6th
This week me and my group ran the community workshop with the youth group, this went very well as we ended up getting students to compose some very great musical pieces. However at the start I was not the most confident, during this session our tutor was also writing feedback like in the mock. This week I would like to reflect on this feedback and complete the write up, doing this will put me ahead of the written work due before the deadline. This week we also ran through the mock performance for the Christmas performance, I have reflected on this under the ‘Mock performance’ page under the Christmas performance tab. However the biggest weakness I will talk about here is learning to play the stabs in rocking around the Christmas tree on time, this is because I was playing them too late which made the rhythm of the song sound messy. By next week I would also like to have memorised feed the world as I am still not confident with the chords of the song, I will memorise this by running through the song more by myself and listening to the song more online.
Week 7- Commencing December 13th
This the final week of the project and I have finished all my written work through my good planning and time management skills. Therefore I will spend this week make sure I have cited all the sources I have used in this project and I will also organise all of my digital space. Due to the new covid variant we are inable to perform the Christmas performance in front of a live audience, instead of performing live we are going to record our performances and Live stream them on youtube. I am very prepared for this performance as I have memorised all of my parts and corrected issues I have faced in the mock performance. After the performance has live streamed I will finish the final page on my digital space before submitting my work which will the final performance evaluation.