Project 2 was exceptionally hard for multiple reasons. I’ve learned that being in a team has a lot of commitments to your teammates. And lately, that has not been my strong suit whatsoever. For someone who has had several factors effect their work, such as attendance and performances, working as a team was very hard. I’ve had to deal with last minute changes, no planning, and rough times with my teammates.
In October, the first month that my Project 2 started, I found that Over-Lapping the projects put a lot of pressure upon my shoulders. I felt like back then, I needed help to do things step by step, but everything was moving so quickly. I felt like I should’ve communicated this to my tutors, but with everything going on, I was closed off from everyone. I was assigned my group after the half term had finished, and I was paired with Tia and Ben. Although, Ben initially was very rude about working with me and Tia, throwing a strop across the classroom that everyone could hear, being overly dramatic and embarrassing and offending me and Tia.
So when he finally did go into a practice room with us, I tried to think of a way we could make Ben feel more included, and make it easier on him, so I decided to let Tia and Ben both pick a song, and I would as well, and each song had to be agreed on by all three members. In the first week, we started learning Ben’s song which was Pink Lemonade. First week went pretty well, I managed to learn a verse and chorus, but timing was very off. But over the next week, we worked on the song and had learned the rest of it.
This is where things get messy. For context, during this time my depression had got increasingly worse, and it had caused me to exhibit signs of dissociation and isolating myself from the group and college. Which lead my attendance to go down yet again. This negatively impacted my team. With no singer on some days, they had to learn things without me. Which brings me to one of the main points my tutors makes about teams; Communication is crucial. After learning Pink Lemonade, Tia had pulled me aside and told me to try Adele Easy on me, I took that as her song choice, went home, and learnt it over weekend , only to come back on Monday to have her say to me that Easy on me was my song choice. I told her no, that she had assigned it to me, and the whole reason why I knew that song existed was because of her. Anyways she started to pressure me to do the song, because she had learnt it on the keyboard. I felt like I had to please her and Ben, because I felt like I had to make a team effort. So I agreed to the song reluctantly and began to learn it.
With three weeks left another song was decided without my consent, and it was a song that I hated and could not sing. Coming back into college I expressed that I didn’t like the song, and that I couldn’t sing it, and that the lyrics made me uncomfortable, but both of them wouldn’t listen to me. That was addressed two weeks before the mock performance. I had been mostly off the week before because my arguments with people in college had been affecting my depression and how I viewed college. Trying to address my concerns to Tia was awful, because she was very rude to me about not wanting change the song, around this time, we had been getting a bit distant with each other. It was really hard to communicate with her or Ben because both sides were dealing with the effects of not communicating. I felt incredibly guilty about my attendance which only made me want to avoid college even more.
Finally getting them to finally understand that I didn’t want to the song was a massive challenge. And it was a while before they finally caved in and stopped pressuring me to do songs I couldn’t perform nor did I have consent in doing. They have told me that they had found someone to do the song Not prepared for you. So Millie was given the song at the end of the second to last week. But I had agreed to do Easy on me and Pink Lemonade. So we spent the last week going though the songs. Millie and Tia had told me that I can’t sing Easy on me properly when I could. Listening to Tia and Ben playing back up for Millie I could hear that Tia wasn’t playing the piano properly, it sounded messy, she would speed up and slow down in parts that were crucial for the singer to take a breath. And she would also add parts to fill the song in, but it would sound out of tune and messy.
Here’s a video of Tia and Ben playing together to show to show you what I mean:
In this video it shows that the guitar playing clashes with the piano, and at times they both can sound out of time. This can potentially affect how the singer performs because the singer relies on the instrumentals from the other members in the group.
So when Millie could sing the song because she wanted to sing it for the Christmas showcase, they had decided to place me with an entirely new group, Millie’s group, with a new song. I found this to be very hypocritical how they kept telling me there’s no time but then they put me in an entirely new team on the day of the Mock performance. I got to work with two new people, who were Niall and Joshua. Both boys were working on a song called Love yourself – Justin Bieber. A song I already knew. I had ten minutes left to practice the song before I had to do the recording. And I sounded awesome on the recording. Playing with a new group wasn’t a problem, I was even able to perform without the lyrics. I felt like if my group had just listened to me and not tried to pressure me so much we could’ve actually changed the songs, because I am able to adapt to new things and last minute plans very easily.
I just wish overall I could’ve been paired with different people from the start. Maybe my overall grade wouldn’t be as bad if I had another group who were more open. A lesson that I’m gonna take with me is that I’m never gonna sacrifice my role as a singer again and I will be open to suggestions but ultimately it will be my decision about what songs I sing. In the next group I will more confident in my role as a singer.