Sunday 25 October 2009

Sunday 25th October

On Friday last week, I went into the mill along with a few other people such as Glyn, Rob, Leigh, AJ and a few others. I managed to work out a few loops on logic, which need a lot of work and i managed to speak to Simon about the compositions, and he offered that both he and Digby help me to compose a song that will really show my voice to its full potential, so some progress has been made, yet the lessons for guitars, singing, keyboards, bass and drums still haven't been sorted, which is really infuriating because for those of us that are only vocalists we have no instruments to help us to compose. These lessons were supposed to be set up at least four weeks ago which is really infuriating, plus some equipment still hasn't turned up either. Some one really needs to sort it all out and get it up and running. However, on friday, listening to Glyn, and Rob, they,ve managed to get the instrumental in Supermassive Black Hole right, which is really going to sound fab when we put it all together to practice it through again.

Monday 19 October 2009

Monday 19th October

Last week we learnt how to mic up the drums in the studio and we worked with Sean (one of the tutors at the mill), playing with compression on Logic and working out how it works. I worked on California Dreaming vocals with Issy on Friday trying to find the right key to sing it. The problem was that the vocals were either too high for both of us to be comfortable with or too low for Issy to sing comfortably, however we decided that we would give the lower vocals a go and see how it works out. The performance in the afternoon when we all got together was interesting, we hadn't practiced Super-massive Black Hole for a while, but as a whole it went better than expected.

Monday 12 October 2009

Progress through the weeks!

Last week we started rehearsing our chosen song covers and with the help of Issy, we have finally got schedules and timetables for rehearsing which change each week to accommodate our choices on which songs we wish to practice that week. Last week I rehearsed one session of each of my chosen songs which all had very pleasing results, and we managed to record the first basic run-through of Supermassive Black Hole, which although went really well, it will need probably the most rehearsal time out of all of my chosen songs.
I've run through California Dreamin' with Issy, which went well, but we still need a guitarist to play for us, and the composition by Jason and Steve went well, but I still need to work on backing vocals to lift the rap music from becoming monotonous - adding shape to the main rap vocals. I think the song 'Big Yellow Taxi' by Joni Mitchell is the furthest ahead in practice because we've got the lead vocals and backing vocals in place we just need to work more with the guitar, and we need to start to practice Everybody Hurts and Time Warp with everybody involved.
This week we'll be looking at practicing the songs that need most work and the ones not yet covered with first practice. Though I feel that Supermassive Black Hole, Everybody Hurts, and Time Warp should be the main songs that me and the people from the group of each song should focus on this week.

Friday 2 October 2009

My Learning Journal

One of the tasks we have been assigned over the year is to write a learning journal about our progress, working methods, thoughts, responses, queries, complaints, joys and inspirations. I might as well start with any inspirations I have had over the years with music.
Most of my musical inspirations come from very different types of music, such as the Bee Gees, the Carpenters, Robson and Jerome, Abba and Phil Collins. I have always loved these music groups, ever since I was a young child, when my parents would play them in the car and we would all sing along. It always used to amaze me how these artists managed to to write such emotion filled songs full of meaning, and be able to perform them. I always wanted to find out more and be able to write my own songs and perform them.

Brief overview of my work in progress...

Over the past week we have been working towards doing a Christmas performance, and throwing together the initial ideas to make it work and choosing the song covers we would like to perform. We have all split up into different groups for different song covers and have been practicing with different people. At the beginning of the week my choice of song cover was 'A Thousand Miles' by Vanessa Carlton and I was working with Larry (a fellow student at the Mill) on the vocals before we decided that the song was not going to work. I have also worked partly with Issy this week as well and partly Ryan, looking at Issy's choice of songs and asking for their help with melodies and harmonies.
I have learnt over the course of the past two weeks that even working on song covers is not as easy as it looks. There is so much involved with music in itself, without even producing your own material, everyone has to work together in sync and organize themselves and everything else involved, it really made me see music and the jobs involved in music differently.
Over the course of the two weeks I really feel I have started to progress in the way I think about things and how they should end up at the end.

About Me

I am studying music through South Devon College at the Music Mill. I can play a small amount of piano, and I sing - mainly classical, but would love to extend my vocal range and experiment with different types of styles of music.