Group Assessment Review

Working as a group brought an exciting element to our work because I was working with new people with fresh ideas. Through the rehearsal process we used this to our advantage and constantly developed our ideas creatively, helping one another when devising our arrangements. This made the work enjoyable which is always a beneficial atmosphere. It also meant we were willing to rehearse more often and achieve a higher standard piece.

We held a discussion on the theme of our performance. In his book, “The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature” (2008), Daniel Levitin identifies six fundamental song functions or types (friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love) then shows how each in its own way has enabled the social bonding necessary for human culture and society to evolve. After researching this, the group settled on a loose theme of friendship. We insured that we thought of human culture and society whilst researching songs. I personally made a list of songs which reflected current society and linked in with our friendship theme.

For the beginning of the rehearsal process we split into pairs, each choosing one song out of the three we aimed to perform. Natalie and I worked on Passenger's "Let Her Go". I played guitar and sung vocals whilst Nat played keyboard. However, when we brought this back to the group we found we were limited as to what we could do with the song. It is originally performed by a male vocalist and the key was too low. Also Passenger is a solo artist and as we were a group we wanted a song that had more room for experimentation. This led to us changing songs to Outkast's "Hey Ya" which was higher pitched and allowed us to create a two-part harmony. The chords for “Hey Ya” were however more complex than “Let Her Go” and because I found it a challenge, though rewarding, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to learn the song in time as a learning guitarist.

Our other songs included an original piece, composed by Reece, entitled "Young Forever". It was in our "Young Forever" performance that I showcased my second skill which was guitar, as I primarily consider myself a singer. Although I only played the block chords of the chorus as I struggled with the full strumming pattern, I have come a long way since starting the module.  I was happy that I could play enough to benefit the piece and add an extra dimension to the performance. We opened our set with "Young Forever" which is all about the invincibility you feel as a young teenager, experiencing everything for the first time and then reminiscing over this, which is rooted in human culture and society and in keeping with our Levitin research.

Chloe and Jess created an arrangement of Miley Cyrus' "We Can't Stop" and Jessie J's "PriceTag", which is about being care free, partying and not caring who sees or about the money. This arrangement worked well as again we used varied dynamics which brought a new energy to the piece, which I think carried over well in performance. We changed the original tempo of the song to reflect the reminiscent theme and we diverted from the original instruments used in ‘We Can’t Stop’ which is mainly synthesisers and drum machines, and used a piano.

I feel our performance went relatively well, when working in a large group there's always going to be small slip ups but I think we handled these very well and recovered professionally. I personally noticed during "Hey Ya" that our timing had been lost due to one of our group members being unaware of the time signature and unsure of the vocal melody. I took a risk coming in earlier than we had rehearsed, however it paid off and I brought the performance back. I think this demonstrates my musical awareness during performance. I did also make a mistake in my solo lines during the second verse which meant Reece had to improvise with the guitar part, again we dealt with this professionally and we carried on. I was happy with my performance overall, I didn't have any issues with pitch and tonality, which had been an issue in rehearsal as I was singing the harmony line. 

Finally, I think the way we set out our performance space benefitted us, everyone was visible to the audience and everyone could be heard clearly. The only thing I would consider changing is the grouping of the singers. Chloe and I were lead vocalists but because we were also playing instruments we were sat away from the other vocalists which I think is partially to blame for the as aforementioned timing going wrong during performance. I would also re-arrange the vocalist’s positions based on their range as I think Sophie who is a soprano standing between Donna who sings Bass and Natalie who is an Alto, caused pitching problems. If we had more time or we were to perform again, I would rehearse ‘Hey Ya’ more as due to the time constraints and the late change in song we were perhaps under-rehearsed. I would also spend more time ensuring that all members of the band were confident with the words as I think several people held back in performance due to a lack of confidence.