A1 - Separated by Water

 

Madison wrote a song for her A3 assignment and she wanted me to play piano for it as well as doubling up the vocals. It uses an AB (binary) structure and so it was relatively easy to remember the structure of the song. Despite this, I had trouble with the chords as I'd often forget, in the context of the song, to switch from C F Dm C to G G E which meant I fumbled the chords a bit. I think that this will improve over time as I remember the structure more. Something else that hindered my playing was that I struggle to play in time and so I'd often play the chords at the wrong moment which I'd panic at and then fumble and forget what I was doing. Something I did to try and overcome this was that I looked at the chords Madison was playing in order to see when she changed chords as an indication. I also did struggle a bit with the words and so had them on my phone in front of me but I mainly focused on the piano which is shown in the fact that my mouth barely moves and I mumble most of it. To improve, I need to become much more confident on the piano part through further rehearsal and then I will be able to properly layer the vocals on top. 

Madison decided that harmonies would add more to the song than just having a doubled up vocal and so in this rehearsal, we focused on harmonies. I didn't play the piano as it would've been too confusing and difficult for me to concentrate on both but Madison played her ukulele as we needed to be able to keep in time with each other. I used my phone to be able to remember the words although after hearing them from Madison, I think I'm getting to grips with them more. My main issue was remembering the melody I think as I often (especially on specific parts towards the end that I felt less confident with) would revert back to the original, main melody. My way of working through confusing the two melodies was to sing the harmony to myself a lot and convince myself that it was the main part as appose to the actual main part and it somehow psychologically tricks me into being able to stay on my part more easily. The part that I had the most trouble with was the line "These uncharted waters cause forgotten memories" as the melody changed more here than in the other parts of the song and so, despite me expecting it, it did slightly catch me off guard and throw me off a bit which is also probably why I struggled more with the harmonies after it. In order to further improve these harmonies, Madison sent me a recording of the harmonies that I need to learn and I'm going to sing along to them and also have further rehearsals with her for the harmonies and I think that I will get used to singing my part. I will also practice the piano alongside this as then I'll be confident enough to sing whilst playing. 

We changed where we put the harmonies in this rehearsal as Madison felt there would be more impact if we had the harmonies on the second half of the song rather than the entire thing as this shows development. I spent time on learning my harmonies and they've vastly improved although not perfect but I think that I just need to spend a bit more time on them and then they'd be ready to go. We also added in harmonies during the B section which I learnt how to sing but (as shown in the video) I sometimes have trouble remembering to actually do them and so I need to concentrate more throughout this section of the song to make sure I remember. I also spent time learning my piano part to the point where I added my own rhythm of a long chord and then two short ones onto the next. I did decided to change this chord at one point though because, no matter how many times I tried, I always messed up the timing when I played the F chord although I'm unsure why. Due to this, I opted to playing it in the same fashion as the chords from the B section as simply a chord every two beats and this happily solved the problem. I think my timing on this song has improved a lot but I still looked over at Madison for indications of timing mainly for the words which isn't necessarily a bad thing as an audience does like to see a band interact a lot of the time as appose to everyone on stage looking like robots. 

(Timestamps = 35:58 - 39:18)

I think that the performance went well overall. We all managed to stay in time with one another which, in my opinion, is one of the most important things in a performance as it would otherwise sound disorganised, unprepared and generally wrong. I concentrated on watching Barnaby mainly in order for me to be able to stay in time as I couldn't see the chords that Madison was playing. This shows why it is important that I learnt to stay in time by ear and not to rely on watching the chords change on Madison's ukulele. I also didn't mess up any of my chords and I remembered when to switch and to what chord and I correctly remembered the structure of the whole song. However, I think that I didn't sing loudly or clearly enough. I think that, at first, this was partly not having my microphone loud enough but, after that, it was me not singing into it loudly enough. I think that this was because I was nervous and so naturally closed my mouth more in less confidence than I'd normally be and this resulted in less noise which wasn't entirely the correct melody to be singing; although, I did sing most of the harmonies correctly and in time with Madison.