Task 2- Weekly evaluation

Week one

To begin rehearsing for my solo performance i firstly had to choose what songs i wanted to do and figure out what changes i wanted to make to all the songs, The songs i have decided that i want to do are, Ex`s and Oh`s by Elle King, Bad Guy by Billie Eilish and also Rooftops by Lost Prophets.

During my first week of practicing for my performance i found it quite difficult to find the time to be able to practice, this is due to the fact that i am having a different person play alongside me for each of my songs. I also struggle to practice at home due to neighbours and being to loud so i have to wait to practice whilst im in college which again i can do but is difficult as i have to wait for the other people who are playing with me to be available. During this week i didnt do very much practice for this as i was more focussing on solidifying what i really want to do for each of my songs. This week my main focus was thinking about the song i will sing first which at this point will be Ex`s and Ohs, for this song i have decided that i no longer want it to be played on acoustic guitar as i think it will make the song more jazz if its played on piano. Therefore instead of Casey playing alongside me for this song, Emily has kindly offered to play piano for me. Due to us all having so much to do whilst in college we didn't actually manage to practice at all during this week, in the upcoming weeks i think that the best thing for me to do is make a plan of when i can practice and when everyone else who is helping me will also have the time. Because i didnt manage to get any practice in this week i have constantly been listening to the song trying to figure out what i actually would like to change about it. A change that i think is very necessary is definitely to slow the tempo of the song, I want to be able to change the way i sing it without rushing to get my lyrics out. I think i will also ask Emily to play the piano with more of a bouncy feel as i dont want it to just sound like the original. This week unfortunately i didn't really get around to thinking about my other songs or practicing them either so i will try my best to keep up during the upcoming weeks.

Week 2

To start off week 2 i knew that i needed to make a plan in order to keep on time with all other upcoming deadlines, this week i again had my main focus on Exs and Ohs By Elle King. This week i plan to spend some time at home practicing and figuring out how much i would like to change the way its sung. The only issue with me practicing at home is that i will have to sing it acapella for the time being as i wont have the people who are accompanying me with me at all times. I am also trying my best to find time around college to go through my songs but as we have a lot of other practical work to get done finding the time to do this has already proven to be very difficult.

Despite me finding it difficult to practice at home i did manage to sing through the song once and have now got a very rough idea of the way i want it to sound, this will now make it easier for me to practice with Emily as i already know what i'm going to do. Due to the way that i have chosen to sing this song it will no longer be 3 minutes 45 second long, it will probably end up being closer to 4 and a half to 5 as there are sections in the song where i would like to be able to freestyle a bit more. When i come to practice with Emily i also think that i might add a key change during the chorus, i'm not sure what key i want to change it to yet but think that when i go through the song with Emily i will ask her opinion as she can play piano a lot better than i can.

This song is currently played in the keys E Minor and G Major in different sections of the song, for the ,majority of the song it is played in G Major. The song overall has a very up beat high energy to it and it has a time signature of 4 beats per bar. As the song is so upbeat, the changes that i have made and that i am still in the progress of making will make the song sound very different to how it originally sounded. The way that i will be singing it gives the song a lot more emotional and meaningful which i personally think is a good thing as it will draw my audience in and hopefully get a good reaction to this new version of Ex's & Oh's.

Towards the end of this week i also started to have a think about my other songs, particularly Bad Guy by Billie Eilish which Lucie has said that she will play alongside me for. This song will be played on guitar again in more of a jazzy style, again as i didnt have much time to practice i didnt end up getting anything started for this song this week.

Week 3

Coming in to week 3 of rehearsing for my solo performance my main goal is to get started properly on my other songs aswell as so far i have spend majority of my time only focussing on Ex's & Oh's. Although i still havent managed to find the time to practice with Emily, i still feel like the best thing for me to do is to go onto my other songs and getting down more ideas for each of those. I have the confidence in myself and Emily that we will be ready to perform whenever we need to despite the lack of practice time as we have both worked with each other so much anyway so id say we are both quite prepared. This week i wanted to focus more of my time on Billie Eilish Bad Guy which i am also planning on changing the style to jazz. So far i have been unable to practice because of time and also the fact that ive just moved house but i have had so many ideas on how i would like to change this song. One of my ideas is to potentially add in some scat to this song ( singing with no lyrics going along the melodic line of a song) as i am doing 2 different songs into jazz and i dont want to do the same thing for both of them. As of right now i'm still not sure where i would like to add in the scat section but when i come together with Lucie we will speak about where it will best fit as she is kindly playing alongside me.

Later during this week i spend some time listening to the song over an over to ensure that i know the song inside and out, by listening to the song multiple times it helps me to be able to vision what i would like to achieve by singing this song. Also whilst listening to it, although im going to be slowing the tempo by quite a lot, i have been singing along figuring out how to sing the song in a more jazzy style. I think that i have also narrowed down where i would like my scat section to be within this song, i think that i will put it either after the first chorus or potentially skip out the second chorus making that my scat section. Again i didnt manage t get any practie in this week again as there just wasnt quite enough time so for the time being whilst im practicing and videoing myself doing that it will be accapella.

Week 4

During this week i plan to hopefully start practicing at least one of my songs with the people who are playing alongside me, although i havent got a start on Rooftops by Lost Prophets im still going to stay focussed mainly on my first 2 songs and getting them to a position where they are performance ready. This week i managed to get a few videos of me singing parts of the songs acapella whilst at home, i would have preferably had a lot more video evidence by this point but as there is so much to do and also the fact that iv'e just moved house its very hard to find time to actually get the practice done.

This week during one of our practical lessons i managed to practice through ex's and oh's by Elle king with Emily. I didn't get this on video as it completely slipped my mind but as we were going through the song id say it went really well and that we probably only will need to practice a few more times to get it to a point where it is performance ready. Although we only managed to just quickly go through it during one of our band rehearsals i think that we will definitely do more work on this song at the start of next week so that i can begin getting videos of me doing it during college.

For Bad Guy this week i couldn't manage to practice in college with Lucie again as we just couldn't find the time to do it, even though we haven't practiced together Lucie has let me know that she has started to learn the song on guitar. I believe that jazzy elements have been added to the way she plays guitar aswell as i really want this song to sound like it has changed a lot. Despite not getting any practice of the song in during college i have constantly been listening to the song trying to find more ideas on how to change it. Whilst at home i have been singing the song acapella as i know that in college there wont be mucgh time to practice, i managed to get a video of me doing this acapella so will put it on my website as well.

Week 5

To start off week 5 of my solo repertoire I continued to have a focus on my first 2 songs, i also started to think of ideas for my 3rd song which is Rooftops by Lost Prophets. For this song i have asked Casey to play alongside me, the way in which i have chosen to change this song is to turn it into a slower pretty ballad as originally this song is rock. I think that when me and Casey start to go through this song that i would like to change the structure of the song and also slow it down. At this point in time i am unsure how i want to change the structure but one of the ideas i have had was to potentially start the song with the chorus then figure the rest of it out around that. The song is originally 4 minutes and 30 seconds long with a tempo of 178 BPM but it can also be played at half time which is 89 BPM. With the changes that i plan to make with this song, the length of the song will likely be a bit closer to 5 - 5 and a half minutes as i will be slowing the tempo.

These are the chords and some of the lyrics to Rooftops by Lost Prophets. Im not sure yet weather i would like to incorporate a key change within this song yet as i feel like changing the structure and style will be enough of a change to this song. As of right now i still am yet to have found the time in college to practice with Casey as we are still working on our band songs, these should be finished hopefully within the next week or 2 so that i am then able to focus completely on this task and getting all my songs to a point where they are performance ready. As i said, even though i couldn't practice much at all this week i have still been listening to the original song thinking of how i want to sing the song and if i want to change it more than i had originally planned. Whilst at home i was singing through the song acapella at a slower tempo and got a short video of how im thinking of starting the song.

Week 6

At the start of week 6 i knew that i would more than likely have to perform one of my songs during college to show my progress through the weeks. As i already had a feeling this was going to happen i spoke to Emily and let her know that the first song i will make an attempt at performing will be Ex's and Ohs by Elle King as i feel  have spent the most time thinking on this song and rehearsing this whilst at home. Me and Emily practiced through the song ones through and then i performed it in front of our class, although i didnt quite feel ready to do this i feel that overall it went really well, i just think that i could do with a few more rehearsals as some parts of the song felt shaky and a bit off.

I think that the next time i perform this song i will start it a bit quieter, although i did start this song already quiet i feel that i could build the song more towards the end if i do this. I also need to make sure that i can confidently sing the lyrics without them being in front of me as although a lot of the time i do know the lyrics i do tend to rely on them. I think overall i sang the song pretty well but i definitely feel that i could have sung it better, i think as i was performing it i got a bit nervous and didnt really go for it as much as i probably should. Im glad that i performed it this week and look forward to seeing its improvement in the upcoming weeks as i know that i can do it so much better.

When at home this weeks i was unable to practice singing my other songs properly as i wasn't feeling to well and had a bad throat so didn't want to push myself to the point of hurting myself. Despite not singing through my songs i did listen through my third song multiple times further thinking of things i can do in order to change it.

Week 7

In week 7, whilst in college this week i found some time again with Emily to go through Exs & Ohs and whilst going through it i have slightly changed the way i sing it. Towards the start of the song i sing it a lot more lightly and quieter in order to build up the song to finish stronger and with more emotion. We went through it a few times and i believe that this song is very close to being finished, i dont have any storage on my phone so couldnt get any videos but i do intend on videoing it the next time we go through it. I am really enjoying the progress on this song and am looking forward to performing it with the rest of my repertoire. Overall although we didnt find much time to go over it, i am very happy with the short amount of time we worked on it as once again the song has progressed.

Me and Lucie managed to go through bad guy once during one of our band rehearsals, doing this gave me many more ideas of what i'm going to do with the song. Before we started practicing we spoke about the tempo and slowed it down a bit, i also figured out where i'm going to put my scat section. Im going to put it in after the second pre chorus of the song, as we only got to do it once i definitely want to find more time either this week or next week to go through it again and get it on video using someone elses phone. 

Week 8

To start off week 7 of my solo work, myself and Lucie went down to a practice room to work on Bad Guy. This was the rehearsal that we really needed, we went through the song a few times together and i think we made a lot of progress but there are still things i would like to perfect and change. I still feel that the tempo of this song is to quick even though we have slowed it down already i want more time between the lyrics of the song. Another thing that i noticed during practicing is that i dont know the lyrics as well as i should, i will learn these when i'm home as we don't get a lot of time to practice during college hours.

Later on during this week, myself and Casey got together to discuss my last song that will be on my setlist which will be Rooftops by Lost Prophets. As me and Casey havent really found the time at all to rehearse together i asked her how well she knew the song and at this point she doesnt know it to well so i played the song through a few times so that she would have a rough idea of whats shes playing. We discussed together what kind of changes to make within the song, i think that something we were both pretty certain on was that i would like to sing the song in a slightly higher key. In order to be able to achieve this we thought that using an acoustic guitar with a capo on it would make it sound pretty different from the original version with the addition to my slower more emotive singing style for this song. Originally this song is quite fast rock, the way i will be singing it will be a lot slower paced with hopefully more emotion. Casey will learn the chords over the weekend, the chords are quite simple so this should be an easy thing for her to do in order for us to rehearse together at the beginning of next week. I am hoping to be ready to perform my whole repertiore by next week if not the week after at the latest. Overall i think that this week of my solo wrk went okay, i still feel that i haven't been practicing my songs as often as i should but also it is difficult as i cant do it to the best of my ability without the people to accompany me.

Week 9