Monday 16th December 2013
Session Five
We started with a few warm ups and were introduced to a new tongue twister.
These warm ups were:
- Sirening (with Lip Trills)
- Arpeggios
- Tongue Twister: "Lily Likes Lollipops"
Our new exercise is a tongue twister which goes like this:
"Lily likes lollipops, lemonade and lime drops,
I like Lily, Lily likes me."
This tongue twister focuses on diction and articulation of the words but also breath control. I quite enjoy tongue twisters because they focus on using the correct placement of the tongue to benefit you when singing. They're also really easy to do outside of class and remember.
We then went on to go through the songs we have learnt. These include:
- "You Raise Me Up" by Westlife.
- "The Rhythm of Life" from the musical Sweet Charity.
- "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" from the musical Evita.
As a group most of us have secured our harmonies and we know what we're singing. Now that we're confident in the song, our singing teacher told us to start adding more emotion to the songs to really characterise it, especially with "You Raise Me Up". The tone and volume you use can really contribute when adding character to a song, when characterisation is added the audience can connect to the performance.
Each song have contrasting emotions you would associate with it. "You Raise Me Up" is a song about love and dependancy, "The Rhythm of Life" is a song telling a story in a upbeat and "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" is a song about saying good bye and being betrayed and weak. All these songs have an emotional performance which can be explored. As someone who is interesting in acting, I think this is really interesting because the more emotion which is added to a song the more you can interpret and give it something different.
I'm glad we went through the ensemble pieces before the assessment because otherwise it may have been difficult to practise over the Christmas holidays.
After we practised the ensemble pieces we had learnt we went into our gender groups to work on our independent ensemble pieces. For my group we went through our "Just A Dream/Just The Way You Are" mash up which is featured in the movie Pitch Perfect.
Now we knew what we were singing and how we has to really focus on the details such as the timing. The song is meant to blend in well and accurate timing is needed for this. Once people had awareness it was up to them to perform it. Although this is an ensemble piece, every individual has to rely on themselves otherwise they are letting everyone else down.
I'm glad that the ensemble pieces we have been working on with our singing teacher are sounding really nice and that I am confident with my harmonies and timing. We don't know what song we will perform during the assessment so being confident with them all is a positive start.
I did have slight difficulty with the words in our ensemble piece and I had to find the lyrics on my phone.
I'm going to go through all the ensemble pieces we've learnt as I've got three weeks before the assessment. I have recordings on my phone to help me and to prepare for the assessment I will familiarise myself with everything we've learnt.
