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Unit 33 - Evaluation of Audition Pieces

Dark Matter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txR3IY9WuDc

This was my last piece of music that I was going to present in my audition. I chose this song because of it style of genre and its rhythms and difficulty. The hardest part of this song is the weird rhythms that are set for you to learn, they are all in 4/4 but the way it is all written seems to me like they are syncopated, and what makes it harder is the drums are obviously in a jazz beat meaning that the snare is off beat in some area's giving the song a sense of no time. To overcome these problems i had to consult my guitar teacher and ask for advise from him; he recommended that i should break each bar down and slow mingle them together again, which i did and now I use that practice routine in everything i play. If i was to relearn the song over again, i don't i would change my rehearsal process because of how easy it was to break each bar down and slowly build it back up.

#Unit 33

Unit 33 - Evaluation of Audition Pieces

Nosso Samba

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM6u0riowa4

My second piece of music was a samba piece made by Rockschool. I chose to do this piece as my second audition piece because of its use of finger style playing and its time signature 2/2. The 2/2 made it very difficult for me to count because instead of having a fairly long count with 4/4, the bar of a 2/2 goes quite quick meaning i had focus too much on the piece, the strumming rhythms where also quite hard to. I soon overcame these problems by (again) Practicing each section until it was perfect, then putting all of the sections together therefore creating the piece. If i were to learn this song over again, i would watch a few video first to understand what sort of rhythms I am about to approach.

#Unit 33

Unit 33 - Evaluation of rehearsal Process

Meet Darth Ear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm_pEOJmQEs

This is my first piece of music that I used in my audition. I chose this piece because of its change of genre compared to the other songs and its level of difficulty. This was a difficult song because there were sections where I’d end up playing very fast 16th notes to a syncopated drum beat; the time signatures were also difficult, they would often change from 4/4 to 7/4 to 5/4. The way I over came these problems was practice, constant practice; i would pick a section and practice it til it was perfect. If i were to relearn this song i would probably wouldn't change my style of learning, because of the way it helps me to learn quickly.

#Unit 33

Unit 4: Analyse musical elements of 2 pieces.

Sweet Child o Mine

This song starts with a cool guitar riff that is based on a D major scale; this is the scale with only 2 sharps (F♯ and C♯). Whilst the solo riff is being played, a chord progression fades in underneath, this chord progression consists of 3 basic chords and they're all 5th chords, D C G, each chord is played for a maximum of 2 bars. Soon after the rhythm guitar enters, the bass and drums follow; the bass guitar does pretty much the same as the rhythm guitar, the only difference being the bass plays single notes. The drums come in with a floor tom and snare being hit at the same time in quaver notes (Half notes) and then to finish this whole section the drums go into a standard 4/4 beat. The solo guitar stops playing the riff and the rhythm guitar ease's the playing and starts to play the chords in a slow strumming fashion and they are played very lightly, then the vocals enter.

Moving on to the verse. The verse is an extremely basic section of rhythm guitar, bass, drums and vocals. The Drums hold a simple 4/4 beat whilst the rhythm guitar plays a soft group of chords, C D G and the bass follows the guitar. The vocals is the most melodic instrument in this section of the song; they are based on a D major scale, but vary a lot in octaves and tones.

The Chorus is the next section (Obviously), and it consists of Solo guitar, Rhythm guitar, bass, drums and vocals. When the chorus enters one of the first things you hear is the solo guitar come in with a riff that has the same rhythm as the intro riff except the difference being the riff follows the key of the chords (A B C D), the riff is also played in a half note fashion (1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1..... etc)

After the chorus section we now enter a mini solo section for the solo guitar, this is based around an E major scale and consists of slides, bends and hammer ons. This last for 8 bars.

Back to the verse, this is a replica of the first verse, but with different lyrics

Now we enter the chorus, which is also the same as the first chorus, but after the chorus we then enter a new mini solo that last for 16 bars and is played around the E major scale for 8 bars then switches a D major scale for another 8 bars, then we enter the DOUBLE chorus.

Now this is were it gets complicated, this is where the solo is played. The solo starts with a bend on the 17th fret (A bend up to B) and starts progressing around the D major scale for about 16 bars, then moves down to the E major scale where a lot of Hammer ons and pull offs are used and a weird scale run up is seen.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGW_f_CU3wQ

(2.35)

and then to finish the song i slash created a solo based around the E major scale

Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

This song starts off on a Bm chord for 4 bars, with a subtle 4/4 drum beat in the background, then the chord progression starts; Bm, A, G, Em x16 bars and then the chorus chords are D, A x 4 and C, G x 4.

Roger Walters starts to sing in a talking fashion, he sings about someone named Pink who is unconscious in his hotel room. Some paramedics try to revive him, and inject a drug into him to help wake him up. The drugs give him a flashback of when Pink was a child and he caught a rat. The rat then gives him a fever.Pink then wakes up to find that he has been shoved into a limousine and he tears of his Pink shell to reveal a Nazi- like attire.

The Solo is based off a D major/B minor scale pattern for lead lines. You can also play the simpler five tone pentatonic scale, specifically, B minor pentatonic, or if you want to, you can use a D Mixolydian mode for improvising.

#Unit 4

Evaluation of rehearsal Process of my audition pieces

Meet Darth ear - Grade 8 Rockschool

For this song, it was a very simple rehearsal process because the song comprised of alternate picked 16th notes which meant all I'd have to do (for a large majority of the time) is sit down with a metronome and practice alternate picking one string, slowly getting faster and faster until I'd reach the speed of the song and then I would go even faster until my hand would start to hurt, this meant that I was able to play the piece at ease.

As I was practicing the song I came across some unusual time signatures, but never the less I over came this by (again) sitting down and playing the change over and over again, starting slowly and build it all up to speed,

Finally, contructing the solo was the hardest part because there were two section of backing music for the solo, one which was easy to create a slow melodic solo and the other being hard because the drums gave it a feel for a fast alternate picked and swept picked solo, which i could not do, so just to get away with it sounding ok, i decided to work out the scale and just alternate pick it until the solo had finished.

Dark Matter - Grade 8 RockSchool

Ok, so this was a jazz piece that i decided to learn because of its contrast between the other pieces, the rehearsal process for this song was almost the same as Meet Darth Ear except there was less alternate picking, instead there were complex rhythms and time signatures, this made it hard because where i thought i was playing in the standard 4/4 i found out that i was playing in 5/4 or 3/4. So to fully accomplish this song, all i had to do was play through the song until i hit a hard section and then stop and slow the section down and practice it over and over again until i played it with ease, or if it was an extremely hard rhythm then i would just play bar by bar, then add all the bars up until its easy to play.

Nosso Samba - Grade 8 RockSchool

This was a tricky piece to learn because it meant that a i was not able to use a plectrum to play this song i had to use a technique known as FingerStyle guitar. It was a hard piece to play because there was a section where in the recording you cannot here the guitar playing, but i had the music saying to play a very complex rhythm but in piano (quietly). Anyway, my rehearsal process for this song was very much the same as it always is, Pick the hardest section, slow it down and build it up to speed, except this time i had to get used to playing finger style which added some new difficulty; i looked online for some warmup techniques for finger style and played them for at least 30mins until i felt comfortable, then started to move on to the rockschool piece. After about an hour i had a rough idea of how to play the full piece although there were area's that still needed treatment; I soon perfected these. Then after 2 hours i had finally learnt the song and was able to play the full thing at a good quality no imperfections.

#Unit 33

Responding to stimulus - Analyse 3 genre's

BLUES

There is an extremely common musical element that is used throughout Blues, it is something called 'The Blue Note', this is where a musician plays the 7th and the 3rd note of a scale. This is typically used throughout blues because of its effect of emotion, it gives an emotion of sorrow and loss.

A perfect example of these 3rd and 7th notes are in this video of Roy Buchanan - Train Blues (0:45)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-_nog_lW6M

The 'Blue note' came from the beginning of music where African scales were often mixed with European tonalities. The 'Blue note' is also used throughout other genre's such as Jazz and sometimes Rock.

Jazz

In jazz one of the most common musical techniques used is slurs; a slur is when a guitarist will play a set of notes without a break/pick, so in the case of jazz a guitarist will usually use 2 notes semi tones apart, and slide between them, the first note of the slur is most probably going to be a wrong note of the scale (a Blue notes) but because the guitarist is moving quickly to a note in the scale it does not give a sense that a bad note has been played.

A good example is Remember When - Guthrie Govan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2llLs4D5PA

Rock

Rocks music element is one of the most common techniques used today, it uses 5th chords, these chords only use the 1st and the 5th note of a major chord; because its a 5th chord it become neither major or minor meaning that is used a lot to help scales because easy to improvise on.

A good example of this is a typical american band called Blink 182 - All the small things

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ht5RZpzPqw

Rock usually uses a typical C major scale for soloing as it is the only scale that has no sharps and is easy to work out .

#Unit 12 #Unit 22

Debrief for FMP

Was the show successful? If so why?

I think the show was a successful show because first of all, my family commented highly and positively about it. Although we had a short amount of time to rehearse everyone seemed to know what they were doing, we all were synced, there weren't many mistakes. Musically for me think the show was successful because i was basing all my work on the C major scale, meaning there were no Flat and sharp notes; yes there was the odd occasion where i would have to switch scales but that was rare. Most of the timing throughout the show were simple for me, for example there was a 5/4 beat that switch into 7/4 beat that was made for Hayden's good dreams, it was decided to have a weird time signature because Hayden's personality is random and excited. When I first rehearsed it, it did feel weird but after a while I began to understand how to count it and how to adapt my musical ideas to it. Soon after the 7/4 section there was a chromatic scale run down with octave notes, this gave the next section a sense of fear and evil, this was good because the section of film that we applied this to was about Hayden meeting his worst nightmare (Slenderman) in a desolate area within his dream. Then after Hayden's weird and wonderful dreams, we started to introduce spoken vocals because he had finally woken up and everything was starting to make sense, I was not able to play during this section of music as it was the other groups idea. To summaries whether or not the show was successful, I am going to say it was successful because I think that our year group achieved the unthinkable in such a small amount of time and we managed to pull it all off in a good enough quality for a show.

#unit 16 #unit 4

Non Performance Role in Fresher Gig

Ok, so my role during the freshers gig was to be in charge of sound, that meant I have to make sure all the amps are working, i would have to record all of the amp setting, keyboard setting and drum positions. This is tricky job to do because if i asked a guitarist to find their own sound they would end up changing it slightly which would in turn muck up the sound levels at the desk. Other than making sure all the amps and keyboards were working i would have to make sure all the leas worked.

There were also other roles that other members of the gig had to fully accomplish.

We had a Budgeting team, who's first task was to speak to Nikki and decide what sort of price this gig should be, and how much profit will be made. They then had to pass the new information over to the Promotion'/Marketing team, who's main responsibility was to design the posters, create the online web pages and get the word around college. Finally we had the set design team who were in charge of what the stage would look like, what color lights should there be and what theme to have to room setup as.

All of these components were crucial to help make this a successful gig.

#Unit 11

05/02/2014 - FMP Rehearsal

Today I was slightly last due to heavy road works in Bexleyheath, but when I got to college I soon found out that we was working on a build up for something big to finish the FMP show.

Because I was late I said play through what they had and I’ll add something in, so after listening to what they had I slowly came up with an idea and added it in; it sounded great, but then tom came back from working with the singers and said it’s too big for a build-up and he reworked it for us. After he had finished re-creating our piece, I soon realised that my original idea would only work for the ending of the piece, so I explained to tom and he said “O, well working something out tomorrow and add it in”.

I think once this piece has been concluded it’ll be weirdly fantastic.

Improvisation - Christmas Show Band

During the Christmas show we were asked to come up with independent musical ideas that would either compliment or describe a scene in the Christmas show. One of my ideas was create a musical element for the last scene where the ship is revealed; I wanted it to sound big and aggressive so that the audience would get the tremendous feeling of insignificance. The way I composed this idea was to first of decide whether it should be major or minor? Obviously it was going to be based upon a minor scale because the scene’s main character is Tommy Titanic and Tommy is made out to be an evil character that tries to destroy Christmas.

Because I had decided to make an idea with a minor feeling, I then had to pick a scale to create something so I picked a Dm scale, so I ran through the scale a couple of times slowly picking out notes that I thought would work. It eventually came to me that to have an aggressive and minor feel I would have to choose the bass notes of the scale and slowly work my way up to the middle notes to create a riff that would have a rising tension.

That unfortunately was the only idea I had come up with independently because my main focus was to keep on my job as MD (Musician Director) and make sure everyone knew their ques throughout the show.

#Unit 12 #Unit 15

21/10/13 - Freshers

Today I arrived to college at 10 thinking it was going to be the average day, but instead I walk into the Venue to find that no-one is there, so I wait around and then Tom Connors (Tutor) arrives; I ask him ‘What time are was we supposed to be in today’, he turns around and says ‘2pm?’.

Later on in the day when everyone arrives to rehearse, we were told that we will be working late today because today is the first time we create a set and run through it; I think that today’s run through had its ups and downs, there were extremely good parts that we all enjoyed like End Credits and there were the very poorly ones like Bury my Bones (because we didn’t have Liv). After we had finished our first run through of the set, we were all called for a small meeting for notes to be given to us, I was told that nearly all the songs I was on were the best songs of the sets (performance wise) which is good, but I was also told not to rest on my laurels.

Audition Pieces

Meet Darth Ear

Meet Darth Ear is a progressive metal track in the style of bands like Dream Theatre, Periphery and Symphony X. It begins with an alternate picked 16th note riff followed by a crunchy E Phrygian section that features numerous odd time changes. The melodic verse uses extended arpeggios based in E natural minor. This is a challenging section to play cleanly because there are lots of string changes and the position shifts. The Chorus comprises of ringing sustained chords that provide some respite before the solo, which is played over a similar natural minor based progression to that of the verse.

Mind the Gaps

Mind the Gaps is a funk track in the style of Average White Band, The Crusaders and Tower Of Power. It features triads, altered chords – and a special guest appearance by fusion legend Larry Carlton. These piece is good for me to play compared to Meet Darth Ear because it allows me time to play with expression and feeling compared to Meet Darth Ear because it is a completely different genre, the tempo is different and there are many other faster techniques used.

Nosso Samba

Nosso Samba is written in the style of classic Brazilian artists such as the reserved Antonio Carlos Jobim and Gilberto Gil, and the modern day samba group Nosso Trio. It features octave melodies, fingerpicked chords and 16th note strumming patterns among it techniques. This is also a very good and challenging piece for me to play as it is a completely different genre, it has to be played in the style of fingerpicking and the time signature is now 2/4 instead of 4/4.

18/10/13 - Freshers

Today we arrived at college at 10am, signed in and got ready. We all met at the the Venue to find out that we were rehearsing in the booths. We had a small meeting about what we would do for the day ahead, and we decided that we would go with three main groups. One group would be working on 'Dip it low', another would work on 'Sex is on fire' and the last group would focus on 'Bulls on parade'.

I was working on the second song, changes were made on the chorus. For example, different strumming patterns, very slight structure changes and the intro was worked on.

Finally, I had finished with my group on 'Sex is on fire', so I waited around to see if I could help out anywhere else.

#Unit 24

15/10/13 - Freshers

Today was the first time we ran End Credits and it went pretty well considering we had only ever tried it that one time. End Credits is an extremely easy song for me to play on guitar because it it is just a chase of me playing three simple major and minor chords, over and over again.

8th - 11th October - Freshers

There have not been many changes between these dates, it has just been a lot of rehearsals, and new idea's. I have been trying my best to take in mind the notes that were given to me, which were: I need to look a little more relaxed on stage. I need to move about more be more active because at the moment I look like i am being forced to play and that i need to practice a bit more

14/10/11 - Freshers

Today it was mandatory to listen to each others songs because I think its getting to the point where tom will start to cut songs and decide on songs that need a little extra work. I was also put on burn today, this is a song that consists of many keyboard parts, unfortunately I haven't been able to learn the keyboard parts at home due to lack of equipment.

3/10/13 - Freshers

Today, I listened to Iona's group play Wake Me Up by Avicii and suggested that instead of having an electric guitar it should be replaced with an acoustic because that is what the original has; somehow i ended up learning the chords and strum patterns and playing the song. It is a hard song for me because you chord shapes are always changing is specific ways that give my hand a cramp, nether the less i shall perfect the song and overcome my pain.

I also managed to Rehearse Raise Your glass with Liv.

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