Friday, 19 October 2012
Singing (Written piece on vocal exercises)
At the beginning of performing arts I didn't know much about singing and how certain vocal exercises are sure to help you improve and develop your vocal techniques. I wasn't a great singer and I'm still not a confident singer however I have noticed I can sustain notes and my pitch has got much better, it sounds less like I'm straining my vocal chords. Doing vocal exercises is a great way to warm up the voice before using it. Not only do vocal exercises help the voice, but whole body warm ups do as well. We don't realise that whilst we're using our voices, we're also using the whole of body. Our posture needs to be long and straight so we don't cut the air off. The most common muscle we use is our diaphragm. It helps to stretch our abdomen, back, neck and shoulders so we can avoid stress which has an impact on the sound of our voices. For the vocal training we use breath control, diction, blending and balance.
There are a wide variety of vocal exercises: Breathing awareness, humming, long vowels, sirening, 5 note scale, major triad, minor triad, major vs minor, note endings. tone vs semitone, crescendo diminuendo and arpeggios. All these vocal techniques will help your vocal chords. During our singing lesson, we use humming, vowel sounding and diction. These exercises are very helpful personally. I can now sustain a note I'm singing and also my pitch has improved. I find because of where I'm from and the accent I have possessed the diction exercises help a lot. My accent involves not pronouncing some letters in certain words, so the diction will help me to pronounce those words when singing. I also find my vocals sound a lot better, more alive and loud when I'm standing compared to when I'm seated or hunched. I personally think we should include whole body warm ups as well as the vocal warm ups, this will ensure the whole of our bodies are warmed up, and we will benefit the most when singing.
Singing
15th October 2012
Targets for 22nd October 2012:
- To create a harmony to Destiny Childs Say my name with my group.
- Warm up body and vocal chords before singing.
- Write all work down.
Review for 22nd October 2012:
To get the performance I want for our harmony to Say my name, I feel we need to research more into harmony's so we have a better understanding of what it is we are supposed to convey in our performance. We are working as a group so it will be best to find harmony's that will suit us all. Also we need to do vocal warm ups and body warm ups that we think will not only help us as a group but individually when we rehearse, so when it comes to our performance we know what most suitable warms up are so we can do them before our performance. The song is quite fast so doing diction warm ups will help, because we need to make sure we pronounce every word clearly, so our voices don't fade away.
At the moment I think our group is working at a slow pace and we need to pick it up. It took us 2 lessons to find out which song we are going to use, even though we have 5 weeks to do this, we only have 1 lesson a week to create something and rehearse. I think the sooner we create some harmony's the more time we can spend rehearsing them.
Targets for 22nd October 2012:
- To create a harmony to Destiny Childs Say my name with my group.
- Warm up body and vocal chords before singing.
- Write all work down.
Review for 22nd October 2012:
To get the performance I want for our harmony to Say my name, I feel we need to research more into harmony's so we have a better understanding of what it is we are supposed to convey in our performance. We are working as a group so it will be best to find harmony's that will suit us all. Also we need to do vocal warm ups and body warm ups that we think will not only help us as a group but individually when we rehearse, so when it comes to our performance we know what most suitable warms up are so we can do them before our performance. The song is quite fast so doing diction warm ups will help, because we need to make sure we pronounce every word clearly, so our voices don't fade away.
At the moment I think our group is working at a slow pace and we need to pick it up. It took us 2 lessons to find out which song we are going to use, even though we have 5 weeks to do this, we only have 1 lesson a week to create something and rehearse. I think the sooner we create some harmony's the more time we can spend rehearsing them.
Wednesday, 23 May 2012
Acting - Scenes
A few weeks ago we was put into small groups and was given a small scene. I was paired with Nicole and we got given scene one in 'That Face'. We read over the script a few times to get used to it, and we found that it is quite a deep play and there are a lot of emotions involved in our characters.
The scene is about two girls who are friends (Izzy and Mia) and they attend boarding school. They are in the middle of an initiation test on a 13 year old girl who is a 'newcomer'. Izzy and Mia both feel that the 13 year old, Alice, needs to learn who is in charge around school. During their test on Alice, Izzy the head girl finds out that Mia drugged Alice with Valium; Izzy starts to panic and you see a frightened side to her whereas Mia stays calm and teases Izzy about being scared.
The first time we performed the scene infront of the class, I was very nervous. Acting isn't my strongest talent but I think I done really well. I think I showed the emotions through body language and the tone of my voice. I also think me and Nicole bounced really well off each other, it always flowed; even when the audience would laugh at a certain part we kept our focus and carried on. I thik we need to work on knowing where our characters would be on stage, so we're not improvising the whole way through the scene. We also need to learn our lines, I think once we've learnt our lines our characters would be expressed so much more, because looking down at a script constantly helps lose the character and if you can't find where your next line is, there will be a long silence.
The scene is about two girls who are friends (Izzy and Mia) and they attend boarding school. They are in the middle of an initiation test on a 13 year old girl who is a 'newcomer'. Izzy and Mia both feel that the 13 year old, Alice, needs to learn who is in charge around school. During their test on Alice, Izzy the head girl finds out that Mia drugged Alice with Valium; Izzy starts to panic and you see a frightened side to her whereas Mia stays calm and teases Izzy about being scared.
The first time we performed the scene infront of the class, I was very nervous. Acting isn't my strongest talent but I think I done really well. I think I showed the emotions through body language and the tone of my voice. I also think me and Nicole bounced really well off each other, it always flowed; even when the audience would laugh at a certain part we kept our focus and carried on. I thik we need to work on knowing where our characters would be on stage, so we're not improvising the whole way through the scene. We also need to learn our lines, I think once we've learnt our lines our characters would be expressed so much more, because looking down at a script constantly helps lose the character and if you can't find where your next line is, there will be a long silence.
Singing
Over the last 4 weeks we have rehearsed 8 songs.
1. Sway
2. It don't mean a thing (ain't got that swing)
3. Wouldn't it be lovely
4. Got you under my skin
5. Can't help loving that man of mine
6. Sunny side of the street
7. Somewhere
8. We'll meet again
We all had assigned songs, so some of us worked in groups, some did solos and duets and we also done a few songs as a whole class. A few people in the class also got the role of choreographing a dance routine for each song. I was one of the few people, and I found it quite easy coming up with a routine and remembering the lyrics. I think at times the class as a whole lost focus in rehearsals but on our performance day we performed the show very well. We was asked to sing two more songs at the end. I'm not a singer and I found it quite embarrassing to sing infront of people but when you see the elderly people singing along in the audience it makes it all worth it. I enjoyed the show very much however at times I felt like the rehearsals were a bit boring and I lost focus and ocassionally distracted others. I now know in rehearsals to keep my focus and work a lot harder than what I had done.
1. Sway
2. It don't mean a thing (ain't got that swing)
3. Wouldn't it be lovely
4. Got you under my skin
5. Can't help loving that man of mine
6. Sunny side of the street
7. Somewhere
8. We'll meet again
We all had assigned songs, so some of us worked in groups, some did solos and duets and we also done a few songs as a whole class. A few people in the class also got the role of choreographing a dance routine for each song. I was one of the few people, and I found it quite easy coming up with a routine and remembering the lyrics. I think at times the class as a whole lost focus in rehearsals but on our performance day we performed the show very well. We was asked to sing two more songs at the end. I'm not a singer and I found it quite embarrassing to sing infront of people but when you see the elderly people singing along in the audience it makes it all worth it. I enjoyed the show very much however at times I felt like the rehearsals were a bit boring and I lost focus and ocassionally distracted others. I now know in rehearsals to keep my focus and work a lot harder than what I had done.
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Dance - 17/04/12
Today in our dance lesson, we watched a few clips of performances and we had to guess which ones were physical theatre or not. Whilst watching the clips I thought I got the hang of it, and thought I had the right answers down, but when we went over them I had got 2 wrong. I feel I should research more about physical theatre however I did learn quite a bit from that lesson.
Company Choreographer Physical Theatre?
Foose Rob Foose No
Phoenix Dance Street Darshan singh bhullir Yes
Royal Danish theatre Glen Tetley No
Cirque Du Soleil Andrew Watson Yes
Tanz Theatre Pina Bausch Yes
In our next lesson, we sat in a circle and was handed a piece of paper each. We each had to write down any occupation, fold the paper over and pass it along, then we had to write a location anywhere in the UK, fold the paper over and pass it along. Then we had to write down a title of any song and do the same, then we had to write down a saying or a phrase, also fold the paper then pass it along. Once we had done this we got into groups, and read the list of things that we had on our paper. We then got given a large piece of paper and had to write down a connection from one character to another. This will help us with our introduction of physical theatre.
Whilst working in our group we wrote down what types of things we could include into our introduction, we added dynamics and changing from one character to another. After a short while and frustration we came up with a short introduction piece that involves, a book, head phones and 2 helmets. These are the props from our characters. An Italian Teacher, Builder, Police Officer and a song writer.
We found coming up with the introductory piece quite hard to come up with at first, we didn't know how to start or finish; no clue at all. The purpose of the lesson before was to help inspire us for our physical theatre piece, but at the time we didn't think of using what we watched. I think to overcome a total loss of what we are doing, we just need to stop what were doing and think about what we have learnt in previous lessons that could help build a piece.
Company Choreographer Physical Theatre?
Foose Rob Foose No
Phoenix Dance Street Darshan singh bhullir Yes
Royal Danish theatre Glen Tetley No
Cirque Du Soleil Andrew Watson Yes
Tanz Theatre Pina Bausch Yes
In our next lesson, we sat in a circle and was handed a piece of paper each. We each had to write down any occupation, fold the paper over and pass it along, then we had to write a location anywhere in the UK, fold the paper over and pass it along. Then we had to write down a title of any song and do the same, then we had to write down a saying or a phrase, also fold the paper then pass it along. Once we had done this we got into groups, and read the list of things that we had on our paper. We then got given a large piece of paper and had to write down a connection from one character to another. This will help us with our introduction of physical theatre.
Whilst working in our group we wrote down what types of things we could include into our introduction, we added dynamics and changing from one character to another. After a short while and frustration we came up with a short introduction piece that involves, a book, head phones and 2 helmets. These are the props from our characters. An Italian Teacher, Builder, Police Officer and a song writer.
We found coming up with the introductory piece quite hard to come up with at first, we didn't know how to start or finish; no clue at all. The purpose of the lesson before was to help inspire us for our physical theatre piece, but at the time we didn't think of using what we watched. I think to overcome a total loss of what we are doing, we just need to stop what were doing and think about what we have learnt in previous lessons that could help build a piece.
Singing - 17/04/12
Today we started our 4 week rehearsal until we have to perform at an old people's home in Banstead. Before the half term the whole class altogether learnt 3 songs for our performance, but may still have around 6 or 7 more to learn before the deadline. We have already learnt Micheal Buble's Sway, Duke Ellington's if it aint got that swing, July Garland's Cant help loving that man of mine. These songs are based very much around the 40's and 50's. This is the sort of music the people at the homes will enjoy. I'm not a strong singer at all and I find singing infront of people daunting, however knowing its for a good purpose and others will get enjoyment out of it plus it will help boost my confidence massively. The other only weakness I have is singing these songs the way they were sung, the music has changed dramatically over the years and I'm used to modern music, whereas this is more jazz and swing based. I may see this is as weakness but it can also be made into a strength; learning to listen and sing along to different types of music. I also feel I can co operate the charlston dance into one of these songs during an instrumental, which will also help my dance skills. I've always wanted to try and learn the charlston and I feel this is a great opportunity to do so.
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Abu Hassain
I felt this story was sometimes a bit messy however I feel it sort of worked, because the story was so funny and played brilliantly by Abu Hassain (Bradley) it didn't need much choreography. I feel as though I could have tried to control myself and didn't laugh at times, so on my next production if there is a funny part I will have to control it, because it looks a bit silly when the people acting find the story funny as well.
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