Final Performance Review

On the 9th of December our ensemble finally performed our two songs "Doo Wah Diddy" and "Don't Stop Me Now" Both songs mostly ran smoothly and we were all pleased with our performances. Our intentions for both songs were to take two pop songs and transform them into ballads. I believe we successfully communicated our intentions to our audience. 

The positive things in our performances were that we sang through both of the pieces like we had rehearsed and there were no major mistakes. We communicated with each other through out and made sure that everyone was aware of timings for ending harmonies etc. Musically our performances worked well and the songs were received well by the audience. I believe we successfully communicated our genre and what we tried to do with the arrangements worked well on the day and we all performed with confidence. In rehearsal time we all had a lot of ideas which we put forward and I believe that this is one of the reasons why our arrangements were successful. At times though, there were maybe a few too many ideas meaning we had to select the ones which we thought would work best.

Some negatives of our performance would be that there were a few mistakes with lyrics at some points and i messed up some chords in the second song and also the rhythm in the first song. I believe that if we had used rehearsal time more wisely we could have had two much stronger performances with more variety to the arrangements. I think that we should have rehearsed where we stood more because levels weren't very balanced and as I was sitting at a piano I found it difficult to hear some parts that were being sung. With more rehearsal we could have worked on harmonies to make them stronger and even add in more harmonies so that the arrangements had more to them for an audience to listen too. 

In future group performances I will try harder to organise more rehearsal time and make sure that the time I am given is used effectively. I'll take it upon myself to do more research at home so that I have more information and material to bring to rehearsals, this will hopefully help them run smoother. I also want to step out of my comfort zone and push myself more as a performer, I want to widen my skills and give myself new challenges. Also in future group work I would like to try and motivate my group more to hopefully produce more successful rehearsals and a stronger final performance. 

Overall I  believe that our final performance went very well. We all performed confidently and with great stage presence. Even though there were a few hiccups we can take these on board and progress further as performers knowing that these mistakes are something we can try and avoid in all of our future performances. Our arrangements were strong and we clearly communicated our intentions to our chosen audience. 

Second Song Choice - Don't Stop Me Now by Queen

The second song we chose as a group is "Don't Stop Me Now" by the band Queen. The song was released as a single in 1979 and is originally performed in the glam rock genre. Its originally an upbeat, feel good song that is very well known by most people. We will be slowing the song down and covering it as a ballad. The lyrics are generally quite happy meaning they can easily be turned into a love ballad of some sort. The chords are repetitive through out making it easier for us to add harmonies. (Queen Official, 2008)

The song itself follows a basic song structure of verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, middle eight, chorus, ending. It has a few variations but the simple structure means that it is a good song to change up and make a new exciting arrangement of. Freddie mercury has a typical rock singers voice, this is something we needed to keep away from in our arrangement in order to portray a ballad genre. We need to all sing the song with soft sounding voices, there can be powerful parts, however, our voices still need to sound clear. 

Musically the song is more complicated than our first song. The instruments are all given more complicated parts and they all have sections where they can show off their talents. For example the guitar solo that is played in the middle of the song. This gives the guitarist an opportunity to show his talents and it gives the song a break to help change things up a bit. We will only have a piano in our arrangement so we need to look at doing something similar but with our voices. Overall I think the song presents us with both challenges and opportunities and we should be able to successfully create a strong arrangement as an ensemble. 

Fourth Group Rehearsal

In today's rehearsal we came to the decision that we had not left ourselves with enough time to do what we had originally planned for our second song. This was to turn a ballad into a pop song. We found this as more of a challenge and sadly we didn't have enough time to do this to the best of our ability. We decided that the best thing to do at this stage would be to do what we had done for the first song, pick a pop song and turn it into a ballad. We wasted no time at all and David suggested that we could do "Don't Stop Me Now" by the band Queen. We all agreed that this song had lots of potential for us to make it an interesting arrangement and we began rehearsing. 

To begin with i found out what the chords would be for piano and i tried playing it through a few times to make sure that i was able to play it and that the chords fit properly. We then started to discuss what could happen where and we put together a rough arrangement of who would sing what and where we could potentially have harmonies. We decided that the first verse would be sang by me and that it should be very soft and slow. I would play singular chords ,with just my right hand, an octave above  middle C to make it sound delicate and pretty. I would sing the melody softly to match what i would be playing on piano. David would sing a harmony with me on the word "Don't" to add some bass and texture to the verse to stop it from getting boring. 

In the second verse we decided that David should take the tune. I would start playing with both my left and right hand and i would play the chords in a variation to give the song more depth here. Underneath David singing the melody, me, Amy and Louise would sing "mm da da" following the chords. This helped distance the song from the original and made it sound more like a ballad. Amy would then sing the pre-chorus as a solo with me, David and Louise singing "aah" underneath. Similar to davids verse this would help communicate the genre to the audience clearer. Also by singing our notes on a more open vowel sound like "aah" it helps build the song up, giving it more depth and texture. It also makes it sound different to the previous verse. 

Finally, Louise would sing the chorus as a solo. I decided not to sing anything in this verse because i wanted to concentrate more on playing the piano correctly because our arrangement became more complicated here. Amy and David would be singing an array of "don't stop me's" and "aahs" in the background, once again to add texture and to make the song sound more interesting for an audience. At the end of the song Louise sings the line "I don't want to stop at all" here Amy and David would sing the same line with her but adding in a harmony to help bring it to a big climax. Underneath on the piano i would be playing E flat, transitioning then to F. When i begin playing F David would drop out and start singing "Don't stop me" over and over on an F, after four i would begin singing the same but on an A, then Louise would do the same but on a C and finally Amy would do the same but on an F. This we would crescendo through this eventually creating a final harmony which would be loud. We would then all drop out and Louise would sing " I don't want to stop at all" a cappella. 

I believe that we made the right choice by changing our song because now we have a strong arrangement of something similar to our first song and we are able to show our audience how we can be consistent across one genre. It also shows our ability to do two arrangements in the same genre of music but make them different enough so that they don't sound too similar and so that they are fun to listen too. 

First Song Choice - Doo Wah Diddy by Manfred Mann

The first song we chose as a group was "Doo Wah Diddy" by Manfred Mann. The song was actually originally performed by the Exciters in 1963 but was made famous when Manfred Mann did a cover in 1964. The song is originally performed in a pop rock genre, however, we will be covering it as a ballad. The song follows a simple chord structure and the lyrics represent that of a love song meaning it is easily turned into a ballad.

The song its self is very repetitive and follows the same lyric structure through out apart from a small section in the middle which splits the verses up. The repetitiveness of the song and the nonsense lyrics "Doo wah diddy, diddy dum diddy doo." are what i believe made the song so famous. Its memorable, yet annoying, making it a typical guilty pleasure song. We hate to love it.
(Slick Rocks, 2014)

Musically the song is very simple, it mostly consists of two chords (G and C) apart from the middle section which has some variation. The melody line is simple and slightly monotone with most of the expression coming from the singer not the notation. The drums seem to play a simple rock beat with a few variations and fills added. The lead singer plays the maracas to give the song more depth and texture. Overall the song is very simple, yet very effective. It is performed cleverly and the combination of lyrics, music and performance are what made this song so successful. As a group we need to make sure that we stay true to some aspects of this song in order to make sure that our ensemble performance is successful. 

Third Group Rehearsal

Between last rehearsal and this one we discussed as a group which song to pick for our second performance, we decided to use "Every Rose Has its Thorn" by the band poison. David suggested that perhaps we could use a backing track that he could create using garage band. We all saw this as a good idea as it would create a greater contrast between our first song. Also pop songs are well known for having cheesy, upbeat backing tracks. David set to work on the backing track and the rest of us began thinking about the arrangement of the song.

In todays rehearsal we carried on rehearsing our first song. We seemed to have hit a brick wall with it so we took some time to look over the song again and to maybe try something new with it. Amy came up with the suggestion to not actually sing "doo wah diddy, diddy dum diddy do" and replace it with something different that didn't have so many words so that we could slow the tempo down even more. We decided we would sing "doo wah" instead and elongate the "wah" to the length of what the original line would have been to fill the gap. By doing this we dramatically changed the song and made it sound even more like a melody. We are still including harmonies for the "doo wah's" to give the song variety.

As the rehearsal progressed we realised that the song was sounding very similar throughout so we needed to mix it up. To do this i decided to play some of the verses on a higher octave of the piano to create a more delicate pretty song. The next verse would then be played the octave below to create a dramatic and powerful sounding verse. We end the song by repeating the first verse but with double the volume and power, we included new harmonies and added vocal echoes. This gave the song a clear ending. We have planned to move onto the second song in the next rehearsal.