I found it really hard to choose a solo. I was stuck with many songs and I decided to go with Adele Make you feel my love. But as I tried practising this song at home I noticed I could not sing it as well as I thought I could so I worried myself. I decided to look at other songs in case I had the opportunity to change it. I tried Ellie Goulding's 'Your song' and Lily Allen's 'somewhere only we know'. I felt a lot more comfortable with these songs and I decided to message Chloe to tell her the issues I was having. She said she still wants to hear the Adele song and reassured me that I may not sound as bad as I may think, she said if I wanted to stick to the Adele song that she would work with me 1 to 1 to help me improve it, and said its up to me completely. She also mentioned it could be something I could work myself up too.
On the 29th January, everyone doing solo's got a chance to have a singing lesson with Chloe to go through the song they chose to do, Chloe said she wanted to hear me sing the Adele song. She then said that the bit that I was worried about I could sing my head voice on the first one and on the second one to belt it.
so head voice on this bit:
I know you haven't made your mind up yet,
But I will never do you wrong.
I've known it from the moment that we met,
No doubt in my mind where you belong.
and belt this bit:
The storms are raging on the rolling sea
And on the highway of regret.
The winds of change are blowing wild and free,
You ain't seen nothing like me yet.
After going through this a few times, Chloe said she wants me to keep the Adele song but to just keep working on it and I would eventually be more comfortable with it.
Chloe has not been in for two weeks so we have not as a class had our normal weekly two hour lesson. So I have been practising at home because of this...slowly I am starting to feel a lot more comfortable with the more belted singing parts.
A few weeks ago, Chloe gave me this sheet that would help me with my blog:
This week we got told that our singing show would be moved to march 26th, which is a few months earlier than it was originally but the show in May would clash with exams and other things going on in the school. This shocked everybody and made me think straight away that I need to keep going strong.
We had a lesson earlier to go through all our class group songs and Chloe would film them so we can put them on our blogs to see the progress. This was a good way to help people see how we sound and look. Chloe then brought out another song for us which would make the fourth class group song, we listened to it and then decided that we liked it but we was going to not put it into the show because we wanted to focus on the three songs we already had. it was James Bay's new song.
Me and Kj suggested to Chloe singing a duet of the song called 'earned it, by the weeknd' from the film 50 shades of grey.
A group of six of us wanted to sing 'cell block tango' from Chicago. The group including me, Kj, Saskia, Lily, Eden, and Daisy. We sorted the characters we were but to be honest rarely practised it.
When we got told that the singing show was being moved to March, Chloe said that on Friday the 27th February we have to sing our songs in front of her and Ella so they can see where the song is at and whether it will go into the show or not. I got really nervous because I thought I wouldn't be good enough.
Me and the Chicago practiced our song a few times and was worried it wouldn't be ready we still tried and Chloe said if we want to do it that we got to work really hard for it so that it will work and will go into the show.
I feel that all my songs went really well but I was most nervous for my solo as it was the first song I had to sing and because I had only sung it in front of Chloe once and never in front of Ella.
Later on that day Chloe took me to have a chat and told me that Dean from the second year wanted to do a duet and asked me to do it with him, I was surprised but I thought I would listen and give it a chance, so Chloe and Dean sung it to me and Dean played the song on the piano. The song is called 'Something to believe in' from the musical 'newsies' I really liked the song and it was sung really high I thought I would like to do it so when I got home I listened to it a few more times and tried singing it a few times.
The show is 26th March, and a list got put up of the songs that did/didn't come in and the songs that needed to be seen again to see if the song will go into the show or not. My solo of adele got in, mine and KJ's duet of earned it got in, but cell block tango and mine and Dean's song is in the maybe part.
Chloe done an exercise with both 1st and 2nd years where she put up pieces if paper around the room with lyrics on it and no song name on it but we had to write down on a piece of paper what we thought it meant:
I thought the first one was about thinking positive/there could be something worse then what is already happening.
I thought the second one was about being judged and about personalities and trust.
I thought the third one was about not being left alone/relationships/stalking etc.
With the fourth one I thought it was about dreaming/travelling/relationships/thinking of the future.
And I really wasn't sure about the fifth one, I couldn't quite figure out what it was about.
The main reason she done this is because she said when we sung our songs that we was just 'singing it' we didn't sing it with emotion and meaning so she told us to write down what we thought our song meant.
We had a rehearsal of adding movement to our song 'school song' from Matilda the musical:
Although the singing needs a lot of work, by adding the movement it has improved quite a bit of the song already.
Chloe filmed all our songs so that in a few weeks when we have had the show we can see the progress:
Me and KJ are using a piano instrumental for the song of 'Earned it' as this key of the song was preferred.
We practised it a few times on Thursday night at college, this helped us feel more comfortable/confident with the song itself and the lyrics.
In Cell Block Tango, me and the girls found the timing very difficult, especially when we first come in with our names of the crimes we committed. So one morning, me & Daisy & Saskia worked out all the timings on the karaoke version to help us figure out when to come in.
By doing this it gave us a more clearer understanding on how the song works. We wasn't sure if a member of the group would be in the song as they had not had much practice with us, we considered using one of the second years to take her place in case this did happen. As the days went on, we figured out that this was the case so a second year kindly said she would take her place and learn it with only days till the show.
We had to decide costumes for the songs, for the school song we would wear school uniforms, for 'keep your head up' we would wear jeans, white shirts and trainers. In 'gone in the morning' we would wear coloured shirts, jeans and trainers, in our Solo's we had to be in smart black clothing (black dresses for girls/black trousers and shirts for boys).
We constantly got as much rehearsal for our songs as possible especially cell block tango. We tried adding some movement into it as well...just now days away from the show.
