practicing / training

Personal practice:

Obviously outside of lessons, we had to find ourselves the time to practice our songs and warm up our vocals to help with our singing show. Chloe recommended at least five minutes of vocal warm up's everyday and this would slowly help our voices improve. Truthfully, I did not do this everyday due to forgetting but I did do it most days when I was at home and I did feel it did some improving and helped with my singing a lot more as it improved my strength of singing and breathing etc.

I think my voice suits slower songs more, I think this is because of my breathing. I especially find it hard to hit notes in quicker songs and become off-key and run out of breath quickly such as the school song, it was like a work out for me. I think my voice can get to higher notes in slow songs as well as it is again to do with my breathing. I struggle to sing low notes in any songs because I genuinely cannot sing very low at all.

Other than the exercises I did with Chloe, I used different ones at home such as ones I use with my singing teacher which included sirens, some tongue twisters such as 'the tip of the tongue, the teeth and the lips' and etc. In warm ups, I tried singing lower to start with so my voice would get used to the lower key. I did this because I wanted to try train my voice to be able to sing lower.

I genuinely think in class I had good focus, had a laugh with everyone now and then but I did try in the warm up's even if they were hard. I think in class I have achieved a little more confidence then I had before because everyone is so supportive of you. I have never done a show of just pure singing so it was a new experience and I liked it. I achieved being able to sing higher harmonies and think about the story of the lyrics so much more then I ever did before so it was more then just singing.

I'm still working towards my range, singing lower and belting to be achieved by the end of the year and I definitely think by warm up's for my vocals everyday and drinking plenty of water can really help and just being careful with my voice and do not push myself so hard. I'm also working on facial expressions whilst singing, there was a musical theatre song I did with Dean in the singing show and I didn't really focus on facial expressions, I was too nervous and was focusing too hard on the singing and didn't think about facial expressions to use.

Rehearsal & Performance: 

Chloe wanted us to choose our own songs unless she had one that she would like you to try or would be good for your voice. I always struggle to choose a song to sing because I do not want to make it too easy for myself but I do not want to do a song that I would find impossible to do. I looked at Lily Allen's 'Somewhere only we know' and Ellie Goulding's 'Love me like you do' but in the end I decided to do a song by Adele called 'Make you feel my love'. I have never sung an Adele song as her voice is very different from mine and I felt okay with it at first but I soon found out I held back a lot and I was really nervous to sing the belting parts as I feared that I sounded off-key. I sung it in front of Chloe for the first time on 29th January and I didn't belt but I used head voice on them parts. Afterwards Chloe said I should keep that as my song and me and her will just work with each other on it. She said for the first bridge that I could use head voice because the lyrics are still gentle but on the second one after the instrumental, to belt it as the lyrics mean more and are stronger. So I kept the song.

Most nights at home I would sing my songs to a karaoke version to help get used to them more and get my voice used to the tune and music and then I would listen to the original as well too see what I can change or what I can even achieve myself with it. I would usually do the vocal warm up's during the day as when I wake up, my voice is a little weird and I find it hard to sing without warming up. I also found it easier to sing at night time because my voice has been talking all day and warmed up a lot so it made it easier to sing. At college I would practice in my own time when I could but the main chances that I got too sing was when we actually had singing lessons with Chloe.

I recorded myself a few times but I am unable to upload them onto here for some reason, it was weird hearing myself but I was able to hear parts of the song that I struggled with and parts I was stronger.

When I sung my solo in front of people, most of my peers said not to be afraid to belt out on the belting parts, stay relaxed, and actually perform the song. Chloe pretty much said the same thing on the line so I worked on it and improved my song with using my feedback that I had been given.

My song was sad, so some characterisation could have been used...I wasn't putting an incredibly smiley facial expression on, but sometimes a smile was useful but only a small one was suited. A song could be sung through the eyes as well, as your eyes can look sad or happy or whatnot...I felt my eyes were sad due to the song I was singing.

Exam

We had to do a vocal exam in front of Chloe where she plays us a tune of sixteen beats and then we have to sing it back and she would play the first key to help us. She started off by having us all sit in a circle and Chloe would clap a tune and we had to copy and do it in time and all of us had to do it. This was difficult because not everyone done the correct timing and the right tune. Chloe did this to help us get a rough idea of what the exam would be like. The more we had to do it, the more harder it got. So once we got through the circle once, as well as clapping...Chloe then added clicking, and then afterwards she added a slap on the knee.

Afterwards she wanted us to hum a tune, literally any tune that came up into our head and then everyone had to copy it...we could add claps and clicks if we wanted. This was also difficult because I found it hard to think of a tune on the spot but also listen to everyone else's tune and copy it exactly the same as they done it.

The point in those exercises was because she wanted us to get a feel for the exam and get the idea of rhythm. She then left us to practice some rhythm in groups and then we was called up one at a time to do the exam. I was second and I was so nervous but Chloe was really supportive and helped me with the exam as much as she could.

This was the other half of our singing unit as well as the show and the blog.