LO4

LO4

4 Be able to evaluate the workshop process in light of performance

Artistic and professional: production values; effectiveness; creativity; clarity of interpretation; execution of vocal and/or instrumental performance skills; fulfillment of objectives; audience response; target setting; working relationships; self-criticism; management of time and tasks Vocational: eg target audience for work, potential for further development, nature of work and possible markets, economic viability

Artistic and professional 

Production Values 

The instruments we used within the group: 

• Guitar- this the main instrument really, we used it in both of the songs, acoustic and electric, it was one of the lead parts on the Peace song. 
• Drums-we used drums in just the Conflict song, this is because the song itself was much more upbeat and having a strong instrument like drums can really reflect on what the song was actually about, which was Conflict. We didn't want to use drums for our Peace song because there was then a clear difference between the two topics and the feel of the both songs were different from each other. Peace was much more calm therefore heavy instruments weren't exactly needed. 
• Bass- we used this on both of the songs, this is because we felt that it needed the bass in the background, as it brings it all together, without it neither of the songs would have sounded the same.
• Piano- we used piano in both the songs. The piano created a different feel for both of the songs. We used it for chords during the chorus' to add extra power.
• Shakers- this song was included in the Peace song, this song really needed an instrument like this. We wanted the feel of the song to be quite relaxed and airy, I think using the shaker this really helped us to create the sound that we was after.
• Tambourine- we used this for the Peace song also, we used it to add sound and make the song seem fuller. 

Effectiveness 

I think our performances were effective to the people watching, although they could have been more effective should the video have worked. If the video worked then I think that it would have had more of an effect to the audience as they would have been able to relate our lyrics to the video. It could have been a little confusing maybe for them as we were singing 'Rosa' and the video would have had Rosa parks in the background so they may have understood it slightly more, although sometimes leaving the audience guessing can be a good thing. 
I hope that our songs were effective in general. I think that our Peace song was much more effective than our Conflict song as the words were much more sensitive and we were speaking in first person so I think it could mean more to the people listening.

Creativity 

I don't think that we used our creativity to the best that we could. I think that during the performance we could have included a lot more things which would have shown our creativity. We could have added more dance movements and changed our positioning of where we stood for each song. One of the things which I think could have shown our creativity which we actually forgot to do when we performed which was to stick newspaper cuttings of headlines and news reports from newspapers on the piano, I don't think this would have worked as we didn't really have a lot of time before we performed to stick them up so we could have thought of a different way to do this.
We were creative with the instruments that we used, for example the shakers as they added ambiance and made the song have more of a feeling and made the song seem fuller. 

Clarity of interpretation 

I think we interpreted the meanings of the two songs really well. Instead of just talking directly about the two topics 'Peace' and 'Conflict' we spoke about the two metaphorically and spoke about specific stories which related to the two meanings. For example, Rosa Parks and the famous story of her on the bus. We interpreted the sound of pain into singing and holding on notes in harmony. 

Execution of vocal and/or instrumental performance skills 

Our vocals were all fine apart from the harmony during the Peace song. The harmony had five voices, this made it quite difficult to always keep to our own harmony and to not slip into each others. No matter how hard we practiced it just never seemed to work but I personally do feel like some people tried more than others, in fact if I'm being honest it was all but one person who seemed to really want to try and do it and I think this may have been noticeable from the performance. If not then it is a shame that others who tried persistently wouldn't get recognised for this than others who hid behind them to ignore the fact they needed to rehearse extra but wouldn't accept this and put it off. I think that our vocals would have been so much better.
Everything other than this went well. Everyone who was playing instruments and percussion performed them really well, I think we were all really rehearsed but during the performance I don't think it all went to plan, especially when the harmonies come in this threw us all off a bit.
I have quite a soft and quiet voice naturally, so I did try and sing out more as some of the others have very overpowering voices, to tackle this we should have really turned my microphone up slightly more perhaps or the others should have stepped back from the microphone just to level the sound more.

Fulfilment of objectives 

I think that we met all of the objectives set, bar a couple. We did find it quite difficult in some ways to make sure that everything was included in our songs, the main one that I think we didn't really use was the dance and not everyone in our group stuck to what we set the costume theme to be, which was green and black, and some people in our group didn't stick to this but i'm not too sure why they didn't. I think we did cover most of the other learning outcomes and objectives but there was definitely room for improvement and things that we could have used even more for the performing side, for example, again the dancing side to things/movement. Although I did really feel as if it was left down to me and every time it was brought up certain people within the group didn't want to co-operation with this side of things as I feel it wasn't something that they felt confident in so they thought they could leave it down to others.

Audience response 

The audience seemed to enjoy our performances. We asked for feedback from people that watched and there were mixed opinions. As other people had seen our songs outside of rehearsals and performance they said they could see the different between the two, although most people did say that when they had seen our songs before they were much better than our performance.The harmonies were much tighter.They said that the songs itself were really good, but we did slack in some parts, especially the harmonies.

Target setting 

Conflict: We wanted the setting for this song to be more intense. This was because the feeling of the song was much stronger than Peace and the meaning behind the song I felt was more stronger and we expressed it more to the point. We started off with the Conflict song because we felt that it was our strongest song therefore opening with it would be a good idea.

Peace: For this song we wanted the environment to be much more relaxed, the opposite of how we wanted the feeling of Conflict to be. We reflected this on the style of our song. I think how we wanted the setting to feel did come across during our performances. 

Working relationships 

We all worked well within our group and helped each other for parts where we may have struggled and needed more help with. Mo was especially a great helper within the group, with harmonies he was really helpful as he always sat down with us and went through parts where we may have struggled as we know harmonies is one of Mo's strong skills. We all understood each other's difficulties within the group and noticed where some people were struggling with certain parts and we went over everything several times to ensure that every body was comfortable with the songs. I think one of the things which did let our group down a bit was when it come to certain things was some people didn't seem as if they wanted to get completely involved in things that didn't feel as confident in. As I did mention in another part of my evaluation, especially the dance side of it, people who wasn't very confident with this they seemed very reluctant to join in and put it on other people to deal with and actually physically do, I think it was really left down to me to do this but we didn't feel as if it would have really worked with just one or two of us doing it, even though we did take part in things which were completely out of our comfort zone.
What I think was a good thing about our group which hopefully reflected during our performance, was that we are all very close to each other. Although we did set jobs at the beginning of it all, we didn't actually really keep to them we all kind of helped each other on everything. For example when it come to making the video we were all in charge of looking out for videos on YouTube and we all sat down and spoke about what and where we wanted certain images and footage, I personally think that when performing you can see how close we became as a group as we had great communication within the group.

Self-critism 

I think I started off performing with confidence. I introduced ourselves, we all took part in this, I think engaging with the audience first helped me feel more confident with performing. The song Conflict that we performed first I think that went well. I knew the Conflict song very well and I was confident with it. However, when it came to sing the Peace song, we wasn't really very confident with it and I felt quite uncomfortable singing it. I was nervous for the harmonies as we wasn't ready with them, it was the only part of the song which really let it down. 

In the Peace song I play the shaker, I found it difficult to come in at the beginning with it so I think I was slightly off for the beginning but I managed to come in time as it went on, I was only out for a couple of seconds. I think what would have helped me with this would be to count when to come in as I normally just come in when it feels right but this doesn't always work out. 

Management of time and tasks 

We managed our time very well. We went through each part of the song slowly gradually building up as the days went on.

PEACE

Doing the actual music making/instruments: We started with the Conflict song so I don't really think that we left enough time for the Peace song. I feel like we were over thinking everything on this song. It took us quite a while to complete the music making and finishing what instruments we were using. We added instruments during the last week of the making of the song, we added a shaker and a tambourine which did make it quite difficult for some people to remember their pieces.
We started off just having it really acoustic just to get the basics down and then throughout we added more things.
Lyrics: This is something that we did over the whole process of making the song, then towards the last 2 weeks we had all the lyrics completed. The reason I think it took this long to have the lyrics completed was because we may have changed parts in the song which meant we needed to change a few words around to make it fit, but nothing too drastic got changed.

Harmonies: We spent at least a solid week on harmonies. I think we may have perhaps over done them, because it made us over think them which then made it really hard for us to remember them and keep to our own harmony. 

Adding instruments. 

Melody: We thought of the melody straight away during making the music. We didn't find this difficult because the guitar piece is very simple there were many different melodies we could create and our options were open. 
Rehearsals: We had plenty of rehearsals for this song. We used our own time to use the facilities and microphones so we could have as much practice time as possible. During rehearsals it made us think about what else we could add to the songs to improve them, that's when we added the shakers and tambourines because it added so much to the songs. It also made us see the our harmonies we're out and not working, although it is very hard to do a five way harmony, having the experience of doing these harmonies that we did will definitely help me for next time. 

CONFLICT

Doing the actual music making/instruments:We spent about 1-2 weeks doing the actual music making itself, we did start off by doing just the Conflict song and then we moved onto the Peace song. As the week or two went on we did improve we did think of ideas for lyrics etc but nothing was really set in stone. 

Melody: This only took about one or two lessons, it didn't take long because it's not really something that you need to spend a lot of time on and it came to us quite quickly. Samara and I for one lesson recorded the music we had and went into a practice room to try out some melodies.

Lyrics: We made the lyrics within the first couple of weeks because we wanted to get everything else completed, like the music itself and the structure of the song. We did move a few things around as the rehearsals went on and changed some words around.
Harmonies: We didn't really use any harmonies for this song. We did have one for the verses but it was just a two way harmony. Mo found it difficult to drum and do his harmony for the first verse so we changed it to just Samara and I singing for the first verse. We both sang the same harmony but due to us having very different voices we both sounded different. 

Rehearsals: We rehearsed all the time, throughout the making of the songs. Constantly rehearsing is important because it enables you to see what parts you may need to change, where you keep going wrong, what needs improving, and what it is missing. 

I do think we managed our time well by focusing harder and spending more time on the things that needed more work on and things that needed to be practiced more, for example the harmonies, but I think we could have spread out our time more on other things and spread it out evenly. Because spending too much time on something can cause something else to slack which then will never leave you with a final track which is completed and neat throughout. I think with our performances you could tell that we spent a lot of time with the songs.

Vocational

Target audience for work 

Our songs weren't actually aimed at a particular audience, but looking back at them and what kind of sound they gave off I think they would be aimed at people with similar age range to us, perhaps 15-19. I think this because they meaning behind them are very serious and any one young may not understand. They could also be aimed at people even older due to the strong meaning behind them. I think that the audience that we performed them to we're a perfect age range, they were older, mainly the performers parents, having an older age range for the audience I think helped us get better constructive feedback from the performances. 

Potential for further development 

We could improve on the tightness of the songs, they we're clean and we knew when to come in and what went where but it was never consistent. I personally think that our songs were good, but there were parts that we could change/improve. If we were to do it again we would change the harmony section, we tried really hard at it but I perhaps think due to us not all being very experienced with them we should have tried something more simple. Making it just maybe be a three way harmony instead. 

We could have had more instruments throughout, we did use quite a few but again I felt it was inconsistent and having more instruments could have made it seem more fuller. For example I only used the shaker in some parts, I could have used it through out but in different ways. The build up to the chorus' could have been exaggerated even more and been more intense.

Nature of work and possible markets 
If we were to take our songs into the real world I would possibly perform them to schools. The reason I think this would be the best place to perform these songs is because I think the meaning behind the songs could teach the students and make them learn about the meanings of 'Peace' and 'Conflict' and the things that go on around the world. I also think we could take our music to events which are about the history of wars etc as I think that we have interpreted the topics well and have used some facts within our songs, for example the Rosa Parks story.

Economic viability 
I think that we could sell our music and could perhaps make money for it. I think that there is a market out there that would buy our music. It's the kind of music that I could see being in the charts and being quite 'popular' music as we have quite catchy chorus' which is something that makes people enjoy music. 

How I think it went...

I think overall the performances were okay. I do think there is a lot where we could have improved and perfected slightly more. The harmonies were one thing which we found very difficult and something that we perhaps needed more time on. We all found that we knew our harmonies during rehearsals and every time we went to perform our pieces with everything altogether and in front of an audience we'd all forget them and get confused, this could be something to do with nerves. 

Unfortunately the video didn't work on the night due to technical faults, so we were unable to do these at the same time as our performance. 

How sound check went...

Sound check didn't go very well at all. This was when we all started panicking and we all realised that it wasn't going to work and it didn't go to plan. Our harmonies were at their worst during sound check, we'd never performed this bad before and I think we were all very annoyed at ourselves because it was actually very embarrassing. After we did this and realised that it didn't sound as good as it has before we went straight into a practice room and went over everything several times, especially the harmonies because this is what was letting us down. 
I think the reason behind the sound check not going very well was because we hadn't performed our songs in front of anyone else yet other than our class so we maybe got a bit nervous and this knocked us back a bit. Having a bad sound check I think definitely affected our final performance because it made us lose confidence and we wasn't sure how it was going to go on the night so I don't think we all performed as strong as we could have done.

What went well...

• Timing- we came in all the right times. One slight problem was that the projector wasn't working so we couldn't put our videos up therefore we can't really evaluate our timing with this, but during rehearsals they all fit perfectly. 
• Stage presence- I personally think that we all came across confident when introducing ourselves to the audience. Mo, Alex, Archie and I all said something to the audience, interacting with the audience made me feel more comfortable and confident for the performance. When actually performing I think we had energy, but obviously there is always room for improvement with this and I think perhaps for the parts that didn't go so to plan we could have acted more confident to try and cover it up more, but nothing too noticeable went wrong. 
• We all communicated with each other with in the group, this also helped us stay in time. 

What could have gone better...

• Harmonies- this is the main thing which we all struggle with and something that we didn't do very well. For the Peace song the first chorus of the harmonies we did well but then we kind of lost it through out as the song went on. 
• I personally feel that my part where I use the shaker in the first verse I lost timing slightly but I managed to get straight back into it. I think this may have been because I felt really rushed at the beginning of the song so this threw me off a bit, and I was also nervous for the harmonies to come in because I wasn't sure what to expect as they never sound good consistently. 

What we would do next time...

• Although we rehearsed the harmonies a lot of times we could have tried different ways to remember them.
• I would go over the parts where I use the shaker, as I found it difficult to come in time to start with. 
• We should all sing out a bit more.

Targets I would give to myself for next time...

• Be more confident when working in a group with strong members and speak out more. I'm going to try and voice my opinion more next time and not just let people tell me what to do and try out my own ideas and thoughts and use them.
• Take charge more and express my own ideas more, I did put out my ideas I think a lot, they just didn't always get recognised and being in a very strong group it can sometimes be very hard to get your point across.
• Get more involved within the music making side of things, I only play a bit of guitar as I am very new to it so this isn't something that I feel completely confident with doing in front of people/in a group like this so I was happy that I did get to get involved with the music side of things but I think next time I think I should include myself slightly more.