Music certificate

At the start of the college year we had the option to choose an additional course alongside our core one, in this case it was Acting Level 3 UAL Diploma. We had cousrses such as Technical Theatre to Dancing to Photography. I decided to do singing as a personal challenge due to the fact that I was not very confident with my voice and in addition wanted to improve on my projection, in result the singing certificate was a clear benefit on my behalf. 

To get in to the course, we were faced with an audition where we had to show our course leader, Philip, with our range and abilities. The first few weeks of the course then consisted of basic warm ups such as scales and tongue twisters; this also may have come in handy to the Drama course. We were then introduced to our first assessed unit which was the Solo Performance Unit where we had to collate a couple of songs and write up a program whilst updating our blog every session. We were introduced to the different genres in Music such as Folk, Classical and Jazz music. Every week, a few members of the class had to sing a song from the allocated genre, whereas I was given Folk music. As far as I can remember, we were required to always have a song prepared as a lot of the time, Philip would ask members of the class to perform solos in front of the class, in turn giving feedback to the singer in order to improve their confidence and presentation on stage, as well as spreading the voice itself. A couple of the songs I performed were 'Eyes Shut' by Years and Years and 'Suddenly Seymour' from a previous musical I had participated in - Little Shop of Horrors.

As the weeks went on, I had collated the songs for my solo performance whilst timing it and making sure that it hit the bench mark of 20 minutes at least. Whilst performing I had gained some feedback on how I performed and what I could have improved as although in the past I have performed in front of audiences before, I kind of lost confidence and felt that this certificate provided a clear solution for me as a solo performer.

We had then moved on to the Ensemble Unit where we had been given the opportunities to choose our groups and put together a short collation of songs or medley's as a performance without the guidance of Philip. My group and I wanted to be unique and decided to go acapella for our performance since we had been previously practicing this outside the class itself. During every week we had discussed ideas on songs on what worked and what did not work. We then decided to use the songs 'I won't give up' by Jason Mraz and 'Price Tag' by Jessie J with a little rap included by myself. In the end of the medley, my classmate and I provided a little improvisation with what we had been doing outside the class which was beat boxing and bass with our voices. 

The next week we had to provide an Ensemble presentation which had to be prepared alongside the group work where we had to state what an ensemble is, give examples of some, state every member and their roles and compare them to another group. I had chosen Westlife and Years and Years since they both share responsibilities off one another, however the difference is Westlife are pure vocals but depend on a backing track whereas Years and Years have one lead singer and the others providing the backing music.

Overall I have really enjoyed the Singing/Music Certificate as over the course of the year I had gained confidence in singing in front of audiences again solo and learnt new warm up techniques to help me even in the Drama course as stated in the previous paragraphs. In addition, I even found a new acapella group which I am so honored to be part of.