Thank you for choosing to read the lyrics for the songs featured in my graduation recital! Just below is a PDF with the lyrics for all of the songs in the same order as the programme. Please enjoy!
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Recently, I've finished the first assignment for my vocal workshop which was to re-interpret a popular exisiting song as your own cover and to make it vocally challenging for yourself. Since I historically struggled with using my chest voice, I decided to do a bluesy cover of Panic!At The Disco's "I Write Sins, Not Tragedies" since most of it sits comfortably in my chest voice and the chorus / bridge veers into the upper limits of my chest voice where I have a habit of switching back into my head (often because I feel like I get a little too loud when I sit in my chest voice in my upper register).
What I learned from this was that using a more nasal tone, combined with focusing my more on my resonance and placement, that my vocal tone could sound quite crisp and powerful in that register of my voice, without having to push so hard to get there. It just takes a certain amount of concentration rather than force to get my voice into the right position - which is basically having your soft pallet sitting nice and high in the same position it does when you yawn. I've been using a habit tracking app called "habitica" to try to get myself to do at least 5-10 minutes worth of targeted vocal exercises everyday. These exercises help me to work on the weakest parts of my voice and what I need to re-learn in how I sing. This has been so useful for helping me to blend with the other vocalists in Gem's recital. Quite a few of the songs like "Better" and "Recover" need to have that more gospel-like tone - it needs to be thick and full so most of that is about understanding your register and resonance. I've gradually found it easier and easier to slip into my chest voice in my upper register and to be able to tell what it feels like when I'm in it versus when I'm just using a very convincing head voice. The one thing I've been really struggling to get my head around recently as we've been rehearsing my own recital songs is how to control my vibrato. I can turn my vibrato on and off fairly easily but really struggle with how to control the width of it. This again, has been a vocally historic issue for me as my vibrato used to be quite uncontrollable and was a nervous habit when I would perform. However, nowadays I'm a much more confident and experienced performer and don't get the same kind of nerves I used to get when performing as I did when I was a teenager. It's just become a habit that my vibrato sounds a certain way and it's a habit that I want to try and break this semester (or at least try to work around). With Sophie's (our vocal workshop lecturer's) help, I want to be able to control how wide my vibrato is and not just when I use it. This may mean practising singing without playing guitar as I've found it quite hard to focus very intently on my vocal work when I'm playing at the same time. Even though I've been singing whilst playing guitar for over a decade now, I'm using my voice in a very different way that requires me to focus much more on what's going on internally rather than what my hands are doing. Next weekend from the 15th-16th of October, I've got a gig at the Greenbushes Acoustic Festival, so hopefully I'll be able to use some of my newfound vocal skills there in a solo context. Then after that on the 18th of October, I'll be performing in Gem's recital at the Rosemount Hotel on Tuesday the 18th of October! So very exciting stuff - I'll make my next update post most likely after Gem's recital. After having a talk with Alice Humphries about how my last 2 recital band rehearsals went, I now know the key things I need to focus on and how much detail will be required for the final scores. The key talking points from our lesson were:
Above are some screenshots of the current recital plans and progress alongside the first page of each "completed" lead sheet. These include:
All of these songs have been mostly arranged and are at a point where they are playable. However, I am well aware that they have a long way to go before they are sounding as tight as they need to be before they're ready to be performed. My goal for this week is to make the above edits to the current scores, and to make a small start on my instrumental piece. Recent rehearsals for Gem's recital have mainly been held on Sunday nights and during her ensemble class on Tuesday afternoons. What I've focused on in vocal workshop recently has mainly been on switching into my chest voice more often and more clearly for more of the "gospel / pop ballad" vocal style so that I can blend better with the other harmonies. Sophie, my Vocal Workshop lecturer, has mentioned that even when I've thought I've been in my chest voice, I've actually been in a mixed voice / head voice. This was very strange to hear since I was fairly certain I was singing in my chest voice, however, by doing some tailored vocal exercises, I've realised that my upper chest voice feels a bit different to what I've been used to.
For starters, I've realised that I've been using a lot more air than I actually need to when switching into my more powerful upper register. I can help to curb this by doing my normal vocal exercises and using a straw to help keep me in my chest voice. This, plus moving my resonance to a more nasal tone will help to keep me in my true chest voice. Luckily, these exercises are quite familiar to me so I was able to pick them up and make the most of them fairly quickly. This has helped me blend better with the five other vocalists I'm singing with, especially when matching their tone and pronunciation. Pronunciation is an interesting aspect of vocals but when you want to attack a certain note in a certain way, e.g. a high note in chest voice, sometimes you'll need to change the vowel of the word so that it's easier to sing. E.g. "heard" has a very closed sound so instead of singing "her-d" you'd sing "ha-er-d" and switch from an "a" sound to an "er" sound to make the most of the open note. So listening to the other vocalists and noting where vocal breaks and pronunciations are and how they change is really important in an ensemble setting. This is a skill I'm developing and getting my head around in these rehearsals and in vocal workshop. I've recorded some of the rehearsals and my assignment that I will update later. The first section of my recital is more reflective and introspective compared to the other sections. It should feel intimate in a way that is sweet but almost intrusive, like this is music meant only for the writer / composer. To help to lull the audience into this mood, they'll enter the performance space with my first piece already playing. Over the easter weekend, I borrowed a field recorder from the loans store and did a sound walk to record the morning bird sounds from in Manjimup, where my Dad's family is from.
As someone who frequently experiences bouts of insomnia, watching the sunrise and listening to early morning bird calls is quite relieving, 1) because they're just pretty sounds compared to the eerie and still night noises, and 2) because it means that I can warrant being awake finally. The second layer to this is that back in 2020, my Grandmother passed away. My memories of her are hearing her waking up before everyone else in the house, early enough to hear the morning bird calls and to see the blue wrens hopping around Manjimup and Pemberton in October. Doing the sound walk in Manjimup was partly for her, and partly to try and connect the my roots of my family's lineage of advocating for environmental conservation. So these sounds are really special to me, and by putting the audience in the middle of a spatial piece, I'm literally putting them in my shoes. Once the doors to the theatre are shut, all of the lights will go down and the audience will be able to experience the rest of the piece in the dark. This will then transition into my first song "Until It's Easy", a song written about the anxiety and existentialism I was experiencing during the last few months of 2020. The bird sounds will fade out over the course of the song's intro and finally, a spotlight will come up on me as I continue to play (solo at first for the intimacy of it, but the final chorus will include a cello and potentially a viola). This seamless transition from music for the audience to enter, into the performance itself will limit the need for a spoken introduction, which I feel would throw off the atmosphere I'm aiming to build for the first section of the recital. Below are the drafts and notes for the spatial piece. Soundcloud link: soundcloud.com/user-751676690/window-panes
Soundcloud link: soundcloud.com/user-751676690/storm-drains
, I've been working with Alice Humphries this semester to work out my recital. She's given me some great advice as to how to tailor my creative workflow, using lead sheets as a way to workshop my pieces before writing up a more detailed version of the score. For my recital, I'm planning to do a performance structured like a concept album. It will be split into 3 different sections with varying moods: 1) Reflective and Introspective 2) Lively and Performative 3) Cathartic and Freeing. This is shaped to explore the dynamics of intimacy in music performance. Sometimes, music is written for the writer and other times it's written for the audience and that's something I want to explore in this performance. Right now, I have 5 songs already written. They will be arranged for a band and (hopefully) an 8 piece string arrangement. 1. Until It's Easy 2. Golden Trash 3. I Suck @ Video Games 4. Matter of Time 5. Oversaturated / Carrington Street So far, I've written the lead sheets for Golden Trash and we have rehearsed and workshopped it with the band. The PDF for these can be found below. I was also able to use this song as a test for using my recording studio for my special topics unit project.
This is the live recording we were told to do for replacing our 4th year Semester 1 performance. These will also be my main band members for the recital, however, I'll have to find a replacement for our electric guitarist who had to quit after realising his schedule conflicts.
The final arrangement I'm hoping to have is lead vocals, 2 x backing vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, piano, bass guitar, drum kit, 4 x violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos and an alto saxophone. These performers will be on stage for the whole performance as the songs in the 3 individual sections will likely flow one into the other. Over the course of semester break, I plan to finish the lead sheets and to start work on the string arrangements. For the opener of the recital, I've done some field recordings for bird sounds down in Manjimup, where my extended family lives. I plan to mix these sounds with some synths in a spatial piece for when the audience is walking into the theatre (I'm unsure which performance space I want to use yet, but it is likely going to end up being in the RGA, The Rosemount, or the Spiegel Tent, if possible). Again, this use of very personal experiences and sounds is meant to impose the idea of intimacy on the audience right from the get go. This will then bleed into the first song, Until It's Easy. I made it! For the full recap of the different projects this involved, here are the PDFs and links to the tracks I created over the course of this semester's special topics unit. I had a lot of fun and overall I'm extremely chuffed with all of my work this semester (even if I didn't end up sticking to that update every week). Here are the links to the tracks I created on my Soundcloud profile: 1) Golden Trash (Solo) - soundcloud.com/user-751676690/golden-trash-draft 2) Sad Songs - soundcloud.com/user-751676690/sad-songs 3) Golden Trash (Band) - soundcloud.com/user-751676690/golden-trash-full-band
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Artist SummaryI'm a WA Fremantle based singer-songwriter / composer. Here, you can have a gawk at my studies, compositions and performances. Archives
August 2022
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