Learning Outcome 4

Types of audience: eg peers, friends and family, public

Communication: type eg verbal, physical, musical; with band members; with audience

Stage presentation: image eg costume where appropriate, stage make-up; stage presence and awareness; use of space eg movement, placing of equipment; sight lines

Musical competency: intonation; instrumental tuning; pitching during performance; tightness; tempo; handling of section changes; beginnings and endings; technical proficiency; critical listening and response to ensemble requirements eg balance; sensitivity and dynamics

Here are three of the many songs we performed throughout the musical. These are live recordings from one of the shows!

This is a good example of complex time signatures, as it starts in 7/8.

Go Go Joseph was fun for me, as it had a driving, energetic drum part with a drum solo towards the end.

I enjoyed playing this song, as I did my best to put my own reggae groove in it. I did not play the written part as I did not think it fitted at all. The song was meant to be stereotypically reggae, and so that's what I played. I made sure to use the reggae kit on Roland drum module. This was a fun piece to play.

Evaluation

I am really pleased that I took part in this. The week I spent practically entirely at the church was really good, as firstly I got to play drums a lot of the time which is always a bonus, and secondly I just got to know a lot of people from both the band - and the performers, and had a great time.

The shows were practically full every night, even sold out on some nights. The audience varied from kids, college students up to elderly people. They all seemed to think it was great.

Communication

The communication between band members was great. Because we were sitting at the back of the church behind the audience, we could whisper and signal things to each other without distracting anyone. David was perfectly in the centre, with us on each side facing him. I could see him perfectly and even talk to him from where I was. This made communication between us work very well. He could also see the performers from that position, which meant that he could communicate with them too.

Performance

I think that I played quite well on the whole. I didn't make too many obvious mistakes, and managed to stay well in time in stranger time signatures and so on. I was also pleased with my solo in Go Go Joseph. I think that everyone paid attention well, and there were no major disruptions or bad parts of any of the songs on any of the nights. The guitarists and other tuned instruments all made sure to tune up before each performance, and we always checked our levels each night to make sure it was all perfect and ready.

Self-Critisism

Something I found particularly challenging was all the use of rubato and ritardandos. I am used to playing music with a set beat/tempo, or recording to click tracks. However, a lot of parts of songs would suddenly slow up, and were controlled by the conductor. This is alright if you are playing something like a wind instrument, as you can slowly start blowing into it. However, a drum hit is so sudden and instant, that although I tried to hit them in sync with the conductor, sometimes they weren't all that accurate. I also had trouble slowing down properly at the end of some songs. I would like to improve on this for next time I do a show, and get better at predicting the changing tempos and ritardandos.

  Here is a review of the show from the Henley Standard: