The previous week was missed due to illness. I managed to complete some research for a few hours by watching other amateur productions of School Song to get ideas for characterisation, choreography and physicality.
Monday - Music
This lesson was focused on perfecting the song and making sure we could project it throughout, very clearly. Our warm ups were individual at the beginning of the lesson and I chose to use some vocal warm ups that I had learned in my choir over the years. I stretched my tongue out in my mouth and massaged my face and throat before doing a tongue twister warm up to help my diction (the warm up was singing"a proper cappuccino in a proper copper coffee pot" up the scale). I then did a warm up for my range and breath control; this was the phrase "una lagrima" sung over 3 counts of 8 in a falling melody. After we had all warmed up, we sang through the song as a group to refresh it for everybody and then split into our groups to independently work on making it as clean and projected as possible. Our group worked a bit more on characterisation and making our voices sound intimidating, this gave us more of an incentive to project louder as it made sense with the character. We ran through it a few times and saw improvement each time in both technique and confidence with the song. We showed it to our peers for feedback and they said that we needed to make sure everyone was singing with equal intensity and power as otherwise it felt unbalanced. So Emily and I helped a few members of our group with where to breathe so that we all had enough breath to ensure the most power could be exuded.
Tuesday - Dance
I led the vocal warm up this lesson; we did the tongue twister warm up that I did yesterday which everyone found tricky but it seemed to help with diction. For our physical warm up we sang through the song whilst jogging on the spot, with increasing speeds, this was to help with our stamina. The number has difficult vocals as well as a high energy dance routine so stamina is necessary for us to be able to perform it all the way through without getting tired. The stamina warm up was tricky but it helped me to know where in the song I need to work on my stamina for. We were then taught some of the second half of the dance routine. This part is the second chorus which is where the younger kids are being initiated into the school and becoming part of it all, it is also where it becomes clear to the audience that the lyrics are in-cooperating the alphabet. To show this we use 4 blocks with the letter names on them and we show each letter to the audience as it's sung. This part has been the most complicated to learn because not only is the sequence of movements complex to remember, but you also have to make sure the right letter is facing the audience the right way round. As a group we learned the steps pretty quickly but it took a while before we were able to run it smoothly.
Friday - Drama
I led the vocal warm up again for this lesson and so we did a different tongue twister up the scale but we also worked on a larger range as the song is also very high pitched. Like last lesson we did another stamina warm up but this one was harder than the last as we included more movements whilst singing through the song. However, I found that my stamina had improved slightly since the last warm up. We split into groups and our group worked with the blocks and learning a lot more of the routine while the other group worked on characterisation. The block section was difficult to learn and I think we will need a fair few more rehearsals before we get that clean and smooth. We have the base of it done and we can go through it right if we're marking at a slower tempo than the original score. Another challenge we faced was trying to choreograph creative ways to pass the blocks and move with the blocks so that it looks intentional, as well as what we do when we're not holding a block, and where to stand so that the stage looks balanced. We slowly marked out everyone's track onstage so we all know roughly where we should be onstage at all times even when we're not directly involved in the choreography.
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