Today we worked solely on our intro. Noel, Jess, and I are creating a song/ part of a song to sing at the beginning of the piece. We began by brainstorming. We had a lot of ideas that were very all over the place. It was difficult to narrow down the ideas into more singable and writeable topics. Anthony gave us a background track to work with. That really helped us with the tune. Once we had the sad piano music, we began a free write. In the free write, we ended up coming up with similar themes. We used a few lines from each of our work, tweaked, to create lyrics and a melody. It became, I think, very beautiful in a sad kind of way. We recorded the audio of our song piece so that we would not forget it. After lunch we got together as a full group and worked on the intro. Everyone showed their pieces. Dance had improved tenfold. Rap and Poetry’s introductions were awesome. I hope everyone liked our song. After this sharing of work we began blocking some stuff. It was a bit frustrating because no one was very focused and it was very loud, and a lot of ideas were floating around. Since all the intro stuff is unfinished at this point, it was hard to block these ideas that haven’t been fully decided.

Today was my first day this week. I had been out sick Monday and Tuesday. At the very beginning the music group worked on our intro song and adding a violin part to it, this part I liked. The last hour before lunch, we ran through the entire show or at least the first section in the morning. We put together all four components: poetry, dance, singing and rap. This gave everyone a chance to clean weak areas up. It also gave everyone practice and experience in case something goes wrong. We all learned that we needed to continue to do what we were doing even if we messed up; we had to pretend like it was real show. Right before we went off to lunch the music group worked on harmonizing the hook to “Don’t Judge Me.” After lunch we all came together and worked on the 2nd half of the show. This part was harder for me because I had missed the last two days but I will hopefully catch on quickly. Another challenge was the whispering and the side conversation but only sometimes did I think the group got out of control, majority of the time we were focused and productive but still got yelled at.

This morning the music group wrote a song that would be an intro. At first we were stuck, but later Anthony gave us some music to work off of and it be came easier. We started to brainstorm ideas at first and talk about what we wanted our lyrics to be. In the end we wrote two stanzas. The song sounds depressing because of the music we put with it but hopefully it will go with the rest of the introduction. For me this was the hardest challenge because I had never written a song before; I had no idea where to start. Some ideas that we might have in the end to make our song better is to add some violin and some harmonies to what we had originally written. Hopefully by the beginning of next week our song will be complete. Also I think that the music group and the rap group have to really work on the song in terms of good transitions, flow and adding the chorus in between sections.

Today war our first full day focused on our specific interests. I was in a group of four working on music with Johnny, specifically singing. Throughout the morning we did a lot of vocal exercises that got us more comfortable with singing and each other. There is a wide variety of voices and experience in this group, even with only 4 people. We talked about what we want to be seen, heard and valued about. It was interesting to learn about singing and music without a piano or other pitch-creating instrument. It helped a lot with training our ears. We worked on finding different pitches, harmonizing, finding our ranges, and many other things. We sang Silent Night and Johnny created different harmonies for us to sing. It needed some work, but sounded good. We worked on some complimentary notes and rhythms, which also taught a lot about improvisation and finding the full chord, which are both important aspects of singing. The exercises were really all over the place, improving our strengths in a multitude of musical areas. We also worked a little bit, at the end, on coming up with some ideas for the topic of our piece. When we got together as the full group after lunch, we put the different creative outlets together and got to saw all the smaller groups’ work. My group performed “Silent Night.” We meshed our own work with the other groups such as rap and dance, and created something completely different. It was cool to see how the different groups’ work influenced each other when we performed together.

So far, hoop suite has been fun. In the large group in the morning and afternoon, we share broader ideas and, later, the work we had done during the morning. It’s cool to see other people’s work and share our own, but I think the time would be better used if we continued in our small groups. Often, with our music/singing group, right before lunch break, we come to a point that we want to continue. It’s difficult to remember what we were thinking the next day, so I think we could have been more productive continuing all day. When we worked with the rap group and heard the beat, we came up with a good tune and lyrics for a hook. We worked with Johnny on adding harmony, and then perfected that the next day with Selina (sorry, I don’t really know how to spell that). Yesterday we did some more exercises and continued with Silent Night and the final song. It was harder to do with one of our small group’s members missing. We listened to a bunch of beats to try and figure some kind of intro out in the afternoon, and started experimenting with lyrics. We also recorded the song. It sounded more professional than I expected. I felt awkward because I recorded two tracks for harmony and in the song it’s a little harder to hear the melody, but Jess and Nadia sound great on it. Once we have Noel back it will hopefully sound more balanced.  I hope in the next few days to get more clear on what is expected of the intro and work a lot on our harmonies and blending as a group. 

Today was not as productive as it could have been. We spent half the morning talking about choices and goals. It was nice, but I personally didn’t find it extremely useful, as we had a lot of other things to be doing today. I felt like we didn’t have enough time in our small groups, but more than enough in the big group. We only had about an hour with our small group in the morning between sharing choices and show and tell. After lunch we worked on blocking the piece and the intro and putting together our “Don’t Judge Me” piece. It took a long time because we were having trouble focusing and it was kind of hard to hear people. There were also a lot of ideas floating around. Again, I don’t think we got as much done as we could have. All in all, not a terrible day as we did get some stuff done… but not as good as it  could have been. I wish we had more time to work with the musicians on the intro song with harmonies and things, as well as working with the entire rap group to figure out when the hooks come in.

Today as the second day that we worked in our groups. In the morning, the music group, continued to do vocal exercises and Silent Night. We also did a lot of breathing exercises and a lot of harmonizing. One of the exercices I enjoy is called “Hosanna.” We performed this to the group after lunch and every one did a good job performing what the had worked on in the morning. After our group meeting the music group met with the rap group. In the end we wrote a chorus that matched the beats the rap group was using; we also recorded it and will continue tomorrow.