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.

Planning/Brainstorming Stage