Role Play!

A more positive week for myself this week as I look to gaining more experience as a musical show singer and also look at how different roles I carry out already can contribute towards the evidence I need to support my application to become a west end singer.
The biggest opportunity at the moment looks to be any possible involvement with the degree project titled "Rocky: The Musical". There are auditions next week for parts in this musical and I think if I can secure a prominent role then this may provide me with the foundations of the type of evidence I wish to include in my portfolio. The musical itself will be written and produced by 2 degree students and plenty involvement from myself will help me gain further insight into the world of musicals! Having completed a SWOT analysis I have identified areas in which I am not experienced enough in and hopefully involvement with such projects will help me improve any chance of getting any job as a west end singer.
I have also been thinking about the different roles I portray as the solo artist daniel dundee and also as front man of the band Fuzzy Buck. For me these roles are different although they are played by the same person, me!, I can see how I can use them as evidence of my ability to act, project dialogue and maintain character on stage.
College started off well this week and in band practice we done more work on our original compositions. Again I found a use for role play as I switched character to improve the likeness to the Beatles in our psychedelic track. I had previously been sounding too much like a mellow Jim Morrision and found that opting for an angry John Lennon was the key to enhancing the psychedelic qualities of our track. It has also been very productive having Michael around during band practice as we are now getting honest feedback on our performances which is helping us progress and improve.
My vocal lesson was back on track as my tutor returned and I have began working on another song as well as having more options for future performances, which I hope to use as evidence in my portfolio.
I am feeling a lot more comfortable with music theory at the moment and I have discovered that I am improving at sight reading and also notating music due to the exercises we have been given. The test is in 2 weeks and I feel confident that I can pass as long as I keep a regular study pattern.
I have also completed the planning stage of my graded unit and feel I have all I need to move forward and that each step of my action plan will provide me with more experience and evidence come interview day.
In session skills this week I took the opportunity to show my diversity and spent the session as rhythm guitarist, which was a fun change despite the dodgy squire telecaster I had! We went over 2 songs and I felt I handled them quite well despite not practising guitar that much recently.
I finished off Thursday by completing my first Cubase/Reason project and although it is not my greatest creative contribution I feel that it has turned out quite well. My emphasis throughout this project was to explore the operations of these audio programs and using many of the different options I now feel I have better knowledge of both Cubase and Reason. This will be of great assistance when I need to record 4 songs from the musicals I am researching to contribute to my portfolio.
My West End show research has continued with The Lion King and already I have noticed great variances from Les Miserable in terms of me being able to transcend successfully across different musicals. The Lion King offers songs that are not entirely in English and call for a greater need of phonetics as well as having a more varied and complex style of costume.
A busy week, and one with a better outlook I thought!
Tune in next Friday to find out how the audition goes!
Ciao tutti, Daniel.