A Little Bit More!

This week seemed to whizz past for me and as I gather my thoughts and recall my week I see that I have done quite a bit and that my current weekly routine is doing a lot to help me develop in all the areas that I need to in order to pass as a west end singer and also progress with my own personal projects.
I started the week with another Fuzzy Buck recording session and we have now recorded our 3rd track and hope to get the 4th done next week before commencing a new batch of writings. I am also half way through completing the track for the John Lennon songwriting competition and am looking good for the deadline.
By Wednesday I was back at college, however there was not much band practice as some members were off ill. I believe we are confident and able enough to gather and perform after a sound check so I am not that anxious about the performance on the 15th December.
Another vocal lesson went well and I had performed 2 songs after my warm up and will now move on to trying a Brian Lane Green cover of "Crying", made popular by writer Roy Orbison and then covered later by KD Laing. This song is quite slow and demands a lot of big breaths and sustained notes whilst adding a lot of vibrato to finish phrases. I am finding that my research of material is going a long way to contributing to my final performances and hope to continue this trend within my west end show research.
I finished off the day in research class discussing band set up and projects for next semester. I have now to deliver a short presentation on elements important when scoring music for a vocalist. It is important to make this presentation concise and relevant as it is aimed at helping other musicians, who may not be vocalists, to score music for a singer effectively. This will be another opportunity for me to include some more quality evidence in my portfolio.
Thursday began with a test in music theory and my biggest mistake was not going to the toilet before I began my test. I had no problem understanding any of the questions and felt quite comfortable answering them however the annoyance and distraction of my bladder pushed me into running out of time as I quickly finished off the last question. I felt silly afterwards but on the positive side it is another reminder of how small distractions can become bigger and affect the final performance and hopefully I will not be repeating these type of mistakes.
I have received my planning stage of my graded unit back from my tutor and am confident that after a few more final touches I will have a draft that I am happy with ready in time for the deadline next week.
In digital audio class this week we covered mastering techniques when looking to burn recordings to CD or other formats. This was very helpful as it is the next stage I am needing to cover with my solo and band home recordings. I have also been doing further work to my project and will complete some fine tuning next week before submitting the final mix.
This is the last week of the research on the musical The Lion King and already I have seen how much a west end singer would have to diversify. The concept of the 2 musicals studied so far are vastly different in prospective as one is regarding humans and the other animals. This also contributes to a huge contrast in scenery and costume which seems to work the cast more when the set is more complicated. I think Les Miserables is a lot easier for a singer/actor to relate to and is less restrictive during performance. A positive factor with The Lion King is that the music is very spiritual and uptempo which might contribute to the motivation of the performers. Next week I move on to Grease which I have more background knowledge of but will not regard this until I carry out my routine of research.
On a final note I have a date for my audition for Rocky The Musical and luckily I have now 2 weeks to prepare myself to impress. I will be happy with any involvement and have all I need to hopefully convince the producers I am capable of delivering.
I shall leave now before Friday becomes Saturday and I fall behind schedule.
Until then I am Daniel.