Ed Soal Year 13 BTEC Music

Diary Entry Section A: My instrument is the drum kit. I've been playing for around 6 years and have recently developed a lot. This will be my instrument that I'll be focusing on for my dairy entries and three solo performances. I don't know what grade I am as I haven't had many lessons and have been self taught for the majority of my playing. The most recent songs I have played are mostly originals with my band, however I have played Kings Of Leon's Use Somebody and The Immortals. As I said before, I am in a band with three of my friends. The lead singer has already got many acoustic originals which we are now trying to turn into full band versions. We plan to try and go gigging as much as possible, but for now we want to learn a lot of material so that we're prepared to gig. We want to have a mix of both originals and fairly well known covers so that the audience can interact and know the songs, but also so it can promote our own music. I also go to chur...

Solo 1: Adventure of a Lifetime - Coldplay With my practising I was trying to work on grooves and how make them more interesting with difficult bass drum, fillers on the hi-hat and using the bell as well. I tried to show that I was growing in confidence in this and tried to use a slightly harder groove compared to the original track but making it still sound slick and not over the top. I really struggled with my timing on this piece, as I came in too slow and behind the song, I managed to alter this when I got into the 1st verse. I think the cover of the song on 'Karaoke Version' was a bit slower and I had been doing most of my practises along to the actual version produced by Coldplay. So transitioning to a version which was slightly slower in tempo really threw me. However what I am pleased about is how I managed to alter this and get back in time with the song, this shows confidence but also that I'm cool under pressure as I didn't make any negative signs ...

This is Saxona, Dan and my original performance of a typical 1950's song called Boogie and Jive. The drumming part was very good as it replicated similar drumming grooves with the 1950s with very simple and repetitive grooves throughout the song. Also I played a "honky tonk" rhythm which was notorious in the 1950's. I also mainly used snare only fills as that was also very prominent in the 1950's. The lead guitar, Dan, was playing the famous 12 bar blues scale throughout the song. This also links with the 1950's as in Elvis Presley's song 'Hound Dog' also has a 12 bar blues guitar part. The lyrics were also taken from the 1950's with lyrics such as 'Smokestack' which was a famous song in the 1950's played by Howlin' Wolf, the full song called 'Smokestack Lightnin' This is Saxona, Dan and my original performance of a typical 1960's song called The Local Gym. The guitar was played in 'Drop D...

This was Saxona, Dan and my cover of One Way Or Another by Blondie. We chose this for our 1970's cover as we realised how important and how influential Blondie was in the 1970's. We had Dan playing a strong riff with distortion to fit the 1970's style of music. My drumming style was very fast paced, which was also very prominent in the 1970's. I think, as a whole this song was well performed and we all knew our parts very well. The song was in time and all the different parts to the song fit in well and was flush. However I have to say, an area in which we weren't so good was in communicating with each other, we didn't look at each other that much so therefore we were on the edge a bit. More communication would have resulted in a better performance. This was Saxona, Dan and my cover of I Want to Hold Your Hand by The Beatles. The Beatles were, in no doubt, the iconic figure in the 1960's so we decided to cover this song as it performed by suc...

At the beginning of the course I wanted to try and develop my skills all around the kit, from rudiments, to strengthening my right hand, to adding more intricate and unique fills to make my drumming sound more complete and give songs a nice flow. I managed to, over these past few months improve my rudiment skills a lot. This included being able to perform paradiddles, double and triple paradiddles to a high and clean standard. Whether that was just on the hi-hat or snare, or around the kit in fills or grooves. I also do warm ups with using rudiments to get my hands used to playing. I tend to do a 45 minute warm up that starts at 60 bpm and goes up to 120 bpm, depending on the rudiment/exercise I am doing. I do each bpm for 2 minutes on each rudiment/exercise. These rudiments ranged from simple single strokes alternating, all the way to the 6 stroke roll, performed both ways. I believe that what I had set out to do has been achieved the whole, however there is one key area that I no...

Rehearsal: At the start of the rehearsal we had to set up our arrangement, this didn't take so long as we didn't have the theatre to perform in, this cut down the time of setting up meaning that we made the most of our rehearsal time. We all contributed well and worked as a team to not only set up as quickly as possible, but we also took real care and positioned everything in a way which we thought worked the best whilst working around the size of the practise room. Also when we started to play the Country part of I Predict a Riot we sometimes would play at a higher tempo than what we should have, but we came together really well and told him in a positive and supportive way that he was going too fast for the song. So I decided that to help keep the band in time I would play some percussion to try and help the band sound slick and tight. This was one of my strengths as I managed to help everyone keep in time and the song sounded much tighter and fresher, also I used eye conta...

Rehearsal: At the start of the rehearsal we had to set up our arrangement, this included bringing the drum kit across from the main college, we all contributed well and worked as a team to not only set up as quickly as possible, so that we made the most of the rehearsal, but we also took real care and positioned everything in a way which we thought worked the best and sounded the best. Also when we started to play the Folk half of Hey Jude Gustavo sometimes would play at a higher tempo than what we should have, but we came together really well and told him in a positive and supportive way that he was going too fast for the song. So I decided that to help keep Gustavo and also James, who was playing percussion, in time was to play some percussion at the right tempo to keep the song tight and make it sound professional. This was one of my strengths as I managed to help everyone keep in time and the song sounded much tighter and fresher, also I used eye contact with people who I knew we...

Practise Session 1: 4/10/15 Today I decided to work on paradiddles mainly on the hi-hat but nearer to the end I used the rudiment around the kit so that I felt more comfortable with it and felt as though I could execute this rudiment anywhere around the kit possible. At the start I started on a practise pad so that i felt confident with the paradiddle, I did this whilst watching a Drumeo video on youtube which is all about developing speed and control in your paradiddles,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1IQj83NCgI . When I managed to grasp this I went on my kit to test it out on the hi-hat. I decided that what would benefit me the most would be to start very slowly and play along with a metronome at 40 bpm. Once I felt comfortable with the tempo I increased the speed of the metronome by 10 bpm every time until I felt that I had covered most speeds that I would come across when drumming in church and in college. Nearer to the end of my practice I briefly started to experiment ...

Development of Pop Music From the 1950's to the Present Day. Looking back on my presentation I have seen some areas which need improving as well as key areas which I managed to do well in, for example how certain artists influenced society and the culture which surrounded music. In this post I am going to evaluate my presentation and notify to myself the important areas where I fell short and didn't analyse and describe these areas in enough detail, or perhaps didn't research enough to explain them greater when questioned. For example I didn't really expand on genres and how they changed throughout the decades thoroughly enough and I just generalised genres without really talking about all the sub-genres which were influenced from other larger genres. This affected how correct I was and how I was only hovering above the water and wasn't going deeper into the details behind the development of music through the decades. To improve I would give exact detai...