Practice 05:

The timing issue in "Little Lion Man" and "Hey Ah!" was directly tackled by adding a competent percussionist to both tracks. This greatly improved our overall performances of the song as timing was the greatest problem. Any problems with timing from then on were greatly reduced with a constant tempo. The addition of percussion also helped the quality of performance immensely through a larger amount of performers and created space for more communication among us in which created a more appealing spectacle due to obvious engagement with each other.

Ensemble Performance 02: (Little Lion Man and Get Lucky)

For this performance we performed "Get Lucky" and "Little Lion Man." We only performed a verse and a chorus of "Get Lucky" yet it was described as "much better" than previous performances.
"Little Lion Man" however was out of time and this was made obvious when playing with just the bass and guitar together. The reason for this was a difference of rhythm and also a lack of percussion keeping tempo.

Practise 04:

"Little Lion Man" was attempted next. Due to all members of the current group being quite familiar with the song, the practise progressed at a good rate. The most prominent problem to occur was the harmonies of the chorus getting confused between me and Joe's vocal parts. To combat this, we repeated the chorus section, yet after every run through we would swap vocal parts in order to understand which were which and therefore prevent us from mixing up again.

Practise 03:

For the third ensemble session we took a look at Daft Punk's "Get lucky" in which quickly became our most confident song due to early competence and familiarity of playing. I worked personally on the falsetto pre chorus in which both me and Joe harmonise. The only problem I encountered as opposed previously to vocal strain was simply the height of the notes and reaching them successfully. This problem was solved by properly warming up. The warm up I used for my voice in this case was simply a scale in the key of the song (Bm) and singing the scales successfully across several octaves in which included falsetto. This helped greatly as my head voice had been predisposed to the notes required and therefore needed minimal effort when singing them.

Ensemble Performance 01: (Hey Ah!)

In this performance many errors occurred perhaps not even making it a pass. This was because of three key things:

> The lack of communication between us as performers (especially me and the percussionist) led to problems such as timing.

> The complexity of the bass line contributed to the confusion over different sections of the song and also contributed to the problems with timing.

> The overall timing issue.

This made it an unsatisfying performance and can only be improved with extra practise, more communication between band members and more familiarity with the song. I will also work on simplifying the baseline created. We all agreed to meet out of lessons to make sure this was done.

Pieces for Ensemble Assesment:

Little Lion Man - Mumford and Suns (Bass/Backing Vocals)
Get Lucky - Daft Punk (Bass/Backing Vocals)
Hey Ah! - Outkast (Bass/Backing Vocals)
Mashup - (Bass)

Mock Performance (Solo's) - Assesment and hindsight:

For my performance I was advised not to use a microphone due to the volume of my voice that was already loud enough for the audience. This caused an immediate loss of confidence even before my performance as I could not imagine my self performing properly without a microphone pre and during it. Consequently instead of standing up right in which would have created both engagement with the audience and improved vocal quality I frequently looked at my guitar in which subtracted the value of the performance. In hindsight I should have asked to use the microphone or should have just performed with it off to generate a better result. In terms of criticsm I strained my voice in parts but had improved that flawed aspect greatly during the practise sessions and other than that already discussed was the non engagement with audience members and eyes down cast to my instrument.

I think it is important that I redo this performance as I did not reflect the adequate presence and musical applicability of a confident performer due to loss of confidence and my vocal strain problems. For next time I will reduce the prospect of these occurrences from happening next time through continuation of practise in terms of the techniques taught in the course so far.