My FMP was a shadow theatre performance, combined with music for the telling of a story about an individual’s experience with grief due to the loss of a loved one. I, along with Pagan James and Bluebell Gilmartin, wrote two songs and performed three cover songs that each linked to one of the ‘Five Stages of Grief’. We promoted and performed this piece on the 26th of May 2022.

 

RESEARCH

 

One of the first areas of my proposal was the research section. I believe I covered all elements of the research and learned about them in-depth (the research articles I created evidence this). If I didn’t write about them, I still needed to hone my knowledge of them, for example, if I was going to be using a new DAW software, I needed to know how to use it, as well as how to use my equipment (audio interface, etc.) through it. Therefore, I would use the articles I listed in my proposal to do so.

 

A point of reflection on my research would be that I didn’t use all the articles I listed in my proposal, I used only a few alongside other articles I would find on the internet to expand my knowledge of a certain subject (e.g., the Focusrite tutorials on using their 4i4 interface with Logic).

 

One of the articles I wrote was on the practitioner Bertolt Brecht. The research I did on him was essential to the creation of the play itself. We were trying to send a message to an audience without them getting lost through attachments to characters, etc. The information on the set design was the most useful for us as a group.

 

Brecht would often use minimal lighting along with minimalist sets in his productions, to ensure the audience was not distracted. We decided to take this another step further by using the shadow screen to detach what's going on on-stage from the audience. The screen removed colour, facial expression, or clothes from their view, alienating them from our piece. They were reminded that it was a performance and could only take on board the message. I felt this was excellent and was the best aspect of our FMP, not only to differentiate it from other projects but also in its effectiveness in conveying the message that was so important to us.

 

It was the breadth of research that made our performance something to be proud of. We all knew about each aspect as a group, meaning if someone was working on one task, they could still receive feedback from another member of the group as we all still knew about the task that one person was doing (e.g., I got feedback on the mixes from the group that was useful because they knew what Logic was capable of).

 

PROBLEM SOLVING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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PLANNING

 

The timetabling system was useful – helped keep us on track by using our original college timetable. 

 

The off-college timetable was useful as we could plan our day in greater detail every hour. This became our go-to as we went ‘off timetable’ in college. Using every hour was more beneficial as there were no longer any scheduled lessons or college breaks, only the breaks we planned. We should have only used that one from the start to increase efficiency.

 

SKILLS

 

These are the skills I wanted to develop in my proposal. However, instead of listing my previous experience with them, I have now listed how I used them in the project.

 

• Songwriting  

  • We wrote two songs – I wrote the music and contributed to the vocal melodies and lyrics. The songs suited the themes they were for really well.

• Rehearsing, Recording, and Documenting

  • Rehearsed songs in college.

  • Rehearsed play in college.

  • Recording, editing, and documenting  

  • Used logic to record, with microphones and direct input for bass and keys.

  • I mixed and mastered the songs.

  • I had weekly reflection journals to focus on short term goals.

• Organisation 

  • The original long-term timetable and the weekly ones.

  • Responding to setbacks and factoring in additional work into our timetables as soon as we could.

• Curating a setlist  

  • The songs followed the five stages in the performance, and the songs we chose reflected their themes really well.

• Professional practice  

  • Utilising our time most effectively during rehearsals and communicating effectively – timetables and OneDrive/Snapchat. When we met up to do work we worked, and we didn’t procrastinate.  

• Detailed research  

  • Research articles.

• Harvard referencing  

  • Research articles.

 

As I said in my proposal, these skills are vital in the role of a session musician in the industry. I believe I have doubled my proficiency in all the fields and am now more ready than ever to turn music into a profession.

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EVALUATION

 

I mentioned daily reflections in my proposal, as well as weekly ones. I decided to only do weekly ones as the daily ones had little content and could be summarised far more effectively in a weekly journal. In addition to this, I was also too busy towards the end of the project to be writing daily reports. The weekly ones allowed me to look back on the previous week’s work and reflect, but then take that work and decide on goals for the next week, with areas to improve on. This was helpful as I could maintain a high standard of work that improved across the project. Seeing these improvements meant I was more motivated to achieve better results, thus making me work harder.

 

In the future, I would make my earlier entries more detailed as they lacked reflection on each individual task. I would only reflect on our performance over the week highlighting skills and work ethic. Towards the end of the project, my entries contained reflections on how individual tasks went, as well as skills and work ethic. Covering both is more useful for development as I can learn to improve on tasks I may repeat in the future (e.g., mixing and mastering).

 

PRESENTATION

 

The website is a great way to compile all my evidence into a more attractive format that’s easier to digest. It’s also more rewarding to see the information presented in a professional manner that I created. It gives a sense of accomplishment, as I achieved that evidence (and ultimately the grade I get) myself. This ties into the motivation from the reflection journals as it has the same impact on me personally. I’m motivated to be proud of my work, and I’m proud of the work I have done so far.

 

The Instagram account however is not something I would utilise again. At least not in the same way. I regurgitated the information from my website onto my Instagram, which doesn’t differentiate it at all from my website. Meaning no one will want to view my Instagram when the website is a better version of it. Next time, I would use it to solely display photos and videos of the occasional day, to make it more of an informal, ‘influencer’ style blog. This adds more depth to how engaging my content is, especially to younger viewers who may have shorter attention spans, and don’t want to read articles with the occasional photo or video. They might want 90% photo or video content.

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TO CONCLUDE

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When we planned this project we knew it may have been unrealistic, but we were up to the challenge. If I were to take on this project, or a similar one again, there would be an outstanding element I would change. Upon planning the initial timetable, we moved the most important, and most time-consuming tasks to the last four weeks. This led to pressure as we weren't completing tasks on time in the little time remaining. Next time, I would spread these tasks across the entire duration of the project, so that the weeks had a combination of major and minor tasks to complete. This would allow us the extra time to complete any tasks that would overrun, but also decrease the probability of us getting behind schedule. Despite this, I believe we worked well to tackle this issue and have the project run as smoothly as it did, and to the quality, it had also.