REFLECTION
After listening to the recording multiple times, I find that i struggle with intonnation more than anything while singing solfege but also that i have trouble while singing leaps of 3rds and 5ths. What I noticed about my intonnation is that I stumble frequently on some pitches because I usually sing them too flat and dont realize it until i'm actually singing it. I find this particularly when I was trying to sing 'mi' especially since that note is an f# it in this context, it sounds particularly flat when I sing it. Something I feel that would help me is to take into consideration that its flat so I can try to make my voice a bit more sharp on that specific note, similar to how i change my embouchure when playing my trumpet on notes that come out flat like. Another thing I noticed while listening to myself sing is that I had trouble with intervals and landing on the right pitches. This also relates to the intonnation problem because often I will land on the right note but it's a semitone off and I dont usually realise until I listen back on the recording and it's very obvious. Something I can do (and did) to fix this would be to just practice intervals and leaps before recording and have sort of an idea of how they should sound. This homework assignment taught me alot of things I didn't know about myself when it comes to sight singing because i've never actually heard myself sight sing before so I feel as though recording myself could serve me as a tool in the future and will help me become more successful at sight singing :).
After listening to the recording multiple times, I find that i struggle with intonnation more than anything while singing solfege but also that i have trouble while singing leaps of 3rds and 5ths. What I noticed about my intonnation is that I stumble frequently on some pitches because I usually sing them too flat and dont realize it until i'm actually singing it. I find this particularly when I was trying to sing 'mi' especially since that note is an f# it in this context, it sounds particularly flat when I sing it. Something I feel that would help me is to take into consideration that its flat so I can try to make my voice a bit more sharp on that specific note, similar to how i change my embouchure when playing my trumpet on notes that come out flat like. Another thing I noticed while listening to myself sing is that I had trouble with intervals and landing on the right pitches. This also relates to the intonnation problem because often I will land on the right note but it's a semitone off and I dont usually realise until I listen back on the recording and it's very obvious. Something I can do (and did) to fix this would be to just practice intervals and leaps before recording and have sort of an idea of how they should sound. This homework assignment taught me alot of things I didn't know about myself when it comes to sight singing because i've never actually heard myself sight sing before so I feel as though recording myself could serve me as a tool in the future and will help me become more successful at sight singing :).
Video No.2
While filming this video I learnt a lot about my tuning that I hadn't realized before. Whenever I sing in the moment, in my ears I always think i'm perfectly in tune. It's when I listen back on recordings that I realize how off my tuning is. I think this exercise was easier for me because I was able to tune to my own voice which was easy because I could just match the sound where as when I'm listening to someone else, our voices are different so it's harder for me to get the tuning. With that being said, I still had to re-record multiple times because the pitches just weren't flowing together and on voice was always more flat than the other. In conclusion, this exercise trained me on tuning and intervals and how to land on notes without having to correct myself. It also taught me how even being the slightest bit off pitch can affect the entirety of the passage.
While filming the on the moor cannon, I feel as though it was easier than filming the other videos because my voice wasn't as exposed and blended with my other voices. I feel as though this made me sing alot more confidently. One of the reasons I don't like singing in class is because everyone else in the class is a girl and my voice is lower and louder than theirs so it makes mine stick out alot which makes me try to sing quieter which in the end affects my sound and ability to hit the right notes. In this video it was just me so I could match my own voice and sing at the volume I wanted so it was alot easier and also a lot more fun! After listening back on it I do still hear minor tuning problems when landing on chords but the most of it is accurate in terms of pitches and intonation. While making this video I learnt how to listen to myself and how to hear when I make mistakes and what notes they tipically happen on, for example I caught myself singing do flat a couple of times and fixed it as you can probably hear in the video so it shows that i'm starting to atleast aknowledge when I'm singing out of tune where as in my first videos I wouldn't even notice and just keep singing. I like these types of videos because they're fun to sing and listen to and also they allow you to discover more about yourself as a singer in more of an ensemble context which is something i've never done before with singing and that I find very cool!
Homework September 30th
I think this canon was har because of the key it was written in and because of the rhythm. I don't think this was my worst video but I also don't think it was the best. After watching this video back I realize that I always song Do flat then correct myself after I hear myself. A way to fix this will be to have that specific pitch in my head throughout the exercise. This will also help me if I get lost because I can just restart at the nex Do since I'll know the pitch and I can find my spot again. This also taught me how to listen to myself for tuning because there were so many voices. The fact that there were alot of voices and weird rhythms made it really hard to stay focused while singing because there was so much other stuff going on.
This video was hard for me to film at first because I was confused with the original solfege let alone the minor solfege so it was difficult to get the minor pitches but after I figured out the Major version the minor one kinda just flowed more easily. I found that the bonjour one was alot easier because it was more stepwise than Annie so I was able to record that one in one shot but Annie was harder because It was longer and I would always get close to the end then mess up and have to restart. This homework assignment taught me how to hear and feel the difference between Major and minor. I dont know if it's just me but when I sing minor there is a completely different feeling in my throat and the do sounds different to me. I also liked how the music wasn't written down for this one because it forced me to think of the solfege and not simply write it sown which is a bad habit that I have... Overall I think this was one of my better videos because it felt easy for me to sing these melodies.
I feel as though this exercise, the pitches were easy for me because a lot of them were low and in my range and the key wasn't too hard. The challenge for me is always lining up the voices bacause if I mess up in one voice it throws all the other ones off. This shows me that I should start using a metronome when singing or keeping the beat with my feet like I do on my instrument and restart when I mess up to avoid confusion. This excercise taught me how to listen to myself when singing and trying to match my other voices in terms of dynamics and tone.
I found this exercise fairly easy because the melody was already in my head from when we had sung it in class. The thing I found hard was the tuning of the chords, especially at the end when all the voices are in unison.
I found this particularly hard because we had to record ourselves learning the song. It also helped me to be on the spot because it made me learn as fast and efficiently as possible. I think this video turned out ok in the end once I found the starting pitch and found all the intervals.
The anchoring bass note in this piece helped me a lot! I always get off pitch while singing and the constant root helped me find Do whenever I got lost. I was also easy to sing because I remembered singing this last year in music Ed so I associated the solfege with the words and it worked pretty well.
This was fun to sing because it was a very familiar tune and the harmonies were fairly simple. I feel it helped me with balance and blending because I really had to make sure the melody was coming out the most and because it was a little high for me this was kind of hard at the beginning but I think it got better as I kept trying.
When I re watched my first take at this video I realized I was singing a lot of the notes wrong because I was confused about how the mode worked. After singing it through a couple more times and checking my notes carefully while taking into consideration the accidentals I could hear how cool it sounded and how the mode worked and how the two voices fit together. Once I sang it through a couple times the melody was in my head and I was good, it was just learning the solfege that took a while because I would always hesitate while filming then one voice would fall behing and they would become out of sinc. This was definitely the hardest video I have had to film for this class but once it comes together it's actually pretty fun despite all the stress in learning it. I think this homework assignment made me a better sight singer and how to know pitches when I see them and to identify if a note tends to be flat or sharp etc. and how to fix it!
When I first tried to sing this piece I simply couldn't hit any of the notes in the first part so I transposed it to C to lower the tonic which then made the highest notes not so high. After I did this I was basically able to sing right through the piece with minor intonnation issues and as a recorded many times the intonnation improved each time . The hardest thing about these trio pieces is getting the parts to match up because if one of the voices isn't perfectly in tempo it messes up all the other ones. Something I tried to do was record starting with the bottom voice then adding the middle and top. This helped me because the bass gives the foundation and the other voices follow it. This homework assigment helped me learn to listen to myself when singing different parts and helped me figure out how to put music with more then one voice together and make it work.
In my opinion, this is one of my best videos in the class. I like how the bass line went really low because I could actually hit the notes and it made singing the other parts that much easier. The only line i really had trouble with was the top line which goes out of my range. Most of the time I can hit a D but i can never quite get E's so i brought the part with the high E down the octave for one bar and that made the piece sound alot better than when I sang it high, in my opinion I think it's more useful me to sing the right solfege in a different octave than to sing badly in the written octave. This piece was also FUN to sing because it was cool to keep adding lines and seeing how the voices came together and made some pretty chords! This taught me how to sing in an ensemble and how to blend, I will definitely try to take what I learnt from this and apply it in class in terms of where I fit in depending on what part i'm singing.
I think this video was easy and fun to film because the range wasn't super hard and infant most of it was in my range. I think the order we filmed it really helped to keep the voices in tune and make the chords sound really good. Overall this video has taught me how to adapt to singing with other people and finding my place in the texture depending on what part im singing. It also helped me with tuning and how to tune up to the melody lines.
This song was easy to sing in solfege because I already knew the melody and the song is based on solfege and scales. The song is in an easy key which uses very few accidentals and is in a reasonable range of an octave which doesn't go past my range so I was able to sing it more or less on the first try. This homework taught me how easy it is to associate solfege with popular songs we listen to today and have listened to all of our lives. I definitely wasn't able to get the solfege version of this song out of my head all weekend aha, this was a good way of making my brain think in solfege without me actually trying to and I think it's kind of cool and will help me in the class as I continue to sight sing music.
I found the melody of this song easy to sing but it was hard to sing the tenor and bass because they didn't start until the second system so it was weird to jump in without and preparation. Also I found it hard to sing the soprano and alto at the beginning without it being out of tune and because it was in unison the intonnation problems were very obvious.
I thought a lot of the chords in this piece were hard to balance for example the last one because i know the higher voices should be louder but because i'm so much more comfortable singing lower those notes come out more. This song taught me alot about balance and finding where each voice fits in the texture.
Since this is one of my favourite christmas song I actually had a lot of fun while singing it. The part that messed me up time after time was the gloria part with all the runs, it was really hard to allign them and if I missed one note it would throw everything else off. I think the final product was pretty good in terms of balance and precision :)
This song was hard to sing because the parts came in all at different parts which made it hard to remember the beginning pitch of each line. Also since it was so long it was hard to sing it all in one take so I had to restart alot. This song was more of a precision piece than tone, it also tested me on how to sing contrating lines because often when some voices would be moving, others would be holding whole notes which got confusing at times.
I found the top part of the Bach cantata to be pretty easy for me to sing but when the higher part came in it made it harder to keep them in time together. I sang this pretty fast because filming it slow was becoming long and not as exciting. I actually think speeding it up made it quite easier for me because I was able to sing through the harder passages without over thinking them and ended up singing it correctly within a few tries. Now that I recorded this canata I feel confident singing both parts, that being said i did have to bring the higher part down the octave because my range doesn't extent that part but all the correct notes and harmonies are still present.
I found this song very fun to sing because it was catchy and I had been singing it in my head all week so I knew the melody right away when I went to go record it. I think its really cool to hear all the harmonies come together especially at the end where it goes 'sun is a rising in my soul' for the last time and the ascending and descending lines are in contrary motion which creates a really cool sound.
This piece was very challenging for me to sing compared to the others! I think it's because of the leaps in the parts or simply cause it's really long but I just couldn't seem to get it right so there's a couple mistakes but they are mistakes htat i'm aware of and will aknowledge and work on! I found some of the harmonies in my singing for this piece actually very pretty and well in tune. Overall this piece tested me on singing in more of a choir setting because we had to read all the parts off sheet music and all the parts were super different! I actually enjoyed singing off of sheet music because that's what i'm used to but it got to be a little complicated when adding in the solfège. Something I will work on is trying to find sheet music and sing along to it using solfège, for example, my main instrument rep or even pop songs that I listen to!
This was genuinely my favourite song we've learned so far! It's so fun and easy to sing and was stuck in my head all week so when it was time to record it I was able to basically just do one take for each voice and I was good (minus the solfege version haha). Since I was so used to singing it with the lyrics, singing it with solfege really messed me up and made it harder! however it did help me hear the different harmonies when all the voices are singing the same words and helped me with the leaps because I associated pitch with solfege. I think the harmonies in this song are so pretty and fun and it really made me motivated to sing! even when I was done recording I didn't want to be and wanted to keep singing it haha. This song helped me with my tuning of chords because most of the time all the voices are singing the same thing but just in harmony.
This pop song was already acapella so I was able to just sing the music as it was written. It was really hard to keep all the parts in time and in tune and took me a very long time to get to sound decent. This excercise taught me how to sing in an ensemble and how to balance for ex. making the inner lines more quiet and bringing out the melody.