Final External Unit

Task 1: Planning

My candidate number: . My centre number: 17343.

My name is joe keczkes . The instrument I will be playing for this performance is drums . The brief requires me to play a 10-15 minute performance on stage as a showcase for local label A&Rs.

Through my performance, I want to achieve the following personal goals:

1. Personal Goal 1: play more in time to another beat whilst performing.
2. Personal Goal 2: improve accuracy during performance
3. Personal Goal 3:  play 15 minutes smoothly without fail

To help achieve the above goals, I think I have the following skills that I can use:

1. Skill 1: My first good skill is  grade 2 drumming ability.
2. Skill 2: My second good skill is  good knowledge of how to safely use a drum kit.
3. Skill 3: My third good skill is good timing towards a beat .

I will know if I have achieved my goals at the end of the assessment because i will know if i played well .

The audience I am performing for are a local record label A&R. Their expectations will be for me to play my songs well and smoothly. I will meet their expectations by practicing all my songs often. i will meet their expectations by playing songs with considerable length and a good stage presence. 

I will perform music in pop and rock n roll. This is because i enjoy playing these genres of music and they have a bigger variety of songs to choose from.

My personal image for the event will be for me to play all my solo songs in a row with good quality. My ideas for the performance are  for me to be wearing a casual drummer outfit to get myself into the shoes of a proper drummer and for me to play in front of a small audience.

I intend to play through all of my songs in a row. I will do it by practicing my songs a lot.

my initial ideas on what i thought would be good for the event were organised music crew, eg. the people that play the backing tracks whilst i play and an organised stage with the drum kit in centre stage. i also need a music stand so that i can read the music when i am playing on stage.

 The set list I will perform will contain the following songs:

1. Song 1: Artist/Band:  grade 2 drum book Song title: for you Estimated length of song: 1 minute 20 seconds . I have chosen this song because it is part of my grade 2 exam .
2. Song 2:  Artist/Band: grade 2 drum book Song title: Bleach Estimated length of song: 1 minute 20 seconds. I have chosen this song because it is part of my grade 2 exam .
3. Song 3: Artist/Band: Suicide squad Song title: Heathens Estimated length of song: 3 minutes 20. I have chosen this song because i enjoy listening and playing the song .
4. Song 4: Artist/Band: Billie Jean Song title: Estimated length of song: 4 min 50 seconds. I have chosen this song because it is simple but effective and smooth.

The total estimated length of my set list will therefore be 11 minutes. 

I have chosen to play these songs in this order because i can get the ones i find easy out the way first so my confidence is boosted by playing good, which then helps me to play the difficult one better .

 I do not need anyone as i am performing all of my songs solo

 I will need the following resources and equipment  drum kit, music amp, music to read . 

 When performing live, I will need to consider the following health and safety issues:

Health & Safety Issue 1: tripping over wires . How I will make sure I am safe: put wires in front of drums so they are out of my way and i cant trip over them.

Health & Safety Issue 2: music too loud . How I will make sure I am safe i will use low/ medium volume on the music amps

Health & Safety Issue 3: faulty equipment. How I will make sure I am safe do not use any equipment on stage that can be or appears dangerous .

Health & Safety Issue 4: Personal injury. How I will make sure I am safe: use a chair which supports my back and have a drum stand which i can easily see so i avoid neck injury .

I used the following website(s) to help me with my research www.liftomatic.com/blog/top-5-tips-safe-drum-handling .

 I will need to spend 20 hours at school preparing, performing and evaluating the event. I will spend my time by doing  practicing performing my songs so i can be as confident and as good as i can for my final performance.. 

I will rehearse on the following dates and I will work on the following at each rehearsal:

Week 19 Thursday 18th January 2018 (2 hours):

Plan: i want to practice heathens and uptown funk and improve uptown funk .

What went well: i played heathens today and it went very well, i feel confident playing it on stage .

What needs work: still need work on uptown funk.

Week 20 Thursday 25th January 2018 (2 hours):

Plan: i want to perfect heathens and try to improve uptown funk more .

What went well:  i basically perfected heathens  .

What needs work: uptown funk needs lots more work.

Week 21 Thursday 1st February 2018 (2 hours):

Plan: today i want to practice alone on Heathens so i can hopefully perfect the song.

What went well:  i basically perfected the song however i can sometimes mess up.

What needs work: messing up here and there needs to be fixed .

Week 22 Thursday 8th February 2018 (2 hours):

Plan: today i want to practice with kujay on the acoustic drums.

What went well:  i helped kujay with the drums and he helped me with Heathens.

What needs work: i still need to work slightly on my timing for Heathens .

Week 23 Thursday 22nd February 2018 (2 hours):

Plan: today i want to perfect all Heathens today so that i can move onto other songs.

What went well:  i feel that today i did what i set and perfected heathens, now i can move onto other songs.

What needs work: i feel i now need to practice chasing cars now because i am not that good at the song.

Week 24 Thursday 1st March (2 hours):

Plan: today i have decided to not play chasing cars and uptown funk as i cannot perfect them in the short time i have, so i have decided to play Billie Jean which still makes up for the time.

What went well:  i feel that i am off to a good start with Billie jean, however this will be my main focus now until my GCSE.

What needs work: over the course of this week i am going to practice Billie Jean a lot.

Week 25 Thursday 08/03/18 Dress Rehearsal Performance (2 hours):

Plan: today today i want a perfect run of all my songs but i feel that i may not do too well on Billie Jean as i have not fully mastered it yet.

What went well:  i feel that my first 3 songs went really well, my teacher also told me that i did really well.

What needs work: i still need to practice Billy Jean but i feel confident that i can do it by next week.

Week 26 Wednesday 14/03/18 Final Live Performance (2 hours):

Plan: today i am going to do a perfect run of all of my songs including Billie Jean.

What went well:  all of my songs were really good and in time to the beat. i also played Billie Jean perfectly!

What needs work: i slipped up on Heathens which was my last song. this was probably because i played other songs more such as Billie Jean so i was not in practice. i regret prioritising the other songs over Heathens towards the end but the mistake was minor so it was not that bad and my Billie Jean required dramatic improvement.

Task 3: Evaluation

Strengths Reflection:

 i performed as a solo act. i think that i did really well playing my songs as smoothly as i did and also i kept calm whilst playing which i was afraid i would not be able to do.

accuracy: i think that i did very well in the first 3 songs, i did not miss one of the cymbals once which i can do sometimes.
technique:i feel that my technique was really good in all of my songs because i had put in the time and practiced a lot but i had not practiced my 4th song in a few weeks because i felt over confident about it.
musicality: my play style was simplistic which is good for the songs that i was playing because they were simple songs.
communication and stage presence: on stage i was relaxed through the last 3 songs but i playing Billie Jean i was worried that i would slip up through out the performance.
health and safety: Health and safety precautions were made for example there were no wires that i could fall over on the stage and the volume was at a reasonable level so my ears were not damaged.

Improvement Reflection:

 individually, i would have liked to play an extra song with different beats from what i did in the actual performance to make my performance more interesting.

Improvement #1:

in the song Heathens i messed up slightly after doing the drum fill and i came out of beat

Improvement #2:

i could of got a better track for Billie Jean as i struggled to start and the song had to be stopped at an exact time that was not the end which made it difficult for the people playing the music.

Improvement #3:

i could have used a better backing track for Billie Jean because the one i had was not the actual track. I could have bought the actual track without drums.

Feedback from others:

You have worked well on these pieces, and you are very focused on getting your accuracy well on some tough pieces, well done. Areas to focus on:
- Make sure you have better prepared backing tracks for the final recital so that you can hear well alongside your drums
- Listen to the backing track as best as you can to try and ensure you are in time and get a good feel for the music.
- Try to make sure you are as accurate as possible throughout, keeping good control of sticks and pressure. 
- Heathens - really listen to the pulse in the music so that you don't rush ahead. Very tough verses - practice these!! Steady on the fill. Great dynamics
- Billy Jean needs a lot more rehearsal with the track. 

 From this feedback i have now realised that my performance accuracy was not as accurate as i predicted. However, now evaluating myself i can see that i made a few accuracy mistakes during the performance.

Conclusion:

in conclusion i think that my consistency was a really positive aspect of myperformance. Also one of my strengths were keeping cool throughout my performance. i was very glad that i was able to manage my self in a tense environment and under a lot of pressure.
however one of my key weaknesses was accuracy whilst playing the drums, for example when i went out of beat after playing a drum fill on Heathens due to hitting the wrong cymbal. in the future i would have liked to play an extra song with more interesting beats next time. Also, next time i will spend more time properly learning all of my songs so that they are perfect on the final day.