During this piece I’m going to be going in depth about the contributions and how I played my role into being a musician in a certain piece of music. The piece of music I will be focusing on throughout the piece of writing will be the main song I contributed to and assisted with. The reasoning for this would be because I helped write the piece alongside one of my fellow bandmates. It started out with the instrumental and then gradually as we got more confidence and familiar with the piece we started humming and singing randomised melodies to see what would work with the song and what wouldn’t. Because the piece was very slow and had a ballad sound and tone towards it, we went with what a like to call a ‘Lewis Capaldi’ vibe, as it was slow and heartfelt. Once we then got comfortable with the melody that we had formed and created we then started adding lyrics. To be completely true and honest the lyrics were created by real life events that had happened to us both on the same day. This therefore meant that we were able to create heartfelt lyrics that just kept pouring out of us. I think with this all happening it made the song feel more raw and real, because instead of coming up with random lyrics that meant nothing, we ended up creating something that shown true emotions and this also would convey towards the audience if they were to listen to the piece.  

Aside from all this I loved working with the group, we all bounced off each other and you could tell that once we were all together everyone wanted the same thing which was to do well. And we successfully have showed this throughout our different projects. Referring to the main piece I am talking about this highlights everyone’s strengths, because we had an outstanding pianist, two amazing guitarists, a fabulous drummer, and then we had 5 singers. This was strange at first because for me personally I had never worked with so many singers in a band setting such as this one, so for me it was something completely new and fresh. However, considering this I think we all adapted well, and we were all very well balanced. This could be portrayed throughout the piece using harmonies throughout the group and throughout the song. Our teamwork can also be seen using backing vocals whether these were little hums or ooo’s. I think overall our voices all blended well together and as said before we balanced and bounced of each other’s vibes very well. For me personally I loved working with different musicians and artists, and I loved the atmosphere we all created being as one and working as a team.  

The creative process for this piece was a slow but effective way to create a piece of music. The way we worked was the pianist came up with some chords and then slowly we added guitar and then this is when the bass came into play. Then once the basic foundations had been laid, we then started to add various drums into certain parts of the song. Drums were only played in certain sections to keep the atmosphere of the piece mysterious and in a way melancholic and then would slowly build towards the end of the piece to further create the ballad effect. Finally, once we had the instrumental down and structured roughly, we then got to adding the melody and as I mentioned earlier, we then got a feel for the lyrics and then piece was formed. Once we finally all figured out the correct parts and pieces to play, we then cleaned it up to make it sound finished and refined. Which then furthermore added even more atmosphere towards the piece. From learning from my fellow bandmates and what their thoughts were on the whole things and how the class has influenced them, from a band member he said, ‘it expanded my musical vocabulary by interacting with musicians outside of my typical genre and style of musical creativity’. I support this from also dealing with the benefits of working with such talented musicians and it was nice to see how other artist work. Also, from another band member she said ‘overall, this experience has helped me gain a better understanding of other musicians and it was interesting to see the evolution of the rest of the band including me from start to finish of these projects we had to create’. Yet again, I agree with this statement, also linking back to the other statement it was nice to be able to make music outside of the genres we usually play, and it was lovely to get to know other artists and their thought process throughout this experience.  

Overall, I think this project was interesting and was also really engaging to learn the ways of other composers and musicians. I would do this again, hopefully with similar people but it was also nice to expand in terms of getting to know other artists and how they work as well on top of the current band. If I was to talk about our weaknesses and strengths, I would have to say that our strengths were towards the end especially, we really got to know each other and how each other work to create different vibes of music and it was interesting to blend different styles from jazz to pop. If I was to mention our weaknesses, I would have to say that at the beginning I think we all found it a little difficult and different to match off each other but then eventually this issue resolved itself and we became a band.