Project: Group 1 – Groundhog Day (31st Jan).m4a

My group’s project was a short musical number titled “Groundhog Day” attempting to tell a story of a ‘Groundhog Day’. We went into this project with the aim of telling a story through a semi-jazz-like genre of music whilst also developing instrumental and ensemble skills in our own playing by contributing together as a team. Whilst almost everybody gave a noteworthy contribution to this process, I feel I gave useful, constructive and innovative ideas to the group that were overall appreciated by my peers and formed as a base that helped deliver the end product at the end of the 3 week period we were given.

One thing I thought I helped massively is our group’s instrument diversity. With many of my peers being trained in disciplines usually found in ensembles (such as Guitar, Vocals and drums) i brought a variety of timbres to the group with less common instruments such as flugelhorn that acted as a large benefit to the group with peers commenting that the project “benefited mostly from the contrast in timbres” and that it “gave the project a different feel”. Alongside these comments, in my own experience, the variety given by this choice of instruments is a massive positive, making our tune individual in its musical ideas as well as the overall effect of the piece giving it the ability to catch the eye of the listener. Whilst this diversity brings about many positive changes, it also creates new problems in the creative process such as the songwriting and texture of the song. These problems became especially evident in our group as it came to formulating a part for the violin which is usually played in a completely different musical environment leading to it sitting at a very different frequency and style to the other instruments. This problem was handled well by me and my group however by communicating with me and Charlie (the violinist) and platforming our ideas as people who are better trained in how to blend the tone of more classically suited instruments in with a more contemporary set of instruments.

Alongside the diverse timbre of our project, in order to get the most out of this experience I was required to think outside the box and adapt my own playing technique to fit the circumstances and genre of the song as well as the story behind the song. These adaptations (no matter how small) were used to benefit the final outcome of the project whether it was simply just “simplifying my playing” or more technical such as “using a variety of note lengths and working on adjusting my tone”. Whilst everybody had to make their own changes to their playing method i think my background as a classical trumpet player lead to me having to really stretch my technique and incorporate factors i never usually would have considered such as purposefully restricting airflow through the instrument to give a more restricted and raspy sound as is captured in the project recordings. The use of these techniques, however, tended to hinder the overall performance if used too often as they aren’t techniques that are usually practiced, in this case, by a classical trumpet player. This led to sections sounding strange as tones didn’t quite mesh and the texture didn’t fully blend together. This could’ve been sorted if we were to simply focus more on intonation (especially with wind instruments) and taken more time to focus on our individual playing as well as part of the ensemble as percussion Evelyn Glennie puts it, “we have to listen to ourselves first of all” so we can then build up a bigger picture.

Another feature that I feel our project really excelled at was the use of skills learnt in earlier projects to solidify and improve features of this project. This had a very large impact on the project as, in past projects, our group has taken influence from a large variety of genres with different numbers and types of instruments and an ever-changing player count meaning we were well versed in adapting our playing to any type we needed. As a classical player among many other players within genres such as pop or digital music, my general input throughout other projects and the influence my ideas have had on this project helps others in the band to interpret different styles into their own playing. There were a large variety of ideas that were drawn from during every step of this project. These are ideas such as switching tones and chordal shifts mid structure to add a sort  of ‘caprice’, henceforth changing the feel of everything around it, even to more rudimentary features such as the general structure of the song and how frequently the main melody shifts to the chorus. This sentiment is also echoed by other classical performers in other projects, some saying their classical background “impacted the compositional structure of the piece” in a very positive way. This sentiment, however, is contradicted in other groups where players said it was “very difficult mixing pop, jazz, production and classical”. That does also hold true in our group as I feel some ideas were rushed into production with little care or thought and were more input, feedback and consideration given by other group members. I feel it would’ve greatly improved our final output.

Ultimately, I believe this group project was a success and a great learning experience for all members who actively involved themselves in the process. Although, in my opinion, the output was not quite at the level i wanted it to be, i enjoyed learning about all the various styles of playing and technique i would not usually get to see as a classical player and think others in the group would agree that it was a truly unique experience

Bibliography
Glennie, E.  (2007) Evelyn Glennie – How to truly listen. Available online: https://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_how_to_truly_listen (accessed 28th April 2025)