Final recording of "Why does my heart feel so bad?"

Reflection: 

In our group, there were 6 instruments played to the ratio of 4 people. Seungjoon was our pianist, Hassan was our guitarist, Marc was a guitarist too (he was meant to play bass guitar but due to the lack of the bass guitars, we had to substitute it to normal acoustic guitar) and I played the keyboard, tambourine and did vocals. Over the course of these few weeks, we put our heads together as a team to create this piece. We started by listening to the song and discovering the placement of the instruments. Then we used it as a starting point to develop and personalise the song, adding our own occurring twists and turns. As the weeks progressed, we layered and combined the instruments to produce our final piece. It starts off with gentle piano chords that combine with the acoustic guitar strums to form a mild but interesting opening. We didn't want to duplicate the same chord pattern so we changed it to make it more unique. I think our performance was very progressive as during the first week, not much was accomplished. Later on, we were able to extend the song, add more instruments, and vary the patterns it was played. A skill I have discovered and developed is that i can multitask- I realised this when i was capable of playing the keyboard, tambourine and singing at the same time easily. The dynamics vary during the song. It starts out with mezzo forte and builds up to fortissimo in the section: "these open doors" and then gradually the piano ends in the piano dynamic. I think the tempo was used effectively as it enduringly grips the listeners with its fast tempo. We used a metronome while practicing to perfect our timing because sometimes we were off-time. We kept the metronome at 110 beats per bar. Although the tempo remained the same throughout the entire performance, the rhythm varied to add different texture and style into the piece. Different rhythms were added with the change over of different chord patterns and instruments. Additionally, i think our choice in instruments were well planned as we incorporated piano, a few instruments from the strings family and some percussion with the tambourine. This maintained a well balanced piece and the instruments were used by layering them one by one to add more texture as the song developed. We wanted to add thickness and depth to the section "these open doors" so we played the tambourine only in that certain section, the dynamics of the instruments were louder, and the singing was louder. Although the dynamics could have been improved if there was diminuendo from the strong section of "these open doors" to the ending solo of the piano to add a gentle atmosphere. This could have effected the piece in a marvellous way and also shown great level of music. However, the singing in the beginning wasn't heard that well, since it's pretty low for my voice range and unfortunately I was super sick in the time of this recording. So for next time, a better alternative would be to either change the key or sing in the higher octave. So that is what I would consider improving if we were to redo this assignment. On another note, my favourite thing about our piece is variety in textures and instruments. They add lots of depth and definitely impact the sound of the piece. Overall, i think this assignment was a great way to start the year discovering new skills that we already had and developing some for the future.