Evaluating Our 60s Performance

For our 60s piece I sang, Ashley played bass and Jess played the keyboard, while the backing track consisted of a guitar and drums. The song was slightly too low for me to really push my vocals and I feel it made the song stay on one level rather than creating a change in dynamics which were only really pushed in the last chorus where I sang up the octave. If I were to sing this again I would consider transposing it into a higher key and play around with different ways of singing each part of the song to make it more interesting to listen to.

The intention of our 60s piece ‘The Rock n Roll Farm’ was to portray the free living life on the farm. As many folk rock songs were connected to the “Hippie” movement at the time and where influenced by the feelings of freedom, love and peace, which I feel was well portrayed in our song. Lyrics like many folk songs were what made this piece a success in meeting its intentions, although during the performance I sang the lyrics slightly wrong which may have jeopardised the success of the songs potential, but it was well recovered and I feel as a group we worked well through the mistake as it did not affect our performance. The upbeat tempo of the song gave the song a happy atmosphere and made it enjoyable for the audience.

To develop our 60s piece further I feel we would need to have the entire song played live. I think that if we had a drummer and guitarist on stage also it would have made the piece sound a lot better. I also think it would add to the staging of the piece and would have meant the members in the group could have had more involvement with each other. For example if we had a drummer and keyboard player they could have interacted with each other while the bass player and guitarist did the same and the singer addressed the audience directly, this would have also made the drum and guitar solo more effective when the dancers came on stage. I feel this would have engaged the audience much more and made the piece more enjoyable to watch. We also could have used the dancers more effectively by adding more colourful lighting effects and possibly using audience participation to really push the piece into having that free spirit feeling that many folk rock songs had.