Evaluation

I performed my original song live as I felt it wouldn’t show as much emotion through a recording. I also did not have enough instruments to make a recording sound effective or enough knowledge on recording or the equipment to create a quality piece.

I think my song was well written for just vocal and guitar but would like to try adding a few picking patterns and maybe a second guitar to give the piece more layers. This would also have aided me in creating a harmony with a second voice in the song. The song was written in one key and didn’t really stretch me much to show off my vocal range that I had been practising over the semester. Singing a higher harmony over what I was already singing would have helped with this or even a key change. The reason I decided to keep my piece low and simple was after reading this article “pitch on its own can affect how we perceive sounds and music, providing a basic scale from "high = light, happy, carefree, funny" to "low = dark, sad, ominous, serious"(Paterson, n.d), This allowed me to make the decision to keep my song low. The song kept a similar pace almost all the way through slowing at the end. This allowed for emphasis on the last two lines but meant the rest of the song didn’t have much dynamics; this would be something I would work on next time.

My song is about what keeps you up at night, and how it changes from when you’re a child and it being the imaginary monsters under your bed, to how as your get older it’s life problems keeping you awake. I feel my take on this song was quite sad and gave the piece a sense of melancholy.  If I were to continue developing my song I might make the piece more up tempo in the verses showing the frustration you feel when you cannot sleep, but keep the slow chorus as it allows for the sadness you can feel alone at night.  I think adding a violin, as I relate its sound to unhappiness, would help to emphasis the song.  A soft drum would be another possibility controlling the pace of the piece. I also think having two vocals creating a harmonic sound in the verses would give a nice change to the soft chorus.

As I continue to develop my piano skills I would have really liked to have been able to use this instrument to play the song, as the piano played softly can create a sad atmosphere and would add to the intention of my song. I think my song is very much in the style of Ed Sheeran for he uses a lot of simple acoustic patterns accompanied by heartfelt lyrics. On a billboard review they praised Ed Sheeran on his amazing lyrics, “The accented yearn of his vocal delivery distinguishes him from other aspiring folkies, but Sheeran's real gift lies in his writing -- his lyrics' attention to detail and unorthodox phrasing in particular.”(Lipshutz,2014),  This is quote made me think of my song as the simplistic guitar made the piece very much about the lyrics, they told the story rather than the melody.