3. Song #2 The Great Debate

For my second song there was a bit of a debate on what I should sing. At first I decided on singing Waving Through A Window from Dear Evan Hanson, this is because the song is very special to me, the lyrics are incredible and talk about struggling to belong in the world and watching other people pass, moving on with their lives. 

I decided against this song because it is sang by a male and I feel like my voice didn't suit it as well as I originally thought because of the key, some of it was too low and some of it was too high for me personally. The first verse and chorus is sang in a very shy way which is not like my character profile at all. 

So as a final choice of song I chose There Are Worst Things I Could Do from Grease because its a familiar song to me, the show itself is over 30 years old and I have heard the song countless times throughout my life which made me a lot more confident to sing. The character of Rizzo is someone who I can relate to a lot more than Evan Hansen. Rizzo is a very laid back, sarcastic and strong woman which are traits I fit best with especially in a song.

There Are Worst Things I Could Do is a song about Rizzo saying she isn't as bad as people thinks she is, she's just an upfront person about a lot of things and it also shows her vulnerable side for the first time which is what we hear through the lyrics and the way it is sung.




Here is the score for the song, it's annotated with different techniques I have found throughout.
For the first section of the song it starts off with an aspirate decay, this technique is often used to show emotions such as sadness, tiredness, frustration etc, these emotions can be seen straight away as it starts off with 'there are worst things I could do' on that last word is where it is heard, bringing forth those emotions within the first line. This technique can be found throughout the entire song, it's used on numerous occasions to keep up those emotions. 

Looking on the second page we see something new which is called 'twang' this simply shows that you can hear a nasal type of effect on the voice, when the note is held and it starts to come off that is when you can hear it the most, the same thing happens on the next page when the word 'night' is sang. 

On the last page we see vibrato fade used numerous times, this is towards the end of the song and it almost sounds like crying which pushes the characteristics of her vulnerability in the song. We then see the technique of push release used towards the end as a high note is used on the word 'lie' this is to show power and struggle by using such magnitude on that note.

Performance

https://youtu.be/D4f146FE3q4

For the final performance of this song you can see I can push a lot of character throughout, using the stage and also with my expressions this is to help place the vocal techniques if I know where I'm moving on stage, as well as the lyrics.

The vocal techniques that I indentified in the score, I tried to execute them myself I even added different ones throughout the show, for example towards the end of the performance I used spoken word when it says 'but I can feel' rather than singing because I felt like it added to the feeling and character a lot more if that part was spoken, my tone I used was also a very emotional and frustrated tone and I could feel myself tearing up as I did it so I pushed character to the max I think.

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