LO 2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

During this quarantine period, nothing has been more challenging than for our musical group to come together and meet every Thursday like we could when we were in school. Saying this, we had to take a lot of changes and adjustments in our stride in order to continue working together and still trying to put on as good of a show as we could in whatever we were doing. Saying this, we were able to work on some videos that we collated and put online to use for the Class of 2020’s graduation that is coming soon. This was a challenge for me as I have not been very experienced in recording music and trying to produce something online, but figuring out how to do this through the process was a very beneficial skill that I unearthed which I am sure will come handy in the future in some form or the other.

We realized that at the end of the process, we would need to put all our videos together in order to create the final process; saying this, it was paramount that we communicated between ourselves components such as tempo, key and rhythm so that we could all be on the same page for the final song to sound as natural as possible. I think that the benefits of working together on this, by having calls with each other and taking the time to record and listen to each others’ recordings was really evident in the final product which ended up being really good in my opinion.

LO 4 Show commitment to and perseverance in your CAS experiences

LO 2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

In preparation for the Wavelengths show happening at school, we needed to be extremely punctual and committed to making it to practices. I gave up time on the weekends as well as after school to practice with Bersama, Sonos and the orchestra as well. It was a show of perseverance on my part because I had plenty of other commitments to meet during the time as well, but I think that i showed a great deal of commitment to these practices in specific because I was aware of what a big show this was and a big opportunity for us to perform what we had been working on for so long.

There were challenges mainly in the form of my performance with the Orchestra; since practice dates were colliding with my service, I did not have time to practice with the orchestra until the final dress rehearsal right before the real show. The challenge was to get the cues right on the arrangement we were doing, and this was a real challenge because the song was arranged in a very unique way that I had not heard before, so it took a lot of time to practice outside of the actual setting for me to get it right, and this was something that took a lot of work but ultimately paid off in the end because the show went very smoothly.

LO 3 Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

We played a show at UWC Day, and we performed a song that was written by two members of the UWC alumni who graduated last year. We had the sheet music and chords, but it was up to us how we wanted to interpret the music. That is why I think that the band showed really great work in working together to plan this performance in terms of the music, because we all put together our interpretations of the music in a way that made it sound great. In the end, it matched up really well with the singers as well. We were tasked with planning the sequence of background music for this performance at the UWC Day assembly with the given score and I think that we accomplished this task extremely well.By launching this new idea of how the music was going to be played, the singers were then able to adapt and modify their rhythms to the way we tried to structure the music; in the end this really paid off well because everything sounded really well done when it was put together and we received tons of praise from our peers.

LO 1 Identifying own strengths and develop areas for personal growth

This year, I returned to my position as the bassist for the Bersama house band; the band that plays backing music for the vocal group Bersama. The bass is not my primary instrument, but it is something that I have taught myself over the last year and it is a skill I hope to develop greatly, already having played in numerous performances at school with my band.

I find that musical interpretation and improvisation was one of my main strengths from last year, and whenever our supervisor, Ms. Stirrat, would give us sheet music for the songs we were to play, I would always be making little changes to the score by either adding or prolonging certain notes to give it a new feel. I feel like this experience has greatly shaped my strengths of interpreting the manner in which the music has been arranged and then changing or improvising it to make it sound a different way while preserving its core sound.

Through the experience of playing bass for Bersama, I have also developed a keen ear for music; I find myself being able to replicate songs we have to learn onto the bass just by listening to it on a speaker and this is a skill I think that is set to improve throughout this year as well, Bersama having just started.

Of course, there is still area for growth; in Bersama, the main area of growth I will look to develop on this year is my stage presence; I have talked to many of the music teachers at school and they have made me understand that the presence of a musician on stage is a very key part of how the audience reacts to them.

Throughout this year, I will try to better the manner in which I present myself on stage to make the performance more visually appealing as well as try and be creative as possible in the way in which I write and play my music.