This week we were interviewed for the tq5 record label. In order to do well we had to complete 5 tasks that were to be completed for Monday. The first task was to write a few facts about ourself, our musical experiences, our musical influences and our ambitions: which were to be presented on either a PowerPoint or to be out in our bio. Task number 2 was to put together a group performance and perform a song to the rest of the class and the 2nd years. This wasn’t the easiest thing to do as our theme was money, so we were limited as to what song we could choose and it had to be something that the whole group decided together. My group decided to perform Jessie J’s price tag but as an instrumental.



Then, for task 3, we needed to write an essay with a minimum of 500 words based on how our favourite band made money in the music industry. Here we had to include at least 8 different ways including PRS, merchandise, ticket sales etc. This was also quite difficult depending on the band/ artist we chose (mine was The Red Hot Chili Peppers) as most websites only explained it very vaguely. Task number 4 was that we needed to come up with a solo piece with or without a backing track to perform to the 2nd years as they were the judges. I feel as though I did pretty well on this, despite a few slip ups however I managed to quickly recover from them and carry on playing in time. And finally for task 5 we were asked to write a small blog on our website for how our first week went and what we did.

On Tuesday we spent the whole day with the level 3 second years. We had a quick introduction to what we were going to be doing for the day and then we got straight to work. Our task was to write a small composition in individual groups and we had to perform this in the studio to everyone else. I think we all expected this to be slightly easier than it was. It was very difficult as we had to include: every member of the band’s style of music; how everyone likes to play their specific instruments; the advice that the teacher gave to us regarding on how to write a song that would interest the audience. Luckily I still had some notes on the songs that I wrote last year for my GCSE’s so we were at an advantage. Obviously we changed a few things so that others were able to perform it in a way that they liked. Unfortunately, not that long before we needed to perform, a band member was unable to play so we had to quickly change the song to fit with the rest of the band but I personally think that we would have done great if we was to of had a bit longer to practice the new composition together as a group.

Finally, on Wednesday we spent the first half of the day updating our websites to make them look more appealing and were shown how to use photoshop help us to do this. We were also shown how to insert a YouTube video onto our sites. I found this more difficult than others as I was getting all confused about what to do and where everything should go but I managed to do it in the end with some assistance from classmates. In the afternoon we learned how to set up a studio and how to do a small recording of the drums on Logic. This took a while as there are so many adjustments that needed to be made to get the perfect sound. Then we had a short break and returned, only to find out that we needed to set up the studio as part of a team without the teachers help. My group did quite well and managed to finish this quicker than the other group so we started to adjust the mics on the different parts of the drum kit to get different sounds.

Overall this week was a success.