Radio - 2

Solo Project:
I began with my solo project knowing that at some point I wanted to work on an audiobook, this is because I think audiobooks have so much potential such as with portraying all of the emotions and internal thoughts that a character in a book would have an having to bring that across to your listening audience. Books themselves are also something I love as I am an avid reader, this made it quite hard to choose a book let alone a section of one to work on and use that piece without constantly changing my mind. I finally chose the first chapter from the book The Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare. I chose this piece because as an avid reader I seriously enjoyed the book, I also knew that no matter how many times I read the book or the part I chose for my vocal project I could never be bored with it.  I also chose the piece because having also listened to the audiobook and admiring the reader of the book I saw a lot of potential in the piece. I also began to look at how I would work on the extract myself making notes on the selected part and seeing how to engage in the emotions of the piece as it starts out with the traditional wedding folk rhyme, I saw this to be a nostalgic part of the piece and so wanted to make it somewhat down hearted and monotone at the same time showing the melancholy in the extract. Going into the actual scene we have  one of the maids who presents a cockney accent, I have found this to be a little more difficult as the accent was not my strong suit, so to work on this I looked at youtube videos to give me a better insight and of course had to go and watch My Fair Lady to give me the real Eliza Dolittle cockney tone. The book is set in the late 1800's and so the poem at the beginning has real meaning to the piece as it was an old rhyme always said around a wedding, just as the "something old something new" rhyme still told today. As a book it is written in a very descriptive way and  you need to convey the description and the emotions felt with that to show the character's feelings and what is going on around them. This can also be shown by the pace of the piece such as when a scene needs to pick up pace if a fight is going on or to slow down when they are trying to process a piece of vital information in the story. 

The second piece I chose was a sonnet, number 116. I chose this as my second vocal piece because I had performed the piece before and knew that there was still more that I could do to it. Such as expanding on the notes that I already had for the piece and since it had been a while since I had actually done the sonnet It was very beneficial to re learn it with the notes I already had. It was also interesting as I was able to take on a new view point having not done it for a while I was able to see it from an insiders perspective but also and outsiders perspective. I began by going back to basics looking at the time the piece was written and the themes it contains. I was looking at how during Shakespeare’s time love was not really seen, most marriages were arranged and not real, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t find love outside as most would find it elsewhere from their marriage. It was a time when the social aspect of love was considered a fantasy and not really something for the everyday life, most would marry for money or for stability as for women, not many jobs were available and for men they needed to create their down line. This piece relies on the listener understanding what it is saying, the sonnet is written in shakespearian and so is not as easily deciphered this is where the voice is heavily relied on, it is the one thing that will show the real emotion that is aching to be released from the poem to the listener. The pace of the piece changes with the different themes, showing the different stages of a sonnet, the intro, crisis and resolve. It needs to convey the question of the piece, then explain the crisis and how this is conflicting the person and finally the resolve the answer to the question and crisis. You could say that it is in a way a story, and every sonnet is the same, they all tell a universal story that everyone can relate to, different themes and problems but all have a resolve. Allowing the listener to understand that is crucial. 

The final piece I chose is a radio advert, the advert in question is for a ballet and saying that you can enjoy memories with the gift of tickets for your family to see the one night only production. This piece is modern and so the social, political and economic constraints are what we see today. These constraints are as follows, the economic situation is that there is not as much money going around and so the piece pushes the memories part of the the advert, aiming to persuade the listener into spending their money on tickets. The political situation right now is that the government are spending money we don't have, this is what is being encouraged in this advert. The social constraints of this time are that everyone wants to go to gatherings like this and take their families, it's a social venture that involves the family and is something that you can make memories with as the advert suggests.
The advert relies on the listener to understand what it is saying and also be coerced by what is happening in the advert to want to buy the tickets, this is also reliant on how persuasive the voice of the person who is talking on the radio. The pace of the piece needs to be quick enough to get everything across but also enough for the listener to understand what you are saying at the same time as being enticed into buying the tickets. I worked on all of this by listening to a lot of adverts on the radio or youtube and studying how they used their voice, vocal tone, pitch and pace to really make the advert as effective as they could, I have tried to add this into what I am doing to make the tickets more appealing for the families and others intended that are the target audience.