Research for Individual Assessment

Individual Research

For my individual assessment I have been thinking of playing the ukulele and writing lyrics. As I am new to this I have never had much experience in writing and creating music. To give me an idea of what I would like to do with my song I have been researching different ukulele players and tips in order to gain some inspiration from it to therefore start creating my own piece. Using YouTube videos to support my research I have found a number of different ukulele players which have gave me inspiration such as 'The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain':

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLgJ7pk0X-s)

This group take popular songs and perform them in front of audiences around the world, they have a very comedic element to there style of performance and can keep an audience easily engaged with their talents.

Although I have struggled to find videos of peoples own compositions I have still been working on playing and how to play therefore I have been learning how to play songs in order to remember chords as I find this the most easiest way to learn them. I have been watching videos such as:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9voTwpEyP4)

I use these videos a lot as they explain clearly and easily the best ways to play the songs you want, they offer alternatives to hard chords which will help you to build confidence also.

As I have been working on my own composition I have an idea of what I would like to look at as lyric writing is my weakness within this I am struggling to get an idea of what I can write about and how to start it. I have started with finding chords for my piece in which I know pretty well, I just now need to continue with the practice of finding lyrics. I have been using my time to research into different songwriters which I think give me most inspiration such as Lucy Spraggan, this artist interests me as she doesn't always write about love and break-ups which are typically what is seen in the charts these days. I wanted to write about something fun and upbeat so I have been looking into her work:

 

 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzcytiq8ZOo)

 

 

This song is the one that inspires me the most as all audience can relate to it and it is fun to listen to, its easy on the ears and easily keeps and audience engaged with the witty lyrics. Songs like this are what most people would prefer to listen too instead of a ballad and using a ukulele I think would really be a good opportunity to write an upbeat feel good song like this one.

lucysVEVO (2013). Lucy Spraggan - Last Night (Beer Fear). [online]. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzcytiq8ZOo>. [Accessed 06/12/2014].

The Ukulele Teacher (2014). Blank Space - Taylor Swift (Ukulele Tutorial). [online]. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9voTwpEyP4>. [Accessed 06/12/2014].

UkuleleOrchestra (2010). The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. [online]. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLgJ7pk0X-s>. [Accessed 06/12/2014].