Lately, Rhythm of Faith has been dealing with teamwork issues. This issue becomes even more sensitive around performance season. The past two weeks, RoF has been preparing to perform at Weekend of Worship. (Weekend of Worship is a 3 night event hosted by Harvest Global Mission Church, one of Penn State's on-campus ministries. It will be at 102 Forum, and the event is open to all! If you're interested, please don't hesitate to join us.) Our tracklist consists of "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper, "Sweetly Broken" by Jeremy Camp, and "Yesterday" by the Boyz II Men.
All three songs require an incredible amount of teamwork and coordination.
During this week's practice, RoF struggled through a long practice of singing over and over again.
One thing we struggled with was constructive criticism. Several groups of students were struggling with their parts during various parts of the rehearsal. The rehearsal was rather difficult to get through because tension began to build as criticisms were given across the room. In the end, the tensions died down as we continued to sing and move past the criticisms.
In any team effort, I think constructive criticism is very important. It's essential for those receiving the constructive criticism to be able to mature enough to accept the suggestions and take heed to the group's advice. It's also essential for those giving the constructive criticism to be able to discern the difference between constructive criticism and plain criticism. After this week's practice, I feel that RoF has taken a step closer to becoming a tighter, more unified group. The phase of dealing with constructive criticism is crucial for a group to improve, and I hope that RoF will continue to learn to work with each other and be able to sing our hearts out together! =]
Friday, March 18, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Let's stay together, shall we?
Recently, RoF has been working on the song "Yesterday," originally by the Beatles, and remade by the Boyz II Men. If you listen to this song, you'll notice that while it's an extremely impressive piece when done well, it has the potential to be an extremely unpleasant disaster when done... not so well. Throughout the song, the 4 parts, Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass, are blended together in a pleasant dissonance. The leaders of RoF predicted that the song would bring us several long and gruesome practices, and their prediction was on point.
The first problem, as previously mentioned, was intonation. Because the parts were so radically different from each other, we could not rely on the other sections' parts to sing along. This piece really pushed our group to grow and mature musically. The alto line was particularly difficult, and our usually musically strong alto section had a tricky time perfecting our part.
While intonation was our first problem, our biggest obstacle was tempo. The song's tempo was marked at 60, which equates each beat to be a second. As a group, we just simply could not keep a steady tempo. Because the song was originally marked at such a slow tempo, our tendency was to speed up. The problem intensified as each section sang at its own tempo. This problem was so severe that sometimes after a mere 30 seconds into the song, our music director would bring the painful song to a halt.
The only way to solve these problems was to practice, and practice, and practice. We practiced separately as sections, came back together as a group, split back into our sections, and then came back together once more. This process went on repetitively until it was time to wait for the next rehearsal to repeat this cycle. This went on, until last practice, our music director finally declared that the song was finished!
This song taught our group a lot about team work. Initially, the song gave us so many problems because the sections, and perhaps even the individuals, of the group were so disconnected. Not everyone was singing the right part, at the right tempo, in the right key. We learned how to pay attention to each other in order to stay together in regards to tempo.
Thank you Boyz II Men for helping RoF become more unified! ^^
The first problem, as previously mentioned, was intonation. Because the parts were so radically different from each other, we could not rely on the other sections' parts to sing along. This piece really pushed our group to grow and mature musically. The alto line was particularly difficult, and our usually musically strong alto section had a tricky time perfecting our part.
While intonation was our first problem, our biggest obstacle was tempo. The song's tempo was marked at 60, which equates each beat to be a second. As a group, we just simply could not keep a steady tempo. Because the song was originally marked at such a slow tempo, our tendency was to speed up. The problem intensified as each section sang at its own tempo. This problem was so severe that sometimes after a mere 30 seconds into the song, our music director would bring the painful song to a halt.
The only way to solve these problems was to practice, and practice, and practice. We practiced separately as sections, came back together as a group, split back into our sections, and then came back together once more. This process went on repetitively until it was time to wait for the next rehearsal to repeat this cycle. This went on, until last practice, our music director finally declared that the song was finished!
This song taught our group a lot about team work. Initially, the song gave us so many problems because the sections, and perhaps even the individuals, of the group were so disconnected. Not everyone was singing the right part, at the right tempo, in the right key. We learned how to pay attention to each other in order to stay together in regards to tempo.
Thank you Boyz II Men for helping RoF become more unified! ^^
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