Solo Singing and Autoethnography

  Music represents a mood, also represents a life attitude. I like to listen to music at different times and places because music can bring me different emotions. But for singing, which I am not good at, this project is a challenge. I sift through the characteristics of my voice, my temperament, the types of music I like, and the singers I like. The song “Love Yourself” was chosen. The first is the sound characteristics, the melody is made up of rising and falling notes. Melody is also an important determinant. Since I have a low voice, I don’t want to consider songs with high tunes. The second point is the rhythm. The rhythm of music refers to the length and strength of the medium of music. The rhythm of music is also the backbone of music. I know my own vital capacity, so it’s hard for me to break through a stretch or a twist in a tune. So for the choice of music, I gave up some sad songs. Because sad songs are harder to master. The third point is the type of music. I usually like to listen to pop music, light music, rap music, and jazz. But among the many kinds, I choose pop music. Among my favorite singers, I prefer male voices, because male voices are more conducive to my intonation. Finally through a variety of aspects of the investigation, the final choice of this song.

The song is a popular song performed by Canadian pop star Justin Bieber on his fourth album Purpose, which was released in 2015. The song also achieved its third number-one single. 2016 also won various awards. I chose this song because of the meaning behind the song. Although the song is about his love story with his ex-girlfriend, it uses light and spiteful tone to express their relationship. And for the lyrics of a sentence that impressed me, that is “Oh baby you should go and love yourself” although the lyrics of the song surface meaning is relatively shallow, from this song, I also feel that a person’s value is not through others to show. We should pay attention to ourselves, not because of external people and things that affect their lives. We should love ourselves.

  At the beginning of the song, I listened to it many times and analyzed every paragraph of the song, as well as summarized the letter linking and silent sound. These steps are all derived from our preparation for the lecture. Then the song was ready to be recorded. Things like lights and locations and computers and headphones. I was a little nervous about starting the recording. Because a solo is different from a chorus. Solo singing is a personal art, which needs to have its own style and timbre. And choral singing is a common art, to carefully observe the voices of others and cooperate. The recital gets all the attention of the audience, but the chorus does not.

In the beginning, I sang in a low voice because I was afraid of the concert. It gets better after a lot of practice. Every time I sang, I would think of the activities in that class. The professor commented on other students, and the problem was that the singing voice was low. This will cause the music to not show well. So some progress has been made after many attempts. For recording, I tried much different software records, the first point is the mirror effect, some software will have people like the opposite direction of the problem. Some programs have incomplete screen recording, making the video smaller. Finally, I chose to record with Zoom, screen record with other software, and finally synthesize. Clip and edit the video and combine the audio to form a complete video.

I felt a little excited and nervous while doing this project. I was excited because I had never recorded such a video for myself before. I was nervous because I was afraid of failure because I was not good at singing. However, by participating in these class activities and communicating and discussing with classmates in class, I gained some confidence. There were also some experiences in singing together, which made me interested in singing. All these experiences have helped me a lot in this project.

In this process, the most difficult thing is singing. In order to sing, I kept on turning. I practiced sentence by sentence and adjusted some notes, and then practiced as a whole. It was a lot better than what I was singing. I spent a lot of time recording songs. This may be very easy for people who can sing, but it is very difficult for me. Although this process is tedious, I think I have learned a lot in order to make good work. I sang the whole song very uneasy, although the voice is not very high, but also tried my best to complete it. In the process of singing, I can change the tone of the song, and my mood will change with the tone. When I enter the main melody, I feel very relaxed. I feel like the lyrics, “You should go and love yourself,” it’s a relief. This song will relax me.

For the final edit, I added the video clip linking effects and added tracking lyrics, as well as the beginning and end of the video. Briefly introduced my name and the name of the song, and the meaning of the song to me. The production of this work, I think, is a great sense of achievement, from the selection of songs to contact songs, then recording songs, and finally editing. I learned a lot in this process, about the composition of songs, and the categories of songs. The most important thing is to learn singing skills and increase the love of singing. This is a process that can influence my future life and love music.

I love the process of making it and enjoy it with all my heart.