Over the last three weeks of practicing my songs, I have grown a lot. I was able to complete some of my goals that I set for myself in my last blog post and have almost reached some of my goals I set for my entire six-week journey, all in just four weeks out of the six that I was allocated for this assignment.
While playing Trouble by Coldplay, I am now able to successfully travel from the Bm to F chords fluidly, which I was struggling with a few weeks ago, and am able to travel back from Am to G and then up into A quite smoothly. There is one little part where I am supposed to go from A down into Em7 in the chorus which I am only able to play at a slow tempo. With practice, I will get there. Additionally, I am able to sing the lyrics as I play the song on the keyboard with relative ease. I am feeling very confident about this!
Regarding Back to December by Taylor Swift, I am also feeling quite confident. The chord changes are feeling very seamless, and I am able to sing along with the song all the way through as I play. The progress that I am most excited about with this song is that I am now able to add in some extra notes while playing the chords, giving my version of the song more interest and depth. As stated in Entry 1 of this series, I am trying to merge the two arrangements of Back to December that I own (one is quite complex and the other too simple) to create a version that works best for me. I feel that I am on my way to creating just that version. I have chosen to vary the bass notes I play along with the treble notes based on whichever section of the song I am playing. During the first and second verses, I play the bass notes two octaves lower than the same treble notes. Then during the chorus, I switch to playing the bass notes both one and two octaves lower than the treble notes to give the chorus more punch. I have made similar adjustments across my version of the song.
Overall, I am extremely pleased with my progress over the last few weeks. My current short-term goals refining my chord changes and my individual alterations to the songs. I feel as though I am very close to the culminating being able to perform and record these songs, the culminating task for this assignment. Let’s hope I get there with no issues!
