Workshops # 1

Song Writing: Jesse and I were fortunate to have a lot of individual work with Robin on our original songs. I first played my song, "Bring you home" for Robin and we worked on making the flow of the song much smoother. He had so much input on the song I brought him and his simple adjustments made my song sound much better. Robin would replace my chords with ones that sounded ten times better with the song as a whole. Robin said that a large difference between the verse and chorus will ultimately make a song sound so much better. When Robin changed the chords around for my chorus, the differenciation between both the verse and chorus stood out and really helped the sound. Robin also helped me finalize my piece and he offered some ideas for essential background vocals. This workshop helped me realize that there are various ways to write a song and a lot of different ways to play with the structure of a song. For example, Robin gave us a few examples of hit songs that have A and B sections in the chorus, which makes the listener much more tuned in while they listen. I'm glad that an individual, experienced in the music industry, heard my original song and helped me set goals to make it something worth recording.

Jim Bonney: Currently, we are working on subtext and the ability to allow dialogue to stir up different emotions. I'm enjoying the workshop more then last time because this year, I'm surrounded by a closer group of people and I'm much more confident with myself as an actor. Jim did an awesome exercise in which he had us listen to the song, "I know" by Jude while our eyes were shut. Then we each recieved the lyrics and were asked to say different lines with different emotions behind the text. The workshop allowed me to express whatever I needed to get out without feeling embarrased or masked. These exercises will ultimately help trigger a lot of emotions in my future character roles.