Fortitude Through Music, Media And Performance

Fortitude Through Music, Media and Performance

Hey guys, 

I would like to share with you a journey that I recently embarked upon to pursue my love for film, music and performing. Something that I had been interested in learning for quite some time but never felt confident in pursing until now, due to the bad experiences I had with education in the past. It all began when I enrolled on the Fortitude through Music, Media and Performance course. A project that enabled me to learn new skills within this field and further develop upon existing skills that I had already acquired from past ventures. 

“The Fortitude through Music, Media and performance is a pre-employability programme that explores self-development techniques, creative industries skill sharing, mentoring and career guidance, well-being drop-in sessions and entrepreneurial skills”.  

For over 6 weeks, the creative industry professionals guided myself and the other participants enrolled on the course to participate in two projects; one of which was to contribute to a group song and the other being an individual venture. We would then be given the opportunity to showcase our talents to friends and families at a live celebratory event at the end of the course. 

Normally, this project would be delivered in a face to face setting but this was impossible due to the global pandemic and the government guidelines that were imposed as a result. Instead, the course was delivered via the online platform Zoom.

The course began with various professionals from within the creative industry introducing themselves to the participants that were on the course and each shared with us their own inspirational stories of how they embarked on their own individual journeys to the successful careers that they have today. I found each and every one of the mentors experiences to be awe-inspiring and I felt incredibly moved by the challenges they each had to overcome to become who and where they are today. 

Before myself and the other participants on the course were allocated mentors with whom we would have the opportunity to work with on a one to one basis. The tutors organised a speed networking session which afforded myself and the other participants the opportunity to ask each individual mentors any questions we had for them that would help us to decide if they were the ideal candidates in supporting us to achieve our goals by the end of the course. I found this session to be invaluable as I learned so much from being able to speak directly with the mentors, lessons that will stay with me long after the course has ended and will no doubt help me in future endeavors that I wish to pursue. 

Following this session, I picked the three mentors that I felt could support me to develop in areas that I wished to pursue further. These mentors were as follows; Louise Schofield, Maddie Jones and Erin Mai. 

I picked to be mentored by Louise because of my passion for acting and love of creating videos. I felt that she could help me develop skills in this area as she works within this domain. During our 1-1 tutorial, Louise not only provided me with tips on how to come across confident which would be beneficial for acting and making videos but she also shared with me techniques on how to interview people and how best to interact with the interviewees during the interview. Something I had never even considered undertaking, until now that is! Some of the tips and advice Louise gave me in order to execute a successful interview were as follows; discovering topics of interest that would set my interview apart from other interviews the interviewee might have done previously, demonstrations on how to convey my personality to the audience, memorisation tips to help retain information from scripts, distinguishing between open and closed questions - open questions would get the most out of the interviewee. As these type of questions enable the interviewee to disclose more information about themselves or even divulge more information about projects they have been working on. Opposed to a closed question that requires a simple yes or no answer. A style of questioning that would negatively impact upon the conversational style interaction. I learnt so much from Louise more than I had originally anticipated I would have.

Another mentor I desired to work with was Maddie as I love to write lyrics for songs and she has expertise in this domain as a songwriter herself. I felt the 1-1 tutorial with Maddie would not only help me develop skills within this field but the knowledge gained would assist me in the completion of my contributions to the group song “static” and the individual song that I was working on. This is still relatively new territory for me so with Maddie’s help I was able to gain deeper insight into the art of songwriting. Tips and techniques that I learnt were from her were as follows; how to plan and structure songs, find simpler and shorter phrases to help the flow of the song when sung, identify various different components that are used in music and help to structure songs such as verses, choruses and bridges, discover various different genres of music and how to sing in different pitches i.e. low/high.

I also chose Erin to be my mentor as she has a lot of experience with vocals and making music as she is a singer herself and even has her own band as does Maddie. I decided that I would like to make my own song from scratch. In order to make this become a reality Erin taught me how to create the backing track to the song via ‘logic pro’ where I had to choose through a vast array of music samples, learn how to maneuver the loop system so that the music samples could be stretched out to play for the duration of the song and instructions on placement of verses, chorus and bridges within the backing track. Not only was I shown the inner workings of how to produce my own track, Erin provided me with singing lessons where I learnt how to sing in various different notes which I felt was helpful for me to uncover my vocal range since I am a novice singer. 

We were also asked to create music videos for both the group song and our individual projects. However, as mentioned elsewhere, we are in the middle of a global pandemic and are confined to lockdown. As you can imagine we were not able to film the music videos using conventional methods so an alternative method to produce these music videos was required to be sought out. Another mentor Gareth was assigned this task as he has expertise in music video production so he instructed myself and the other participants on the course various things we could send him to enable him to carry out this task such as, audio, video recordings and image stills. Gareth provided us with great tips on how best to record audio to help minimize distortions to the sound quality, various subjects and items we could take photos of and locations that would encapsulate the theme of the projects we were working on and how to capture ourselves on camera with regards to lighting/positioning and so forth. 

I was grateful that were afforded the opportunity to learn from a vast array of different domains within the creative industry, instead of focusing solely on one area as this enabled me to develop a broad range of new skills further expanding on my current skill set. My contributions to the projects comprised of the following; I wrote, sung, produced and directed my own song which was entitled ‘what I do’ which depicted how proud I am of being Deaf and how I won’t let the fact that I am Deaf become a barrier from stopping me from doing what I love. I wrote my own lyrics for a verse in the group song which was entitled ‘static’ which was a combination of all the participant’s individual experiences of life spent in lockdown which I also sung and produced. In addition to translating the lyrics of the chorus of the group song that was written by another participant of the course into British Sign language (BSL) and then taught this to everyone on the course. After a few practices, we all signed the chorus together which was recorded live then the video clip was sent to the music video producer to be incorporated into the group song’s music video. The instruction video that I had created to help everyone that I had taught to practice the new signs along to in their spare time was also played during the showcase for the audience members to participate along with, if they so wished. 

When I saw this course advertised, I did have some apprehensions about enrolling to start with due to the negative experiences I have previously had with education whilst in school. For example, the teachers did not provide me with adequate support that I required as a deaf pupil and this inaccessibility meant that I was not able to learn subjects that I desired, one of which was music. However, My desire to pursue a career as either an actor, podcaster or song writer in this industry far outweighed that early traumatic experience I had been subjected to. So, I decided to take the plunge and not let my negative experiences of the past define my future and I am so glad that I did manage to muster up the courage to do so as it turned out to be an incredible experience. 

I was pleased that I made the decision to sign up for the course as I really enjoyed it and had so much fun. It is an experience that I will never forget and something I am very appreciative and fortunate to have been part of. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the other participants on the course whom I have made great friends with and hope to stay in touch with. All the tutors Daniel Fitzgerald, Tom Stupple and Erin Mai and the mentors Gareth Leeman (Creative Music/Multimedia Workshops, Traineeships and Mentor Support), Louise Schofield (Presenter, Online Content Creator, Actor, Comedian, Music Journalist, and Music lover), Maddie Jones (Welsh singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer), Richard Samuel (music industry as a journalist), Julie Britton (inspirational Life and Business Coach and Mindfulness Teacher, that revolutionizes entrepreneurs, business services and team’s performance) , Radio Platfform (Youth-led radio) who I learnt a great deal from and really appreciated all your encouragement and support as it enabled me to confront my fears head on. In doing so, I was able to work towards unlocking my full potential and who knows perhaps we might make some collaborations in the future. Watch this space! Finally, last but no means least I would like to thank the providers of the course. Without you none of this would have been possible as you ensured that the course was made fully accessible for me to become fully immersed in the course and learn alongside my hearing counterparts. By providing not only one BSL/English Sign Language Interpreter but a whole team of interpreters whom were as follows; Rebecca M, Rachel, Sam, Lisa and Rachel L. 

Lastly, I would like to state that Deaf people might not be able to hear granted but that does not mean that we cannot learn subjects such as music, if we so desire. What we lack in one sense we certainly do compensate with our other senses. For instance, impeccable vision (that resemble that of a superhero) and sense of touch which help us feel the vibrations of music. Whilst on the course I incorporated a mixture of British Sign language (BSL), my own vocalization and music that me, yes a Deaf person, had produced from scratch. I know that my voice may not be perfect but that did not deter me from giving singing a try and I am really proud of myself for having the courage to do so and I aim to continue to develop my vocal skills further to make my singing become even better in the future.