Rent Rehearsal with Musical Director

1. Rent Rehearsal with the Musical Director
The focus for this session was to analyse the song, ‘Seasons of Love’ from Rent, create
harmonies within the song and understand the lyrics.
My SMART target for this session was to make sure that I projected in the first run through
as well as understanding my own harmonies and where and when to come in with each of
them. Whilst I think I have an excellent understanding of projection, as seen in my Skills
Audit, I think I can practice on it so that I don’t lose any understanding about it. I also wanted
to aim on understanding my vocal register and where it lay for this song.
Our rehearsal was held in the music studio, and the Musical Director led it. As a group, we
talked about vocally warming up, as not to damage our voice whilst singing. Also, warming
up helps us not to tense up and lose focus and control. As a company, we decided that
‘Seasons of Love’ should be the opening to our musical showcase. This is because it
includes the whole company and showcases our vocal skill right off the bat. It’s also a
positive and uplifting song that will engage the audience at the beginning for the rest of the
showcase.
Firstly, we ran through the song as a group. We then figured out harmonies and vocal
registers, splitting the class into a soprano group and an alto group. I went into the alto group
as I have a lower pitched voice. Whilst in the groups, the company as a whole talked about
harmonies and what they should sound like and the timings of them. The musical director
helped to create these harmonies that correlated with each other. As aforementioned, the
musical director previously talked about warming up the voice and muscles around the
mouth and neck; this is important because otherwise we might injure ourselves in
rehearsals, and the final showcase. Therefore, she advised us to always warm up before
rehearsals so as not to strain our voices. Also, she suggested trying to improve on the
opening, as it was quiet and calmer in the beginning. The opening to the song needs to be
loud and snappy, so that it captures the audience’s attention and illustrates the fact that it’s
the opening to our showcase. Next, she talked about projection, and how a lot of the
company were very quiet, and the backing track was much louder. Therefore, an
improvement for everyone in the next rehearsal would be to focus on projection, as this is
important in the final showcase so that the whole audience can hear us. My peers said the
same, and thought that we could all be a bit louder. The musical director helped me find the
right pitch in which to sing so that I could match the rest of the company, as they all have
much higher pitched voices.
In ‘Seasons of Love’, I am focusing on portraying the character Mark Cohen, a struggling
Jewish documentary filmmaker and the narrator of the show. Rent tells the story of the life of
a group of bohemians who struggle in modern day East Village New York. It tells different
stories of different struggles, like AIDS, homelessness and drugs. This means that we need
to focus on characterising the struggles the characters are facing in our piece, but also
showing support for each other. Facial expressions can help this, because as our characters
we can look at each other with admiration, respect and “love” like the song suggests.

2. The challenge of this session was the harmonies, as not all of the company’s main focus is
singing, so it was a challenge to be able to have everyone maintain their own harmonies. In
terms of roles, there was some talk about the individual solo parts and who might play them.
It’s important to have confident singers in the roles as this will boost the overall projection
and will help the characterisation to shine.
I think a skill that was a strength for me this rehearsal was my projection. This is because
you can clearly hear me in the audio compared to everyone else. However, I would say a
weakness this session was my pitch; although I tend to have a good understanding of my
pitch and how to control it, singing this song with the harmonies, as well as with peers who
have a higher vocal range than me, it was a challenge to find where my pitch should lay.
This means that my target next rehearsal is to focus on this and maintain it, so that I don’t
sound out of place with the rest of the company.
Looking back at my SMART target, I feel like I projected well and understood the harmonies
for this opening song.
This is an example of the musical director helping me with the
harmony. The altos have to stay on the same note on “dear” whilst the
sopranos have to sing in a higher pitch to create the harmony.
The musical director also helped me to find the best pitch for me to
sing in because I have a deeper voice than the rest of the company.