Even though the start of our group was a bit late and uncertain, this somehow turned out to be my favourite project of the academic year. 

I am not entirely sure if we spent an equal amount of time on each stage of development but here’s my take on it.

Forming : 

Our group was already formed by our lecturers. The group consisted of Christopher John, Michael Woods and myself. For the first few lessons, I did not get the opportunity to start talking about the project as my group members were not attending the lesson. Our lecturer Gail conducted one session between me and Christopher where she was helping us find some common ground and later that day, Michael joined us too. For our means of communication I had set up a WhatsApp group which we ended up using through out the whole creative process.

Storming :

As me and Michael live in the student accommodation just after reading week which was the fifth week for this project. We met up at my apartment and decided how we wanted to proceed. That day Michael told me he had already made a backing track for our first song which we later named ‘ Deep Blue ‘. That week in class Michael played the backing track and had already written half the song. I personally don’t always write love songs but as me & Michael both share a deep interest in Lana Del Rey’s work, we decided this would be a similar to Lana’s hopeless romantic songs. Christopher wanted me and Michael to take the lead for the creative aspects and he wanted more so to be a part of the performance. And for our second track we decided it was going to be something more upbeat, positive and uplifting. Christopher was quite excited to here that as he loves to bring joy through music.

Norming :

After Michael gave me the backing track and half finished vocals for ‘ Deep Blue ’ , I immediately started writing to that track and recorded myself on it and created a reference track . We had sang a bit of the song in front of class, and that’s how Christopher was introduced to it as well, and then we decided what he could do with the saxophone on the song. After we were at a satisfactory stage with ‘ Deep Blue ‘ , we decided to get started on our second track. Whilst I was in class Michael had sent me another track and I immediately started writing to it. Once he arrived to class, he wrote lyrics to it. Some of it what he already had in mind and later some of that was inspired by my lyrics. The three of us had an incredible jamming session that day and we were definitely on to something.

Performing :

After our pieces had a structure, we started going over them thoroughly, both together and in our own time. ‘ Deep Blue ‘ already had a reference track, but one day Michael and I booked the studio and recorded ‘ Queen’s Of The Club ‘ both for a reference track and also because we ultimately wanted to release it as a single. Before the final performance that we were being graded on I took the responsibility to print out the lyrics for us. We thoroughly enjoyed our final performance it was in front of our peers, lecturers, staff members, UEL alumnus and others. We were told we brought a lot of fun and good energy through our performances and speeches. I had an incredible time myself.

Adjourning :

We were extremely lucky, we had no conflicts and we thoroughly enjoyed working as a group. We were equally valued in the band. To adjourn we had another performance at the University's underground bar. But we plan to release these singles so we look forward to see each other again and record these singles. As we are now aware of each other’s unique attributes we will possibly work together in the future again.