For the first three weeks, we managed to stay well on our proposed schedule with the songwriting and arranging aspect of our project, having all three songs in a full arrangement by the fourth week. While they didn’t sound perfect by any means at this stage, this was a huge achievement for the group and the musical directors, as composing and arranging three tunes in three weeks is a tall order.
As I have already mentioned, my role was to be one of the musical directors and this means I was directly involved in the writing of each piece. Given the nature of my role, I figured I would go into a little bit of detail about how we wrote the pieces.
Our first song we called “Not Sure,” and this has an apparent influence from modern pop music and even funk in parts, similar to band’s like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Here is some footage of us performing it for one of the first times just after writing.
This song follows a typical “Verse-Chorus” structure which is used in most pop songs, but our piece features a bridge/breakdown section. It looks something like this:
This, song was written in the key of Eb minor as we decided that not only did it sound good as an opening chord, but it is also generally an easy key for the singers to sing in.
As for the sections, the chords sequences look like this:
- Verse – Ebm / B / G / C
- Chorus – Ebm7 / C / G / G
- Bridge – Ebm (Jam / vamp)
As I am a guitarist my main focus when we had settled on the chords was to make sure that the two guitar lines weren’t clashing with each other, but weren’t just playing the same thing as each other all the time. So, to mix things up a bit I continued holding down the chord rhythm section, while Luke on the other guitar plays a repeating melody using an Eb minor pentatonic scale during the verses. In the choruses we play the same chords as each other, however I use alternative fingering and generally play the chords higher up than the standard barre chords from earlier sections.
Here’s some more rehearsal footage at a later date showing off the song in it’s more finalised structure:
The next song we worked on is more of an unusual sounding track, which we later named “Family in the Snow.” This song features a reggae rhythm for the into and chorus sections, this time in the key of Bb minor. The chords for these sections are as follows: |Bbm|Bbm|Abm|Gbm|
The verses in this song are just centred on the Bbm chord, with one guitar hitting the full chord in regular intervals, similar to a slow ‘skank’ rhythm used in many reggae songs.
Here is one of the first takes we took of this particular tune:
Obviously this was just a really rough take just after we had started piecing things together. while discussing the arrangement if the sing’s structure, we agreed that it would be best to keep close the basic song form structure for all of our tracks as this would alleviate some of the pressure in the songwriting process as we were strictly on a time limit.
After agreeing on this plan, work started on the final song as we had a recording session coming up soon. We called this one “One Shot.”
For this last track, we decided on a really slow and laid back rhythm on the verse sections consisting of F major, C major, and finally resolving to a G major. To give this song more of an impact, we added in double time sections which built up the tune massively before snapping back to the original pace. These sections were mainly the same chord structure as before, but with the occasional D major added in.
The hardest part to nail with this particular piece was easily the ending. To finish the song we decided on having synchronised stabs on each instrument, with crazy drum fills to flesh out the gaps. This worked really well I thought, although it took many attempts to really nail it in practice.
Here is a quick video of us working on this one:
Recording:
After finally reaching a stage where we had three tracks at a presentable level, it was swiftly on to the recording studio for us.
We hired the help of Grant Henderson at Loom Studios in Birstall to record our tracks which was a brilliant idea for the project as not only would we receive very high quality audio takes, but we have also worked with Grant in the past so he already has an understanding of the sound settings we like.
When booking the room, we decided to use two days to record the raw audio tracks for each song and then mix the tracks ourselves. This would save us some money firstly as we wouldn’t need that extra recording day, and would also reflect our own sound more due to us being the ones doing the mixing.
After discussing the mix/mastering situation as a group, Lex and Luke volunteered to take charge of the overall mix, leaving the rest of the group to focus on the promotion and build up to the EP launch.
This recording really was my final job as a Musical Director for the project, making sure that we got the best possible takes recorded for mixing and mastering by Lex and Luke.
Promo:
With the guys on with mixing the EP, I felt it would be most beneficial to help out the others with the promotional side of things. While they ran the social media feed for our band, I got in touch with Abbey who kindly came along to take photos of our recording session previously, and also happens to be a media student. I asked if she could help us with a video to promote the EP and to go along with one of the tracks.
The Launch and Unexpected Circumstances.
As I stated previously in my project amendment post, some unforeseen circumstances managed to trow off our launch plan entirely for this project. roughly two weeks or so after our fantastic recording session with Grant, the United Kingdom, and the world in fact entered a lock-down situation due to a global pandemic because of the Covid-19 virus.
Due to these sudden and extreme changes that simply couldn’t have been taken into consideration, we have had to scrap our original idea of hosting an all day style festival event for charity, and just distribute the EP online and promote it as much as we possibly can.
The week prior to the launch, we had a teaser up online for people to see of around one minute long to try and get people interested:
We also had finalised logos come through from on of Lex’s contacts, and we all really liked the finished products:
So at this point we had an established brand, and a steady flow of promotional content, and all that was left to do was to keep this up until the launch day of the 30th of April.
Launch Day:
Finally, the launch day was upon us, and the tracks went live at 3pm on both YouTube and Bandcamp. Unfortunately due to unexpected issues with distribution and PRS we were unable to upload to streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music for the 30th.
The tracks on Bandcamp are on a pay what you want scheme for the downloads, and any money made from this will be sent to charity.
Here’s a link to the Bandcamp page:
https://thelastshow.bandcamp.com/releases
And a link to the YouTube Playlist:
References:
Bell, E., 2015. Verse-Chorus Structure 101 | The Song Foundry. [online] The Song Foundry. Available at: <https://thesongfoundry.com/verse-chorus-structure-101/> [Accessed 2 May 2020].
Henderson, G., 2020. LOOM :: Recording Studios Leeds / Bradford, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Halifax, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, Yorkshire. [online] Loomstudio.co.uk. Available at: <http://www.loomstudio.co.uk/> [Accessed 2 May 2020].
En.wikipedia.org. 2019. Ska Stroke. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ska_stroke> [Accessed 2 May 2020].