Due to my late arrival at Bradford College , I joined a band that already had a well established set list as well as effective parts for everyone in the ensemble. Our band consisted of 7 people, made up of 2 singers, 2 guitarists, 1 bassist , 1 pianist and finally me on the Drumkit. Due to their lack of a drummer they had previously been playing in more of an acoustic style before I joined them, therefore as I added my drum part it allowed the guitarists and bassists to play in a much more free style as I was keeping them all in time instead of them having to listen to one another to achieve this. This also meant that our overall instrumentation changed as the guitarists swapped out acoustic guitars for electric ones. During the space of 3 and a half weeks and many hours of rehearsing, we began to gel and work well together as a band. Initially I was lost on what to do as drum parts, however after many hours of practising and listening to the songs I began to develop more complex parts when needed and began to feel more confident as a drummer.
Our first band rehearsal after I joined the band took the form of a planning session in which we decided what songs we wanted to do together and the best times to rehearse as a group.
We decided that Monday afternoons and Wednesday morning/afternoon would be the best time for everyone.
During practise sessions we had regular discussions on the best way to play each of the songs and everyone contributed ideas.
Due to our slot at this gig being only 15 minutes long, we decided to narrow down the original set list to 4 songs.
This included:
Free Fallin’ – Tom Petty
Zombie – The cranberries
Use somebody – Kings of Leon
Compromise – The skins (our own composition)
Rehearsing as an individual
During this project I put many hours of time into practising songs and techniques for this gig. A key challenge I had to overcome was my lack of stamina. Due to drums being my 3rd instrument, coming into this project I was slightly rusty and as some of the songs had very fast tempos, I had to develop a better and stronger technique. After conversing with my Drum teacher about this, I began to practise the molar technique on a drum pad in order to increase my durability and my ability to play at faster tempos. Although I only had a couple of weeks to rehearse this technique, It did help me to feel more comfortable with playing all of the songs and allowed me to relax more and enjoy the performance.
The idea of learning songs for a performance was not a new concept for me, however to get 4 done to such a high standard in 3 weeks was definitely a lot more pressure than I was used to. This meant that I had to spend a long time listening to the songs we had decided on and arranging music in order to create as similar drum part as I could.
Although this process took up a lot of my individual time , I very much enjoyed it. Working with a whole new group of people was a great experience and even though it isn’t the sort of music I’d generally enjoy playing, It was great to see how the tracks developed over time and it was a fun experience establishing my own part and becoming one of the band.