Rehearsing with Darren
This was a really early session in which we were working on comping on my blues piece whilst Darren was soloing as well as the idea of structuring solos.
For this rehearsal with Darren, I was going through the basic rhythm of satin doll as well as comping and soloing techniques. Looking back at this a week before the performance it is quite embarrassing to watch but also nice to see how much progress I’ve made from this recording. Of course there are always improvements to make but I feel that I’ve vastly improved upon this recording.
First practice with the full band
First song Autumn leaves (00.00 – 13.00)
When watching this performance of autumn leaves with the band I feel quite proud. For me although there are potential improvements to be made with the soloing, I really enjoyed practicing in the trio and I feel like I worked well within the group to create a good sounding piece.
Second song Take the A train
For the Take the A train we were working out the general structure overall as well as the intro and outro as well as different soloing techniques.
Third song Blues
Again with the Blues we were just working out the structure of the piece and generally practicing as a band.
First band practice part 2
For the second part of this band rehearsal we were working with Veronica, to get a structure together for Fly me to the moon.
This was a really important rehearsal with Darren as ironed out a lot of pending questions I had with the pieces I was less confident on including Satin Doll which I can be seen working on my soloing technique with at the start of the video. With my improvising technique, Darren told me to simplify it and built it up over time and I really took this advice on board when improvising on all of the Jazz standards. I really improved many rhythmic features as well as my knowledge of the pieces in this rehearsal and working with Darren gave me loads of new ideas to work on. You can see at the start of Blue moon how low on confidence I am but the level hugely rises as I get further into the piece. Playing with Darren, really gave me a huge amount of knowledge and understanding in how to improve my technique and attitude to these songs so I am very much in debt to him for that. He encouraged me to listen a lot more, both to my own playing and others playing in order to gain inspiration and new ideas. Originally I found it quite embarrassing to listen back to my own playing, however when I did do this, I immediately noticed areas with which I could improve on such as timing in different songs as well as improvising in different ways rhythmically. Therefore evaluating my own playing will definitely be a technique I use as I look to improve in the future.
Thursday lunch time performance
Jazz techniques that I mention in some of these paragraphs including comping and soloing etc will be covered with examples in other tabs for this project.
Thursday lunch gig part 1 track list
Autumn leaves
Overall I think that from this set list Autumn leaves is my most established song. I thought that this performance began very well as the intro sounded very atmospheric and led into the piece well. Personally I thought that there were many great aspects to this particular performance and that as it went on I grew into the song as my confidence developed.
A few things I need to work on for this piece include my timing, which wasn’t terrible, however in some parts of the song wasn’t perfect.
Another point was my comping when Darren was playing the solo, however this is a technique I am currently working on for the rest of my songs and should improve over the final week due to my practice routine.
Finally, although I had previously created a definitive ending in practice the day before, when playing this gig in the cafe I failed to implement it correctly which created a slightly confused ending, however with some more band rehearsals I’m confident I’ll improve on these 3 areas.
Fly me to the moon (begins at 05.13)
Like autumn leaves, for this piece I believe I grew into it. The start was slightly shaky, however other than some minor timing issues throughout the piece and the need for a small improvement in my comping ability, I think that this song sounded quite good overall.
Summertime (begins 11.47)
Prior to playing this song at this gig, we had only rehearsed summertime once a couple of weeks before. Therefore to no surprise there were major timing issues as well as issues with structure and band communication.
However, after the first verse I think that we began to develop the song and iron out quite a few timing mistakes, though it was nowhere near a perfect performance. When playing, I remember thinking that my solo sounded horrendous, however listening back to it, it actually sounded okay, although there’s always room for improvement.
By the second verse I think that we’d all grown in confidence and delivered a much better performance, which hopefully we can carry forward and improve upon for the final performance.
Personally I think the main cause for struggle with this piece is the fact that as it’s so slow, you always feel the need to overcompensate by overplaying which can lead to a muddy sound. Therefore I’ll look at trying to find a balance o my amount of playing.
Thursday lunch time part 2 track list
Valerie (Begins at 00.24)
Although Valerie isn’t part of my set for my final performance. I really enjoyed playing as a four piece with a singer, so I suggested that we should do this as an extra song for a bit of fun. We have played it much better in the past however it was still a good experience.
Take the A Train (Begins at 03.49)
At the beginning of this song, my timing was slightly off and I’ll look at playing with some backing tracks for this piece. When it came to improvising, my teacher had given me some different tips for scale ideas to work with and this was my first time trying them out, as usually I’ll use a C blues scale. For Darren’s solo section, my comping could have again been to a better standard, however I have already spoken about this in previous songs. I thought that the ending for this performance was great as we were both in complete cohesion.
The days of wine and roses ( Begins at 7.50)
Prior to this performance, I had never played the days of wine and roses in any setting, other than as a soloist. Therefore for the first time, I think that it went quite well. For this song, the main thing I need to develop really is the solo, and I thought that for the most part the solo sounded quite good.
The bass solo on my part was really badly coordinated at first and again my comping could have been better.
Finally for this piece, the ending needs some work. Overall for this song I was very happy with the result.
Georgia (Beginning 12.25)
For this final piece I was absolutely shattered when playing it, so my playing increasingly deteriorated over time. Therefore for this song I’m not going to criticise myself too much. However I believe that I played the start of this piece very well and that gives me hope for playing it when it features in my final performance.
Lunchtime gig 2
At the start of this performance I was playing with part of the piano off, which led to some of the bottom keys jamming, therefore my original chord playing is quite bad in my left hand on some of the earlier songs. However I addressed this issue after a couple of songs. This issue prepared me for dealing with any minor setbacks I would face when playing my final performance.
Playing this lunchtime performance allowed me to improve my playing skills with a bassist. We went through most of my final set and this allowed me to experiment with new ideas and get used to playing in front of a live audience which, as these live rehearsals went on, grew less and less of a worry in my mind.
Playing with Nic on bass gave me the experience of playing with a different feel as every musician has a different technique. This helped to build my collaborative experience and communication skills as although I had worked with Nic lots before, I had never played with him. This forced me to adapt which I think I did really well in this situation.
Mock performance
The mock performance was probably, for me, the most important experience out of all of the rehearsals and practice gigs we did. To summarize this performance ( I will analyse my performance after this summary ) we played incredibly well and got a great response back from the people viewing us. This gave me a huge boost in confidence and gave me a really positive mentality for my final performance which was later on that day. Overall it was a great experience and a great preparation for delivering my final project.
The biggest criticism I had with my performance was having my back to the audience, this was something I noted and rectified when it came to my final performance. I spoke about this in my research when I looked at EST’s performance techniques as a band, as I feel that by having your back to the audience you exclude them from creating a potentially special atmosphere. It also meant that I really struggled to communicate with the band, however thankfully I was very strong on all 3 songs so this didn’t play a major role. Autumn leaves sounds excellent in this performance which made me feel very proud as it was the first jazz song I ever learnt meaning it was one of my favorites in my repertoire. The beginning of Fly me to the moon was slightly out of time due to my poor skills at counting in which is definitely a skill I need to work on in the future. At times in my Fly me to the moon solo, I was slightly hesitant, which is an area that my teacher Nic picked up on and during the feedback told me to play with a bit more courage when trying out ideas which is advice I definitely took on board. When looking back on my audience interaction via the microphone, I was mumbling quite a bit which was an area that was picked up on by my peers during my feedback. Therefore when doing my final performance I tried to speak clearly and engage with the audience on a personal level. My seating position in my final performance was a huge aid to this. In the blues piece I think my comping was slightly out of time in some parts of the bass solo, the ending also wasn’t completely perfect which was something we talked about as a band before the final performance and fully ironed out which was great.
Overall for this mock, I think that we delivered an excellent performance. The sound quality was a high standard and I was impressed to watch how composed I was when playing in the trio. Being given the feedback allowed me to improve on some slight areas of doubt in order to create a very successful final performance.
Summary
Playing in all these different settings and on different pianos and keyboards allowed me to feel much more comfortable when playing my final performance. The cafe gigs and mock performance allowed me to practice playing in front of an audience which boosted my confidence over the project. By playing with different pianos, I could easily adapt to the feel of the piano at the Delius which was helped by it being such a great piano to play. Playing in different settings allowed for me to prepare and react to different events such as potential background noise and reacting to making mistakes when playing. Overall, I feel that as a band we could’ve rehearsed more, however when we did rehearse we were incredibly productive and as individuals we were all very dedicated to the project.