Introduction
Prior to the beginning of my final project, I had met a couple of musicians who were interested in playing and composing the same style of music as myself. In our first session as a band, we explored a few of my compositions as well as one of there’s that they had been working on. It went extremely well and we met up a second time to continue experimenting with our ideas. Our 3rd rehearsal is the first one that I will be documenting on this page and I will continue to document the rest of our rehearsals throughout the project. We began the project with 3 of us in the band, featuring myself on keyboard, Fraser on guitar and Shaun on drums, however there will be a few more musicians added throughout as we look to refine our original sound. I will include a range of recordings taken from the rehearsals as well as a brief summary and evaluation. In our band rehearsals, we will also have a brief meeting discussing the aims and objectives of the band as well as presenting the opportunity for the band members to put forward their opinions so as t discuss them and move forward.
03/03/2019 – First Rehearsal with Cain on bass
Although we were creating a very interesting sound with 3 of us in the band, we wanted to add the dynamic of a bassist into the band in order to allow us to go down the funky route.
In our first rehearsal with Cain on bass, we showed him the chord progressions of a few of our songs. Our attitude in the band is very supportive and welcoming which is something that I am very proud of and Cain grew into the rehearsal more and more as it went on. We played a range of my compositions including a new dub idea that I had come up with earlier that week, which resulted in a 30 minute jam which was very exciting to be a part of.
Band meeting and aims and objectives
In our band meeting we discussed the previous gig at South square and we all seemed very happy with the level of performance that we delivered. There was a large amount of excitement at the tracks that we had run in our rehearsal , however we all felt that we needed to work out a more detailed structure in order to be able to communicate better and deliver stronger solos. Me, Fraser and Shaun all agreed that Cain would be a great addition to the band and therefore we added him to the band chat.
10/03/2019 – First Rehearsal with Shy’yan
On the 10th march, I invited Shy’yan to come down and to try to lay down some vocals on some of the tracks that we had composed. We mainly focused on the dub song as well as a funk idea which I thought that we could potentially mash up with feel good inc by Gorillaz. Shy’yan came up with a few lines of vocals for the chorus part of the dub song and we began to develop a few structural ideas for that song.
Whilst experimenting with a few different sounds on my keyboard, I discovered a vintage electronic piano sound that sounded very similar to style of a Rhodes piano. Hugely excited by the new sound coming out of my amp, I began to play around with a 2-5-1 chord progression which used a diminished C sharp chord to bridge the gap between the C and the D. We spent a while jamming around these chords with Shy’yan doing some scatting and everyone seemed a lot more intrigued at the opportunities that a singer could bring to the band. We also jammed round another chord progression that I developed in that practice and we’ll see if that comes to anything over the course of the project.
The discovery of the Rhodes piano sound could have a huge impact on our bands overall sound and it is something I am very excited to explore in the future.
Band meeting and aims and objectives
In our band meeting we discussed a few covers that we might want to attempt with Shy’yan on vocals these included the cover of Afro Blue by Robert Glasper and Erykah Badu as well as Bad Blood by NAO. WE hoped that by doing a couple of covers with lyrics that Shy’yan would feel more comfortable in singing with the band and that we could push the bands sound forward.
14/03/2019 – Me and Ian
My first rehearsal with Ian was one pure anticipation and excitement, Ian is a musician I have long admired especially with his skills on violin and I was really interested to see what sort of music we could create together. The session was basically a jam session around some of my compositions that I had come up with on the piano, at the time I had been listening to a lot of Olafur Arnald’s and therefore it was really exciting to hear some similarities in the style that we were playing to him. We played through two of my ideas which are yet to be named as well as Noah’s Arc and immersion. The violin beautifully complimented the ideas that I had on piano and gave the pieces a fuller sound. I was interested to see what some of these songs would sound like with the full band, however some of them will definitely be better as a duo. Ian also seemed very excited about the potential and I updated him on the band’s developments. Ian also plays trumpet which could be a big help on some of tracks going forward.
17/03/2019 – Mother Fungus
The 17th March was a rehearsal that ended up featuring me , Shaun and Fraser and was more of a very loose jam and meeting than a proper rehearsal. It was interesting for us just to get into a room again and explore some ideas as well as talk about the bands direction. We established that we wanted to turn some our good ideas into proper arranged songs and therefore , I set my homework as starting to structure them into some sort of format.
27/03/2019 – Me , Ian and Shaun
Our session on Wednesday 27th was very progressive in that me, Ian and Shaun got through a lot of material and had a good humoured band rehearsal. Me and Ian also managed to work on a range of potential horn lines for a couple of songs.
31/03/2019 – Me and Ian
Originally, the 31st was meant to be a full band meeting however due to the health of Fraser and Shaun and everyone else being unavailable, me and Ian were left to do some music of our own. An exciting addition was that Ian had brought his delay and effect pedals which meant that we could experiment a lot more with our sound as a duo. At this point however, I was slightly worried with certain members of the bands commitment to rehearsals and therefore decided to look at resolving this over the coming week. At this point in the process, I had gotten to the point where four songs were completed which was very exciting overall. These consisted of De Ja Vu,Immersion, Noah’s Arc and Run and hide which musically was almost complete and just needed some vocals for the verse.
03/04/2019 – Me, Shaun and Jordan
In the week beginning the 1st April, we decided to look for a new bassist who could commit to the band, as Cain had too much on to practice frequently. The man that replaced him was Mr Jordan Slinn and with a full band rehearsal looming on Friday 5th April, we decided to have a rehearsal featuring me, shaun and Jordan so as to introduce him to some of the tracks that we had been writing.
At this point the full band songs that I had written and arranged included run and hide as well stay easy and therefore we spent most of the session working on these as well as a cover of it runs through me by Tom Misch.
We practiced for about two hours and got a lot of stuff done , Jordan is normally a guitarist , however he got really into playing the bass which was great to see. Unfortunately my footage of stay easy was terrible, however here are two short clips of run and hide and it runs through me.
05/04/2019 – Full band except Ian
On Friday 5th April, we had almost a full band rehearsal which meant that we could work through the track with both of the singers cues. By this time, I had written lyrics for three full song as well as a couple of instrumental tracks. I had also arranged certain musical parts for some of the songs such as the beautiful escape which features a dual horn line in the verse. As Ian wasn’t there, we mainly focused on the structure overall of the songs but the horn part should slot in just fine. We made so much progress in this session which was really exciting and worked on certain areas of the song such as dynamics and solos. Unfortunately , I didn’t get to record too much or the rehearsal as my voice recordings would have sounded awful however I got a couple of videos which I will post below.
24/04/2019
On Wednesday 24th April, we had a last minute band rehearsal before our mock gig on the 26th April. Unfortunately Shy’yan was ill for this session and Ian and Fraser couldn’t make it due to work commitments. However we still got a lot of work done and I brought down my saxophone in order to attempt soloing over a couple of songs and to show the rest of the band what it would sound like with the saxophone added to the mix.
Here is the recording of our full play through and discussion about our song run and hide. Unfortunately the camera flips over towards the end as it was rested on my amp and fell over due to the vibrations. However it does provide a good insight to our structuring of the solo section.
Thursday 9th May – Me and Ian
Thursday’s rehearsal was a great opportunity for me to brief Ian on what was happening in the band as well as the parts that I felt he should play in the final performance. During this rehearsal, me and Ian worked on some horn parts that I had created for run and hide as well as de ja vu, stay easy and Afro blue. in Afro Blue, I decided that it would be really cool if Ian could double up the melodic verse line with myself. This worked really well and overall it was a very productive session.
Sunday 12th May – Full band Rehearsal
In our final full band rehearsal, before the final performance we ran through four out of the five tracks, with the track that we didn’t run through being mine and Ian’s. Let me go or take me with you was one that due to band popularity, I had chosen over stay easy. I believed that if we improved the rhythmic feel of the song and gave it different areas of contrast, then we could turn it into a great final piece. This rehearsal was the first time in which I thought we had reached that point and I was really excited to play it at the gig.
Run and hide features the new added horn lines, which aren’t hugely filling but are something that add a bit more to the verse overall in my opinion.
Band Meeting
In this band meeting we went over a few important areas such as our dress code for the gig, the south square gig invitation and preparations for my final performance on Thursday. After a debate, we decided to wear casual clothes for this gig as my idea of wearing glitter wasn’t well received by everyone in the group. Jordan and Shaun also informed me that they weren’t able to play the South Square gig and therefore me and Ian agreed to take that on under the name Baby Fungus.