Dealing with a heavy schedule and workload
At the beginning of my final project, I was committed to four bands being Mother Fungus, Chicago Pit Band, Zed Leppelin and Dineo’s band. This was a huge level of commitment to give to music alongside my cocktail piano job, college work and daily practice routine and became quite overwhelming. It was a hard fact to admit that I wasn’t able to hold up to these tasks for as long as I wanted as it was a very stressful situation due to the heavy workload and the mixture of genres. However, I managed to take so much from all of these experiences and create some great final products. Luckily Chicago finished quite early on in the project and after I had finished recording Dineo’s E.P , I was able to take a step back meaning that I could focus on Zed Leppelin and Mother Fungus much more. I did my best to manage my workload by prioritising what I thought was important as well as trying not to let others down. For example, Dineo needed a pianist to perform at her EP launch and therefore I arranged for one of my friends who is a talented pianist, Tom Potter to perform instead of me. It was hard to take a step back from a project that I had invested so much in, but overall it was for the greater good. By being able to focus on Mother Fungus and Zed Leppelin, I could add so much more and it give me much more energy to put into these projects.
Organising band rehearsals
Originally, I had wanted the band to have a regular practice routine. However external and internal factors of the project restricted that. Instead, to overcome this problem we practiced in smaller groups with whoever was available at that point. This meant that I had to keep the whole band constantly updated and required a very strong organisational set up. I therefore recorded a lot of parts on the piano and created guide and backing tracks for people to practice with. Shaun and Jordan were usually available on a Wednesday and this day was also quite good for Shy’yan. I believed that as long as we had a strong rhythm section and as long as Shy’yan could keep in time with us that the smaller parts such as guitar and violin effects and the horn lines could be added over the top at any time. I had a lot of sessions where it was me Ian or me and Ant and this allowed me to put across the framework that the band would sound like in order for them to feel comfortable for when we had a gig. We only had two full band performances throughout the project being one before our mock gig and one before our final performance. These practices allowed us to put all of the framework in motion and it was kind of like putting pieces together in a jigsaw in that they were all well structured and in the end fit really well. This was my approach as the band arranger and I think that it worked really well and was the only real practical approach to the situation.
Developing the sound of Mother Fungus
Managing the band
Playing a variety of genres
Here is Part 1 which I unfortunately couldn’t upload to you tube.
Final Performance – Performing without Fraser