For the performance aspect of this project, the funk band, that had recently been put together by the other music students in my year, were missing a guitarist after Dan dropped out of the band. They asked if I wanted to take his place for the performance at our event, and naturally I said yes as I’d learnt guitar previously with a guitarist who played mostly funk, and I’d played in the funk band last year run by John, one of our tutors.
The first thing that we had to do was decide on a name, and a set list, based on who our audience would be and what our chosen genre was. We very quickly decided on using the name ‘The Funky Ones’ without much hesitation after a quick brainstorm for band names. We then went on to deciding on a set list, making sure that all the songs were well known and slotted into the funk genre, whilst not being too difficult to learn within the time frame we had. The songs we decided on were;
- Superstition – Stevie Wonder
- Young Hearts Run Free – Candi Station
- Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars
- Rehab – Amy Whinehouse
- RESPECT – Aretha Frankiln
After deciding these songs however we decided to drop RESPECT as we thought wed struggle to get all the songs rehearsed and learnt, and Leah said she was struggling to hit the higher notes as powerfully as she wanted to. We chose the songs that we did because they were well known, they weren’t too difficult to learn, they were very upbeat, which stuck to the mood and atmosphere we were wanting to put across with our performance. The final set list we decided on, in running order, is;
- Young Hearts Run Free – Candi Station
- Superstition – Stevie Wonder
- Rehab – Amy Whinehouse
- Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars
We chose this running order because we were confident about playing Young Hearts Run Free first as it was the simplest of all the songs for the band as a whole, and Rehab and Uptown Funk were the most upbeat songs, and because our band was the last to perform, we wanted to close the event on an enjoyable tone.
I sat with Nic and Sonny during rehearsals to figure out the parts I would be playing, I wrote down the chords I would have to learn and scanned them:
Unfortunately, due to personal issues and being ill, I missed out quite a lot of band rehearsals. This has meant that I’ve had to learn my parts alone and hope that I could perform my parts alongside the band. Ideally I would’ve been to every rehearsal with the band, that would’ve improved my confidence on stage during the mock and final performance.
During this project, an amazing opportunity arose to go and see the Radio 1 Academy show at Leeds Beckett University. This allowed us to get some incredibly important insight on live performance from some of the biggest names in music, including Greg James, the Radio 1 Breakfast Show presenter, and his team, Lewis Capaldi, and more. The biggest thing I learnt whilst at this event was that confidence and appearance is everything when it comes to performing, if you aren’t confident, and methodical then you can’t perform to the best of your abilities, and if you don’t know exactly how you want to present yourself, then you you won’t be able to creatively guide and shape your performance to represent yourself as a performer.
We ran through the whole performance at college during the mock performance. I believe that, as a band, we performed incredibly well, however, my personal performance could have been greatly improved. As id missed a lot of rehearsals, I wasn’t entirely confident on my parts, also, I found that my stage presence was lacking, I didn’t look as confident as the rest of the band and I felt that I stood out because I didn’t put across the same tone that the rest of the band was. If i had been to the miming session with the rest of the band then I would’ve been more confident and structured about my stage presence. To improve for the final performance, I knew I need to practise more and try to get to as many rehearsals as I could to feel more confident and be able to play my parts much more confidently. I also needed to work over my stage presence to try and fit in with the rest of the band and help represent the band properly.
(Mock Performance Video)
Before the final performance I made sure that I practised my parts much more and I even stood in front of my mirror with my guitar and tried to push myself to look up where the crowd would be, stand up straighter and move more, giving me a much more confident appearance and representing the upbeat tone of funk as a genre, and our band, properly.
During the final performance, I had not anticipated the venue being as full as it was, and this rocked my nerves a lot. However, I feel that I definitely improved my stage presence since the mock performance by standing up, moving more, and looking up at the crowd much more often than usual, and I believe that I managed to make myself appear much more confident than I was. Even though I improved my stage presence, I do not however believe that I improved on my accuracy whilst playing, even though I had practised much more in between the mock performance and the final performance, my nerves got the better of me and I found myself playing when I wasn’t supposed to during Uptown Funk, and even hitting the wrong chords in Young Hearts Run Free. The more mistakes I made the more I found myself making mistakes. However, I do believe that I did the best I could to hide the mistakes I made and move on as fast as I could to ensure that the performance sounded as good as I could. In the future, I will definitely bear in mind how not looking after my own health and personal life properly can seriously affect the amount of time I can put into ensuring that my performance goes as well as possible, I definitely suffered from the amount of time that I lost due to days being being off ill or from not properly organising my own work outside of college. I will also put much more effort into improving my stage performance and confidence from now on as I can see how important they are to how you represent yourself, and how important representing yourself properly to your target audience is.
Final Performance Videos:
http://estream.bradfordcollege.ac.uk/View.aspx?id=16790~5k~cAWxC7H0Ul
http://estream.bradfordcollege.ac.uk/View.aspx?id=16791~5l~EnkXm6Snrb