The songs we chose to perform at this concert were as follows, along with reasons on why we chose them:
Riptide, we chose this song because lea, our singer and guitarist, already knew the song and it was relatively simple for the rest of us to pick it up. This was good because it got us used to playing songs together and getting used to how each other play.
Where is the love, we chose to play this song because it is a song that has become synonymous with charity performances. For this reason we thought it perfect and appropriate for our charity performance.
All along the watchtower, we chose to play this song because it is an instrumentally challenging song to play but also has breakdown sections with raps in them. We thought this would suit our band and style well.
Miss Jackson, our tutor chose this song for us because we couldn’t decide on the final one to play. He chose this song for us because he knew it would be a challenge for all of us musically. It was also a song we could add a lot of personality to because it is quite easy to develop on. It was also a song that suited the rest of our repertoire very well.
seven nation army. We chose to do this song because it is very well known and everyone who played an instrument in our band already knew how to play it. We also put our own spin on it by playing it swung and making it a lot jazzier.
Whilst choosing these songs, we had to consider our target audience, which was family, friends, students, tutors. We based our songs around our target audience by not playing anything too depressing, but also nothing too extreme that would distress some of the audience. Because of this we went for mostly middle of the road type songs that a general audience would enjoy.
All of these songs work in our ensemble because they are all songs we would listen to individually and all enjoyed playing. Also, because in our band our front man is a rapper, the songs we picked had to be suitable to have a rap in them. The songs themselves weren’t overly difficult to start with which was helpful because in our band each member was of a varying skill level.
We had to change a couple of elements in each of the songs to make them work. In “where is the love” we had to add a breakdown section where all the instruments dropped out and gradually built back up to explode back into the chorus. We did this because without it, the song was too repetitive and boring.
In “all along the watchtower” we merged two versions of the song, the Jimi Hendrix version and the Ed Sheeran version. This was because the Jimi Hendrix version was technically more interesting in the instruments, but the Ed Sheeran version had a rap section. We also added a breakdown section in this song with just bass and vocals and drums building up in the background. Again, we did this to add more dynamic contrast to the song. In “miss Jackson” we had to change some parts of the lyrics as they were quite explicit and wouldn’t have been appropriate for the show we were playing. For “seven nation army” we changed the feel of the whole song by swinging it playing it more in the genre of jazz. We also added a half time section for the rapper to rap over and also a solo section for guitar bass and drums. This was necessary as the original song is too common and expected but we put an unexpected twist on it.