For this project I had to compose a song with my band. I composed my respected instrument parts and my band members did the same with theirs. We then put what we had together to make our track.
Research
For this project I researched various things. I looked into live studio sessions of rappers to see how the keyboard players went about playing their parts in bands. I found one session of British grime artist ‘Stormzy’ performing in the BBC radio one live lounge. I instantly looked for any pianists or keyboard players to listen out for how they proceeded to perform their parts in the live performance of a rap song. This was relevant because I had to do the same thing in 2 weeks time after that moment. So seeing how other pianists played in live situations with bands for a rap artist really helped and gave me ideas to implement into my own performance. I then looked into hip-hop beats that are famous for their piano melodies. Things like old West Coast Rap beats from Dr Dre were the type of things I looked into. I eventually realised the sound I wanted was a clav, which I heard in ‘forgot about Dre’ and in ‘the next episode’ both of which are very popular tracks by Dr Dre.
Planning And Production
For this project I gave myself a week and a half to come up with an original keyboard part for my band to play in our original song, which we were also working on as a group at the time. I feel like I managed my time well because I ended up having my part fully written within 5 days, which meant I had met my criteria of no more than a week and a half. I feel like my production was very satisfactory because it sounded really great with my band mates playing alongside it with their respected productions. We received very positive feedback from the crowd who came to listen to us perform it live at the Underground in Bradford.
Practical Skills And Presentation
This Video is a clip of my bands live performance at the Underground in Bradford on the 29Th. November 2017. We were performing our composition from our second project and as you can see it went pretty well. My role in the band was keys. I played on a clavinet setting with my keyboard to play the melody of the track. We went for a West Coast classic Hip-Hop sound and so that is the reason the for clavinet sound.
Evaluation And Reflection
My Composition for my band’s song is well produced; I believe it has some positive attributes and some negative ones however. Firstly I’ll talk about the positives. My composition is a Clav instrument played on the keyboard, which takes on the idea of a West Coast, classic Hip Hop type of sound. It was very much inspired by Dr. Dre who played similar style instrumentals on tracks such as Forgot About Dre and The Next Episode. I went with this sound, as I didn’t think many others would go with a rap song if played in a live band. I believe the parts are very original and are not copied from other songs. My parts are very well structured and are very fitting to the track. However, some things aren’t too amazing about my composition. For example, my parts are well composed but there isn’t many parts within the track that are different because it’s a Hip-hop track, meaning there isn’t much change within all of the parts of the instrumental. I think if I was to go back and change anything then I would keep what I already have and just add more because what I have already is really well composed and sounds great. Adding more to it would make it sound denser and like it was composed and produced at a higher and more professional level.