Aeroplane:
During this first song, I was proud of my technicality throughout the song. I played the notes correctly and in time. This was helped by my use of chord charts. Using these at home and asking for a demonstration from Nic helped me to solidify what I needed to do in my head and ended well. One personal improvement I would make is my stage presence. Although I was stood in the back and fairly hidden, I feel as though in the parts where I didn’t have to play I was fidgeting and not properly preparing for when I next come in. This can be distracting to the audience and does look slightly unprofessional. In future performances, I will change this into productive behaviour because it will make the performance look better and more organized. I also liked the tone that I had set for my guitar because it sounded true to the original recording by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I was taken by surprise when Dan used a pedal in his solo and totally changed the sound of the bass. He had not done this in rehearsals.
Overall as a band, this was our strongest song. We all knew our parts and had practiced this together. Unfortunately, the person originally supposed to sing this hardly ever attended rehearsals and then did not show up on the day, which meant Rebecca had to learn the whole song in a short amount of time. Despite these problems, our performance was tidy and we had fun playing it.
Ain’t Nobody:
For this song, I started out strongly with all the right notes and remained within the key. This was particularly difficult for me at first because I am more of a soprano singer and these notes, although in my range, were out of my comfort zone. I tried to add some articulation with trills and vibrato in the verse but they fell flat and I should have sung the notes as they were in this section as that was how I had practiced it. In future performances, I will focus on learning the notes and lyrics then if time permits, I will add expressions and practice them so that during the actual performance they sound clean.
As a group, we played this song well too. With it being the first of the set that we learned, it was our most played and it helped that from the beginning many of us were already familiar with the song. One problem that we had continuously was keeping the tempo steady. Oftentimes, we would gradually speed up so that by the end we were almost playing double speed. Most of this was down to Michael (the drummer) as he has a habit of increasing tempo. I believe that in the final performance though, we kept to the tempo of the song closely.
Mr Magic (Through The Smoke):
My main role in this song was percussion. I had a tambourine and played it offbeat during the verses. However, the transition back to the verses from the choruses tended to confuse me. One positive I took from this performance is that I knew the structure very well. In future performances, I would practice more on my vocal control and holding longer notes as, during my backing vocals, I had a lot of voice breaks and wavering notes.
The band as a whole really struggled with the stops we added into this song in particular along with a few others. We certainly should have spent more time on these but this was difficult due to the number of rehearsals missed by a lot of the other classmates. This was a common downfall of many of the songs. If we were to replicate this performance, I would prefer to do it with people more dedicated and reliable.
Oye Como Va:
Yet again, I took on the role of percussionist and vocalist in this song. It was a simple cabasa played on beats 2 and 4. As this was continuous throughout the song, I found it quite easy. The only changes were that during the stops, I followed the lead of the rest of the band. I also felt that I did well to learn the Spanish lyrics.
One major struggle we all had was learning the structure of this song. It is quite long and has a lot of instrumental parts. This can be confusing without practice and concentration. It can be seen in the facial expressions we all had. When performing a more complex and heavily instrumental piece such as this in the future, I would continue to practice it more often than the easier pieces. This was a tactic we adopted as a group. It worked well and this song became one of our strongest however it did end up taking away from the quality of some other songs in the set.
Lady Marmalade:
In this song, I sang the backing vocals again. I did not practice it much and that was shown as I sang off-key and it sounds as though I am fighting with Rebecca in volume during the choruses. In addition, my vocal health was not taken care of. This resulted in an unintentional rasp in my voice. In every performance I do from now on, I plan to warm up and take precautions like drinking more water and using the steaming method.
We played this well together. In some of the areas of the song, the dynamics dropped randomly due to slight confusion. This can be off-putting.
Overall, the whole performance was good and although there were many areas for improvement, it was a huge increase in musicality from the first rehearsal.