My targets for this first project was to get used to performing in front of people and gain that confidence. I have sort of achieved that, because we weren’t able to perform in front of a live audience, there is no way I could of fully achieved it. However playing in front of my peers helped, as before this I have never played in front of any kind of audience, so that did improve my confidence. Another target of mine was just to get more experience playing with people, and that definitely happened. Even though I have played with people before, this was a different experience and it made me a better musician.
I think I did enough research. I definitely could’ve done more, but I did put effort in and I think that shows. A lot of my research wasn’t that useful to this project, however it will be in the future. A piece of research that was definitely useful was the live performance analysis I did, specifically the one I did on the Arctic Monkeys. This helped because it made me realise what a good live performance is, and what I need to do to be a good performer. The research I did on the music industry, such as the roles and the guide to the industry isn’t that useful at the future. But later in my career all this research will definitely help. Health and safety is also something that helped now and will definitely help in the future.
As a performer, I think I did an okay job. There were still areas for improvement though. As both the songs we performed weren’t picked by us, I found them not some of my favourite songs to play on the drums. Therefore my performance suffered as because they weren’t my preferred style to play. The songs were very repetitive with their drum parts, so sometimes I would switch off a little bit and not listen to the bassist and guitarist as I should, and I go out of time a little bit. My dynamics could’ve been improved, however apart from that I did a good job with my playing. My performance skills weren’t the best however, because it was my first time doing a live performance, I didn’t know what to do so I looked kind of awkward just sat there, that’s something I need to improve as I need to look confident and like a performer. I definitely improved in my live sound skills, as before this project I had no clue of anything to do with live sound. Even though my knowledge now isn’t perfect and there are a lot of gaps, I still know mostly what to do and with help would be able to set it all up.
I very much enjoyed performing during this project and it would be something I would like to pursue in the future. I would need to develop my skills as a performer, and outside of college is how I would do that. As I am in a band outside of college, whenever live performances and gigs start happening we are going to try our best to get some of them. I did enjoy the live sound aspect as well, however I will need to do some more of it before pursuing it anymore.
Something me and my band missed out on doing, is adding more songs to our set list. We didn’t add any more as we got stuck on our first song, Somebody that I used to know, and then we didn’t have time to add any more in, which is a big shame. We also haven’t done any promotion or marketing, this is a big aspect of music and is something that would’ve been cool to explore.
All in all I enjoyed this project, I enjoyed learning new things about live sound and performing, and I really enjoyed the live performance. I also enjoyed all the rehearsals leading up to the performance. I need to improve my playing and just keep becoming a better player, become a better live performer and keep improving in my live sound. For a future project, if live performances are back on, an idea I have is to do a live performance and set it all up myself.