Overall, I think our rehearsals this week went extremely well. We managed to play the whole set back to back, refined our final song and worked on audience participation and engagement. As for the mock performance, they had an issue uploading the video so it couldn’t get the whole set, but we did play it all with minimal issues and o a small audience of the other music students. I really enjoyed the mock performance as it felt almost like the real thing with the lighting and sound, and it was a good experience for all of us before the performance next week.
Group And Individual Strengths
A major part of this week was ensuring that at least one of our songs had some crowd interaction in it so we could make our set more fun and engaging for the audience. As we were the last band playing and our last song was Neven Nation Army, we decided to turn this into a longer and more fun song, where the crowd would sing the main melody during the choruses. I think this was a great idea as the crowd will already know the melody, but just not the way we’ve spun the song in terms of genre and feel. When we introduce them to the song, they will anticipate it to be like the original version, but when we all come in as a full band for the verse, it will sound totally different to their expectations. It is a good idea to also have the break before the final chorus whilst the song is still playing quietly, as the crowd are more likely to listen to what Lucy is saying compared to if she started saying that before or after the song.
This was the first time this week that we had played the set back-to-back, with no interruptions or abnormally long pauses in between songs. The time of the set takes up a good 15 minutes. The transitions between the songs were smooth for the most part, but we had some trouble hearing ourselves through the monitors which were sorted out eventually. Niall and Tia’s instrument swap was great; I didn’t even notice it’d happened and whilst they were swapping, Millie entertained the crowd by asking them how they were, introducing the next song, introducing the band members etc.
For myself, I thought my drum solo sounded very good to say I had never been given an opportunity to do something like this before. I have soloed in the middle of a song, but never for the ending part of the whole evening. Being given this was very special to me but a bit nerve-racking, so I worked through this week to work out what I wanted to play and how long it should be. It still needs work, but to say this was my first time doing this, people seemed to enjoy it and I’m sure it will go down well for the final performance.
Group And Individual Improvements
The set in general could sound tighter, as we tend to tall out of time a little bit during Love On The Brain during the stabs and the guitar hits on the 4 of every bar. To help this, we simply need to practice the song more and practice the song alone at home to the original song or even a metronome, so people can hit the right notes at exactly the same time. As well as Love On The brain, we should work on Seven Nation Army a little more. This includes everyone remembering the pre/post choruses where we build up, and the triplet stabs before the start of the next verse. These stabs are important to indicate a new area of the song and should be extremely loud and powerful. As well as this, we all must be together for the final beat of the song and this should stand out hugely as people will remember this part the most. Everyone should hit that final note and ring it out until I stop playing on the crashes, and then do a closing hit after I finish my drum solo, and stop on time for the drum fill, indicating the end.
As a drummer, I struggle with crowd interaction and always feel like I should be moving around more, which is very hard given that I am sat down and have to keep very focussed on all four of my limbs at the same time! However, as a band, I think we could improve this part of our set, as everyone just seems to be glued to their instrument. All of the jack cables and XLRs have give on them so people can walk around the stage and communicate with other band members. Even just turning to another band member and smiling gives it that human touch, indicating that we are enjoying playing just as much as the audience is enjoying listening. If someone was confident enough, they could even move closer to the audience or walk around the middle walkway between the seats and focus on certain audience members to give the viewers something more interesting to look at, making the show seem more personal and exciting to them.
A huge improvement for me to make for next week would be the drum solo. I need to carry on working on this to ensure I don’t fumble or make a mistake during the actual one on the night. I plan to keep the solo mostly improvised as I feel like I work well with improvisation and would prefer this over creating a piece of sheet music or structure to follow for it. However, I do want to have a general idea of what I want to play and make it sound tighter overall. The solo doesn’t have to just be playing fast singles, I could include different rudiments, grooves, syncopated accents and more to make it impressive. I however like the idea of using a ritardando for the end as it indicates the end of the solo.
Targets For Next Week
-Play through the whole set again on Monday morning to ensure everything is fine before Wednesday.
-Carry on working on the drum solo.
-Successfully perform our set on Wednesday for the final performance.