Performance of ‘Someone You Loved’ by Lewis Capaldi, with Lucy (vocals), Ellis (keys) and me (guitar).
Overall, I think this first week of our group rehearsal went very well; we managed to plan the songs and what instruments we would play, and learn the first song of our set to a good standard. It didn’t take long to learn and after learning Someone You Loved, we made a start on the second song of our set, which we didn’t get round to playing this week. We also had to decide what instruments we would all be playing. I really wanted to play the guitar as I am not used to performing on this instrument, so Ellis went on keys and Lucy on vocals. However, we might swap around for certain songs, for example, Ellis on guitar and me on percussion.
Group And Individual Strengths
An extremely important strength from this week was the communication and group work from us all this week. We had never worked together as a group before, and especially with some of us being on secondary instruments, we knew we would have a challenge. The guitar is fairly new ground to me and I wouldn’t say I am the most confident on it yet, so playing guitar for this unit is a test of my skills. Before learning the songs, we decided on 4 songs we would learn. They had to be appropriate for a young audience (so no swearing or themes not suitable for a school). We also wanted to make sure the students would know some of the songs, but also whilst making sure we actually enjoy playing them, so we picked two we think they would know, and two that might be less popular among young people. This is the setlist for the performance (order subject to change):
- Someone You Loved – Lewis Capaldi
- Do I Wanna Know? – Arctic Monkeys
- Come Together – The Beatles
- Take Me To Church – Hozier
For the first song, we all learnt our parts very quickly and Ellis already knew the piano part; one of the reasons as to why we chose this to learn first. I used a Tab to learn Someone You Loved, in which we changed the song’s key a semitone up to suit Lucy’s voice, making the song’s key was now in D major. For this, I found the original tab and used a capo on the second fret instead of the first to change the key. The song overall wasn’t hard to learn and they were very simple major and minor chord shapes. It took a while for me to figure out a strumming and fingerpicking pattern I liked but once I found this, it helped me understand the structure more.
To say this was our first week practising as a group, I have still managed to introduce different advanced musical elements early on in my progress. I think that this is important to get used to using these as if you can perfect these early on whilst learning the songs initial melodies, rhythms, structure and lyrics, you can have time to focus on other details of the song or set that could be overlooked if we didn’t have enough time. I looked at using dynamics, such as going to mp in the second verse, and using a crescendo from the breakdown chorus to the final chorus, to really emphasise the change in emotion and power.
Group And Individual Improvements
Behind a drum kit, I am very confident as I am used to being there and are happy with my own abilities. However, as I am playing an instrument I am not so used to playing, especially for educational purposes and not as a hobby, I found it quite scary to play the guitar to an audience. To work on this, I need to keep practising the parts on my guitar at home and in college to excel my skills and confidence with the set, and I think this will show in my progression in the next few weeks. Regularly playing the guitar to an audience will also help as it will increase my confidence on an instrument I am not used to playing in front of people, so I will make sure to perform regularly too.
A major improvement we need to work on for the next few rehearsals would be making sure we know our parts off-by-heart so we don’t have to use chord sheets or lyrics in the final performance. Having your phone out for help or even reassurance in the final performance might look unprofessional and seem as though you are unprepared. For now, using phones is okay as we need to learn the songs, but we need to phase this out soon, preferably before the performance so we have time to practice without any music sheets. This will help iron out any mistakes we regularly make as we will be relying solely on our memory.
Targets For Next Week
-Perfect this song, making it tighter and more performance-ready.
-Start work on a second song, ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ by Arctic Monkeys.
-Decide on a third song that we can learn individually after the next rehearsal.