Overall, I think this week was our best week for preparing for the performance. Our mock performance will be next week, meaning we will be well prepared for this, and therefore our final performance. As well this week, Lucy and I performed ‘Be My Mistake’ by The 1975, we we both really like the song and have been learning it together so we could perform it, but just as an extra song as it is not involved in our actual setlist. The cafe performance shows all of our song minus ‘Take Me To Church’, but we learnt that after this performance in the lesson after and it has quickly become my favourite song to play.
Group And Individual Strengths
During the cafe performance, we played ‘Come Together’ which is a very popular song. Because it is so popular, people can sing and clap along to it, which is exactly what the audience did here which was really enjoyable as we weren’t expecting it. It added another layer to our performance and made us all as a group feel more confident that we were playing the song well as the clapping along shows that the crowd like us and the song. I love when the audience gets involved with your set as it increases the relationship you have with your crowd and helps to make long-lasting fans.
Another impressive factor of the cafe performance is that we managed to perform 3/4 of our songs back to back in a set with minimal issues or mistakes during and between the songs. Being able to do this weeks before the performance is important as it will improve the flow of the set and make us look more professional when on camera. Adding our final song will be fairly easy because as soon as we learn it we will add it wherever we feel right in the set, making sure it fits with what instrument Ellis playing as he tends to swap around from guitar to keyboard.
Group And Individual Strengths
Although Lucy and I have learnt ‘Take Me To Church’ very quickly and are happy performing it, we need to still figure out as a group how Ellis can join in with this song. We all decided that another guitar or piano would sound strange and wrong, and the vocals need to be the most powerful as it is such a meaningful and lyrically interesting piece. I think having some percussion would sound great, just a tambourine or shaker on the downbeats. However, the verses are in 3/4 time signature, with the pre-choruses, choruses and bridge being in common time. In the original version, a snare plays in the second verse on the second beat, which could sound great throughout the whole cover but using a different form of percussion.
We have moved away from using chord sheets for the rest of the songs, however now that we have learnt our final song, I used an online chord sheet for this as I wasn’t confident playing it without it yet and had only just learnt it in that lesson. For the performance, I will make sure i have memorised the piece and played it enough times through that I don’t need to use a chord sheet anymore. As well as this, Lucy needs to move away from using lyric sheets during the performances, but this will come with time and hopefully she will be confident winging the songs without lyrics in front of her for the final performance.
Before playing ‘Someone You loved’, I struggled with starting it as I couldn’t remember what key the song was in, which determined where I would put my capo on the fretboard. This took a long time to resolve and made the group look a little unprofessional and unprepared on my behalf. The time between the two songs was well over a minute, which because of this mistake and I need to cut down on this by remembering where to put my capo next time. This could easily be shortened to under 10 seconds once I get this right. Eventually, I just told them to start the song and that I would join in soon. Soon after Ellis started playing I figured out the key by ear and put my capo in the right place before my guitar part started.
Targets for The Final Performance
-Perform all of our songs back to back as a set.
-Don’t use lyric sheets or chord sheets as help throughout the set
-Look all-round confident and play professionally in the performance.