During the 4 weeks we’ve had in college, we’ve actually got the an exceptional amount of work stemming from written work, to physical work.
Week 1:
Week 1 was little more chaotic then the rest of the weeks because we were forming bands and assigning songs and what instruments each of us would be playing. We started off by being given “Somebody Told Me – The Killers” which I found a little difficult at first because I didn’t really know my parts so I wasn’t sure on what I played and when I came in. However, Nic helped me learn my parts and get my timing down properly, then we practiced properly as a band until I build up my confidence and now I can play no problem.
However, I do only play a little bit in this song so it would have been nice to eventually learnt something for the verses but at least it gave me a chance for a little break and my parts made up for it in “Clocks – Coldplay”
Weeks 2:
Week 2 was a lot more settled, in terms of we knew what we was doing, but it was a lot more difficult and I struggled a lot to begin with. This week, we got our second song which was “clocks” and this one, by far, challenged me the most. I struggle with the notes I was playing, timing and rhythm of the little solo parts. However, I stuck with it and just practiced a lot, whilst Nic and Joel helped me a lot too, and now I can play it almost perfect.
The only thing still left is, when I’m nervous I rush the solo parts so it can give the song a little bit of a messy feeling so I just really need to work on that for the live performance. Overall, the challenge was really good because once I finally got it, I felt more confident in playing the song but also in my ability to be able to play any song I wanted as long, as I put in the practicing hours.
Week 3:
Week 3 was when everything kind of just started to fall in place, we had completed our set list and began practicing the 2 new songs. Our first song of this week was “Moving To New York – The Wombats”, which was chosen by Nic. This song is so lively and so fun to play that it’s just really fun to listen to and perform. We, as the band, then chose to do a fourth song, “Animal – Sir Chloe” which was a very different song, in comparison to our others. This song, like The Wombats, had no keys so we did have to make a part up which meant that keys didn’t play too often in the song. However, the song is quite soothing and I think really helps break up our set a bit.
We got all our parts down and just really practiced until we felt very confident on stage. However, we still lacked some performance aspect, like moving around on stage and interacting with the audience.
Week 4:
This week was our final week as our performance was on Wednesday, this meant we had to now actually focus on the performance aspect instead of just the musical side. Nic had us doing a little miming activity where we played the original song out loud and just pretended to play our parts. This gave us an opportunity to focus entirely on how we were moving and presenting ourselves. During this week, we also swapped our set list around so it now goes 1) Somebody Told Me 2) Clocks 3) Animal 4) Moving To New York. In between each song, we play the starting to each song so we have an opportunity to introduce our next song and even interact with the audience.
Overall, the performance should go well, after we’ve got our final rehearsal in, because everyone knows their parts well and we are keeping the audience engaged with the little interludes.
It was very fun to be able to see what actually into a live performance because the public is always judging their performance but it actually takes a lot of time and effort in the, many sessions of, rehearsals.