Just one week before the night of the live performance, we are here with a full mock performance in preparation. Laid out exactly how we plan to have things go on the night, this is a brilliant opportunity to feel the lights and get accustomed to that experience of performing live music on stage to a sizable audience.
Besides the obvious blip in “Californication”, I am quite happy with our musical competency, I thought we gave off a really solid showing and everyone executed their objectives very well.
In addition to the music, I am introducing the whole show as the first speaker, I felt like I coped with this pressure reasonably well as I didn’t feel a great amount of anxiety whilst I was stood with the microphone. I stuck to the script relatively well and hit all the important points that I needed to
Right away, “Californication” went off the rails when our guest singer Millie lost her place in the song, I can’t blame her for this as she doesn’t know the song well enough and we should’ve enlisted the help of someone who knows the song better. I listen to the singer for my cue of when to play what I need to, and other band members listen to others for theirs, we all got lost and it lead to a poor start for us.
As I am the speaking member of our band, I need to be fully on top of what I’m saying to deliver it with confidence and clarity. At times when I was speaking an audience member would speak back and I would engage with them, really this can’t happen on the night. It would distract me from the script I have in my head and lead to a slower, more broken-up speech. Course mates will be at the back so they shouldn’t engage with me during this part. I also need to make sure I am actually speaking into the microphone properly, I drifted away from it slightly and I wasn’t able to be heard, I should keep this in mind when speaking so the audience can hear me clearly.
Performance-wise, we could all do a bit more to look confident and mobile, at times it really looked like we didn’t want to be up there. We should try and keep our heads up where possible, looking into the audience, maybe even interacting with other bandmates somehow.