For our first rehearsal we were able to learn and play the main chord structure and were able to play mostly in time. This is because we all listened to the song in detail to be able to know the general structure, tempo and rhythm. However, many mistakes were made and we needed guidance from our tutor. We made mistakes on the changing chord structure at the end of the chorus and couldn’t get further than that. Our singer at that point also couldn’t sing the verse or chorus in time and so didn’t end up singing in this rehearsal, which meant she went to practice on her own. Apart from everything we could improve on, the first rehearsal went fairly okay for a first rehearsal and made us realise what we needed to work on as a group and individually.
Our second rehearsal was visibly better and more improved than our first rehearsal. After a day off practicing and listening to the song on our own, we came back and were able to play through to the guitar solo with only a few minor mistakes. Our singer was also now able to sing the song in time with us after practicing on her own and so the song ended up coming together, making it sound better. However, after the solo we ended up coming out of time. This is because the solo ended a bar early and we all ended up messing up and stopping. A mistake we made after this was that we ended up practicing the whole song to try perfect the ended rather than just practicing the ended.
Our performance went well for a first performance and we all did our best to not let the pressure of performing in front of the people get to us. The first half of the song (up until the solo) went extremely well with little mistakes. However because we did not practice only the solo to end after our second rehearsal we still ended up messing up at the end. We came up with a communication method to help with the end of the song which we didn’t get much practice on, but the nodding got confusing and so we ended up messing up. We could have prevented this if we made it extremely clear what our nodding meant. Overall I think our bands first performance went well and sounded good, I am looking forwards for it to sound even better.
Our third rehearsal went extremely well compared to our last rehearsals. We can now get all the way through the song, getting through the guitar solo and managing not to mess up afterwards. We also fully clarified what to do at the end of the song, saying that after our singer finished her last line we would play through the chords twice and end on the starting chord to make it sound finished. What we could improve on next would be to maybe change the key to fit the singer better and also work on getting the timing absolutely perfect.
For our rehearsals at this point, we were only trying the perfect the song. I personally think that instead of doing this we should have been practicing our 2nd song because we didn’t know it as much. I also feel that these 3 rehearsals didn’t go as well as the others as my guitar was not in tune, so it made the song sound wrong. I also didn’t have access to the acoustic guitar so I had to improvise and use an electric.
On the plus side we are now able to complete the whole song now and have it sound reasonably good with the equipment we had. The singer now knows all of her parts and we can now all finish the song at the same time. In the next rehearsals I’m hoping to work on our 2nd song, Island in the sun by Weezer.
Doing this we discussed what we needed to improve as a band. We came up with working on the structure for our 2nd song, Island in the sun and also working on our communication. For structure, we focused on playing all the way through the song to be able to remember when the changes happen. It was difficult as our singer felt ill and could not sing. For communication, we had to try listen to each other as there was lots of playing/talking over one another so we ended up not getting much done.
This was the first time we ran all the way through the song, we needed help from our tutor to know when we needed to change into the next part of the structure and also made many mistakes. For example the guitar solo was played two bars too early and the ending was not in sink at all. To improve we will practice the solo and the end to make sure we can fully play it and all be in time. For a first run through however, i think we did okay as we were able to play all the parts, just sometimes at the wrong time.
Our second rehearsal of Island in the sun went much better than our first. This is because we were able to go all the way through the song without needing help from our tutor for the structure of the song. The tone from chorus to verse also sounded much better as we had an overdrive pedal to switch the tone, however needs to be worked on getting the timing right to switch tones. We also need to work on the ending of the song as it is out of time and messy. To work on these things we will only practice verse to chorus and the ending of the song so that we can get better. For me to personally improve i need to work on the chords so that it sounds cleaner, to do this i will practice on my own switching between chords.
For this rehearsal we were in the room that we will perform in, in order for the second years to get the sound checked and right. Since it was our first time playing in this room we made many mistakes as it was much harder to hear ourselves. For example, the singer did not come in on time for the built up part as he could not hear when the instruments dropped down. This happened often, during the solo I messed up because I couldn’t hear what I was playing. There’s not much we could try and improve on that since it was not our faults, but since it was our first run through we will work on structure and timings to try and perfect it. I personally will work on getting the solo down by practicing with a backing track by myself.
Like 505, it was still hard to hear our selves play our instruments making it difficult for us to play well. For example, the guitar solo was extremely quiet and put us off slightly. As a band theres not much else we need to work on for this song, just need to perfect the slight imperfections we make. Our singer also still reads the lyrics off of her phone so a personal improvement she needs to make is learning the lyrics off by heart. This will make the whole band improve as we will have more stage presence and not loose where we are in the song, meaning less communication is needed to help each other.
At this point the volume of our instruments were more clear but still barely hearable, but we had learnt slightly how to communicate with each other to be able to make is easy for each other. There were plenty of mistake made in this run through, for example I and the bassist went into the chorus too early because the drummer changed his drumming patterns slightly, putting us off. To avoid this we will work more on the structure to be able to know exactly when to change. The singing arrangement also keeps changing last minute so the two singers didn’t know who was singing which parts, making it sound out of key. To improve on this we will have a clear discussion of who is singing what.
Being able to hear ourselves helped a lot better with how we payed, but having little practice before this meant we still made mistakes. We still need to work on the structure of the song since the solo came in too early and made many mistakes throughout the solo. I personally need to work on getting the fluency of my solo parts down so that I can become more confident and be heard better. However I still think part of that is because of how it was still hard to hear ourselves play. For the whole band to improve I feel as though we need to just stick with Aimee as out main singer because hers and Luke’s voice clash, we will talk about this in a band meeting to try and improve the sound of the song.
This was our first performance playing all of the songs in a set ad in front of a group of people. This was a chance to get used to the stage and how it will feel on the actual day. However many mistakes were made during this. At the start, when we first came on stage, there were technical difficulties such as tuning problems and the pedal i was using didn’t work. This meant time was wasted, if this happened on the real night of the gig, people would get bored even before the music has started. During the performance, a very clear mistake was that Ollie’s guitar was very out of tune making the whole song sound wrong, to prevent this on the actual day of the gig we will tune our guitars before hand and also have a guitar tuner on the guitars in case of a quick tuning needed in between songs. There was also a time where our drummer went out of time with himself causing the band to stumble slightly. Another main thing that we need to work on is how loud the singer is, she needs to become louder and more confident to keep the crowd engaged throughout. We also need to work on stage presence by moving about slightly, dancing and look like we are having fun, we will work on this over the next week to enhance crowd engagement. Another thing would be for our last song, 505, the tone of my guitar was wrong. There was too much gain on when i needed a crunchier tone to get the sound right. To get this right on the actual day i will mess about with the settings on the amp to try get the right sound. Apart from those things, our performance went well and i personally enjoyed playing and listening to other people, i look forward to our actual gig.
The main performance tip for us to work on is calming our nerves and enhancing stage presence. As i’ve said before, we need to look more lively and fun when we are on stage. This is really important as we want to keep the audience as engaged as we can. We will work on bringing our confidence up to be able to feel right when we perform on stage. A lively band makes a lively crowd which would be really helpful in our case since we are the first ones on set. This means that if we are lively when we perform, it will be easier for other bands to relax but also gets the crowd relaxed early on. That is why we will be working on stage presence for the next week, along with perfecting that small imperfections in our playing. Over the next week we will also start thinking about how we will dress for the gig, wether it be casual or eccentric. I think we did an alright job of communicating with the audience which would (in the real show) keep people interested.
Topping and tailing is where you practice the start and ends of songs so you are able to know how to change to the next song. At the start when we first tried topping and tailing we made mistakes as we didn’t know what we didn’t know what we were doing, aka, not knowing how we are going to start the song but also how we were going to switch to the next song. This was difficult between Where is my mind? and Island in the sun as i had to put a capo on my guitar, so to help with that, Aimee tells the crowd what we are playing next, giving me 10-20 seconds to put the capo on. Our practice of topping and tailing meant we didn’t totally fail in the mock performance which is good because it made sure that we will know what it is like on the actual day of the performance.
This was our first rehearsal after our mock performance, and after looking back we all knew we had to work on stage presence and bringing the music to life, that was our main focus in this rehearsal. It is clearly visible that we have more stage presence in this rehearsal as we moved and danced about a lot more. This is something we must do at the actual performance as it keeps the crowd engaged and they will enjoy it more. However, because we were focusing on stage presence, we made mistakes whilst we played. For example, our singer forgot the lyrics to 505 and also switched the verses around. Also between where is my mind? and island in the sun i was not ready and so we ended up messing up at the beginning. To avoid this on the actual day we will all make sure we have everything we need, guitars in tune and capos easily reachable so that we don’t keep the audience waiting. We will also make sure we all know our parts off by heart all the way through so playing the songs will be just muscle memory by now.