This was our first attempt at making a song. As Ollie said at the start of the video, we actually had a different chord progression before this but scrapped it because no one liked it and thought we could push ourselves further. I personally like this chord progression and it is jazzy and fun to play, i also think the melody is nice to listen to and makes the mood feel lighter. However, a few of our band mates don’t like this chord progression as they wanted to make something heavier. In the next session we will have to thoroughly discuss whether we want to keep this chord progression or change it again to fit everyones standards.
This band was a band that created music that was similar as to what we were going for. It is a calm type of music with a piano melody with an acoustic guitar as accompaniment.
New Idea
This video basically explains as to why we changed our song. We wanted to go slightly heavier and the song we were making was too chill for some people in the band. he bassist Robert had created a rhythmic melody over the weekend with guitar and bass and we decided that we would use that for our song. It however isnt much heavier than the last one but everyone likes it.
This video explains what we were going to work on in the session, which was structure of the song Robert made and to piece all the parts together.
this was the first rehearsal of our new song. Robert taught me and Ollie the guitar and bass parts to the song, and after getting the hang of it we started to piece it all together even adding marcel on the cajon. I think for a first rehearsal it went fairly well but definitely needed to work on timings and structure. To do this we will practice it more as a whole group.
I was not here for the second rehearsal, when i was gone they worked on the structure more. The timing was much better in this rehearsal however we need to work on the rest of the structure. I also feel like the guitar could sound a lot better with different effects instead of being that clean. We will work on getting the sound and structure right in the next few sessions.
We had a few minutes to discuss and think about what we needed to work on, as a group and individually. This helped as it meant we could plan what we were going to do in the session. For me that was nailing the guitar part and learning any new bits that the other had added whilst i was off the week before. For the group as a whole was still to work on structure. We then went on the rehearse different structures until we found one we liked.
At this point we all new our parts except for Luke on the keys. We still have yet to create lyrics but wanted to nail the structure before creating and lyrics. There are still clear improvements that are needed to make it complete such as timings and making the playing more accurate. I needed to work on getting my playing more accurate between different sections as there are some mistakes that are being made.
At this point i had gotten better and become more accurate with my parts, however we were still having conflict about how the structure should be. With Nic help we managed to come up with a better structure after this rehearsal which made the song feel more like a song.
This was us trying out the new structure with the help of Nic. I think this makes more sense song wise as it has a verse, pre chorus and chorus. We just needed to learn fully how this structure was going to work, then put it together. Once we’ve done that we can start working on lyrics.
This was the first time rehearsing the full song in the live room and we as a band think that it sounded damp and dull. We will. work on perfecting the sound of the bass and guitar as well as maybe speeding up the tempo a bit the make it less dull and more up beat. I think the pressure of performing in front of the group made us mess upon a few of the arts and we still needed to fully discuss how the end will be. Apart from that i think we did fairly well at performing it considering we’ve only had 3 weeks to get it down.
Final song
Strength
I feel like as a band we successfully were able to create a nice sounding song with different sections and a well made structure. We were able to create a chord structure with a bassline, drum beat and keyboard part in the first few sessions of making the song. And after a bit of pushing we finally got some rapping to the song.
Weakness
As a band we have fallouts over the song and I feel it make people not want to participate which is a major weakness. I also think we didn’t really work as a band to create this song as Robert made all of the different parts. We also still don’t have a singer in the chorus and if we did it would sound much better.
I feel to improve we as a band need to stop having people take control over everything and we need to learn that not everything we make has to be “perfect” and we need to learn how to work together as a group, not an individual.
Altogether, apart from the quarrelling, we managed to create a listenable song that is unique to us. I feel we could potentially make great songs in the future if we actually out the effort in to work as a band.