This was our first rehearsal in front of people that are not on our course. Tensions were running high and everyone was a little nervous. Despite this, we put on a pretty respectable performance. We were consistent from song to song and included every bit of audience engagement we planned. This would go on to set us up for a really good final performance.
Where is my mind- As always, our strongest song of the set. We played really well together and you could see how rehearsals and practice have paid off. We could have done more to engage the audience during this song, but apart from that, this was one of the better times we have performed this song. The vocals were a little shaky and the guitar solo started wrong, but both the guitarist and the singer got straight back on track when things went wrong, making for a song that flowed really nicely. We all looked very professional when performing, and you can see the nerves slowly filter away as we get through the song. The nerves were settled when we moved on to the next song.
Island In The Sun- This song is always the one to watch as something usually goes wrong. However, in this performance, we played the track pretty much perfectly. We sounded tight as a band and each did well at our assigned parts. This sounded like a really good cover version of the song. Considering we had to transpose the track by three semitones shortly before this performance, and the fact we had two different singers during rehearsals, we handled this very professionally and created a nice-sounding track. This was a good performance for me. I usually struggle with this song, but I played the chords in time and played every note correctly. It may not make a difference to someone listening for the first time, but for me and the band who have played the song continuously, we can really hear the difference. This track is more mellow and has lots of room for crowd engagement. You can clearly see we capitalized on this by making the audience clap. This is the only song this happens in. We could have included the audience further by making them sing the ‘Hip-Hip’ parts of the track, but this might be asking too much of them, especially if they just wanted to sit, listen and enjoy the performance. All around, a great addition to our setlist.
505- With island in the sun going so well, this fan favorite was teed up very well to be amazing, and it was. We played the song very well and worked as a team to create a great cover of the British anthem. This isn’t the best time we have performed this, but it didn’t really matter as this was only a dress rehearsal. Marcel missed a beat as the drums start to build. Again, to the average person listening to this one time only it is pretty much unnoticeable, but as we have heard this song so many times, we noticed. We also needed to work on the transition between our last song and 505. This needed to be a lot quicker. Despite that this was a really good performance. All the instruments were tuned and set up nicely, so nothing went wrong. The singing was a bit shaky but as this is a big song to sing, it is sometimes hard to bypass that. Credit to Aimee, she did a really good job. The bass and drums were good and on time. They really drove the song forward and acted as a backbone. As for the keys and guitars, I believe they sounded really nice. I had a lot of freedom in this song to play the chords however I want. I took this chance and ran with it. Every change in chord sounded nice and clean, and the variation between the length and volume of the chords created a really nice texture within the song. This was a great way to finish the set and finish a great dress rehearsal by us, smoke break.