Week 1;
These three videos were our first attempts at playing this song from beginning to end. We were not quite in sync yet so it sounded all around the place, our vocalist singer (Jamieleigh) wasn’t with us quite just yet, so our rapper (Ashton) had to do the chorus as-well as the verses. I am the lead guitarist in this song and i am playing the harmony in the chorus but in this rehearsal i played my appointed melody throughout the songs entirety. I was not yet confident playing the part i was given to play so i was accidentally picking the wrong frets and wrong notes sounded out. When i realised that i hit a wrong note i stopped playing my part until the next beat comes and ten i joined back in and kept playing my melody. Overall i need to focus on my picking hand so i do not strum the wrong string when its not intended, and i also need to focus on staying in tune and in sync with the rhythm. I have a lot of time to practice in my free-time at home and even after we finish our lessons in college. i practice every spare minute i get because i think i need to improve and be able to play my part correctly and in beat with everyone else. When I finish college for the day i go to the live room to practice and (Jozef) and (Kaitlyn) joined too to practice our guitar parts so we have a rough idea of what its going to sound like when we are near completion.
Week 2;
This was our second rehearsal and we had it in the live room. At this stage of our previous practice sessions, this was the first one that we structured properly and played the song all the way through. We have still not figured out how we are going to end the song because we are confused by the ending. we also had our lead vocalist (jamieleigh) so we had a better idea of what the song would sound like upon completion. I had learnt a new part of the song that i needed to play during the verses, which our rapper ashton was rapping. i had two parts to play, both of which i was instructed to play during the vocals, one of them was behind the verses and the other was a melody behind the choruses which in the original song (gangsters paradise) was a harmonic that i think sounds like a choir singing along. I replicated this choir sound on my guitar for an effect like some kind of background melody. before we made this recording of our rehearsal i had gotten more comfortable playing my part and so i made less mistakes and i stayed more composed and was not as nervous as i was the first few times we rehearsed. I still need to work on my timing because on the second verse the guitars and the keyboard cut out until the next chorus, only the bass, drums and percussion are playing in the second verse. I can achieve this goal by preparing myself to recognise the first chorus ending and humming along to the song.
In the video above we were doing our first performance to the other two bands in our class on this music coarse. I was very nervous because i am not that confident and i get frightened in front of people and i was shaking, due to this i was not able to keep my composure as well and i messed up my part a few times, i did not want to stop because i felt a lot of pressure so i did my best to finish the song without any further mistakes but i was not able to do so. I messed up another fair few times but i am reluctant to think anyone noticed them, i do not do well with crowds especially if i know that their eyes are on me. This is not an excuse to not play in the upcoming concert but purely my opinion on where i need to improve and that is in my public performance abilities, i like to think that i can do anything i set my mind to so im going to prepare as best as i can for performing in front of people and any other type of audience that can be expected. Other than that i feel like our band is more than capable to perform this song in it’s entirety, we just need to remember the parts that are appointed to us and do our best to play these in sync.
The evaluation of our song that we performed for our fellow classmates. We did a little performance for the rest of the class and at the end they evaluated our performance, they gave us feedback on what we did well, and what we did not so well.
Week 4:
Some other rehearsals we’ve had during this term: