For our first song (which was use somebody by kings of Leon) is suited towards our band because there is a guitar solo for the lead guitar player, and the singer in our band suits the vocals from the original.
I think the band will adapt this song so it sounds like we have our own perception on the original track. here is a video of the original song to listen to:
For our first ever rehearsal as a band, things were quite out of time and there was a lot of mistakes such as, hitting the wrong notes, slightly going out of time and playing the wrong things.
However, despite these mistakes we managed to get the basis of the song down within 45 minutes. Personally, I think I could improve on adding more to the bass line and maybe get some inspiration from bass guitar cover videos of this song. Also, I need to work on remembering the timing of the bridge.
One thing I think I did well was using the correct phrasing of the song. Overall, our first rehearsal of this song went quite well because we managed to add things such as buildups and a wide range of dynamics to the song.
In the video above, our band did a first ever performance in front of the rest of the music class. Overall, this went exceptionally better than our first rehearsal because we were mostly playing our parts correct, the drummer learnt the beat and threw in a few fills in, the lead guitarist played the solo and improvised for a bit and I had a look at some cover videos and added my own take on the song because I phrase it slightly differently and added a few runs in, and sometimes even play the song in different octaves to create a sense of low end fullness.
After we performed the song in front of the class, we had a few improvement and critique ideas such as, not being able to hear the keys and that we couldn’t remember the structure of the song.
Some things that I think went wrong were, that most of the band forgot about the bridge section and the pause at the end of it, nobody stood up since it was a performance and just little things like the guitarist switching to the wrong chord.
One main thing I think we all need to improve upon as a band is having an awareness or each other and communicating more, rather than just having our heads down.
In this rehearsal Eric, (a tutor) had to help us out with playing the guitar parts, this was because Both guitarists were absent that day. as a band we managed to get tighter with the drums adding in extra fills and me on bass adding in some melodic parts.
Also Marcus who is on keys managed to develop his keys part in the chorus and add some extra phrasing. Despite the two guitarists not being here, Eric addressed one of our main problems which was not including dynamics. This made us all quite aware of this problem which we will hopefully conquer in future rehearsals.
Song 2:
In todays rehearsal, we started to learn get lucky by daft punk. as a band we struggled with our parts as we just learnt the song on the spot. my bass part so far is just the notes but in my own time at home, I will learn all the licks and slap bits, and hopefully get it tight with the band. next rehearsal, I am hoping that the band can start including dynamics such as solos, and drop ins and outs.
Our main weakness of this song is that everyone is struggling to include dynamics and we usually struggle with starting the song with a decent sounding intro. we can easily fix these problems by practicing more and getting everyones opinions to create our own intro that’s suited to our band.
In this rehearsal, me and the rhythm guitarist co-ordinated our parts so that me (on bass) is playing on the beat and the rhythm guitar is playing on the off beat. This creates a syncopation between us which is more interesting to listen to and sounds more funk like.
I have also managed to create some bass runs using mainly octaves, 4th and 5th notes so they are major and catchy. I am also trying to create more complex lines either through using a major or pentatonic scales.
Also in this rehearsal we managed to get the bridge section down quite smoothly with just the guitarist letting the chords ring out and the singer.
One thing we could improve upon is making a smooth ending for the song that transitions from the last chorus. in this ending we could slow each chord down and have this ending lead by the drummer which will indicate us all when to end on the route note of the song.
Song 3:
For our final song which the band got to choose, we picked Valerie by Amy winehouse. we chose this song because as a band, we thought about how well suited the singer is to the song so it would sound nice, we also thought that their was so much potential with this song, for example we have made this song an acoustic cover.
In the first run through which is shown above, I think that dynamics are one of the things that went well because in general acoustic music features more dynamics, and is quieter than our other two songs. Also for this song I found that we are quite good when it comes up to the build ups for the choruses. I also really like the subtle but effective ending of the song that we do.
The main thing we need to focus on is the guitar stopping at the correct time for the intro, despite this one negative thing, I think this is the best song we’ve done as a band because it got put together really quickly and easily and I also think this is the best sounding song we do.
here is a link to the original song:
Before going into this rehearsal when our other guitarist was here, we top and tailed all 3 songs and practiced what the singer would say to the audience between each song and at the end of each song. Unfortunately on the day that we got to perform in B25 our guitarist was ill so we could only perform this song without him.
Again our weaknesses is that we don’t have a rhythm guitarist and the intro of the song, in the second run-through of the song the guitarist also messes up the break down, my weakness is that I may be hitting a few wrong notes because I haven’t really had enough time to experiment with creating a nice bass line for the acoustic version of the song.
And finally our strengths are that despite the fact that we don’t have a guitarist in the mix, it still sounds pretty solid for an acoustic cover. I also thing we couldn’t have picked a better song because it will change the event up because we are the only band that’s doing an acoustic cover of a song. I think this will differentiate us as a band on the night of the event.