I Wish
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Our intro for this song was strong, we were all in time and knew exactly where to start even though it differed from the original. Mine and Isobel’s tones were fitting throughout this song as we were both using wah effects, she was using a wah pedal and I used the amp’s wah effect at a 4. Ollie nailed the style of his part, I think it fits really well. Robert’s tone with vocals fit during the verses but he could have worked around the chorus differently to save himself from strain.
Our overall understanding of the structure was strong besides the outro. Every part was transferred into well and without hesitation.
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Our tempo was slow and dragging the whole time, which is something Ollie was struggling with throughout rehearsals. Nic told us that being too fast was better than being too slow because otherwise it would feel like the song was going on for too long.
In this performance Isobel and I weren’t balanced dynamically as I was too quiet, despite trying to adjust this throughout the song. To prevent this I could have talked to Evan, our sound technician for the mock and performance, about my volume and whether or not how I sound is accurate both through the monitors and the main speakers facing the audience and how I need to hear Isobel, myself and Robert most.
Vocals stopped randomly at times, this could have been either because Robert was lost about the structure of the song or wasn’t 100% confident about knowing the lyrics. We could have worked on this or discussed it before the mock so we knew how to help him, like doing run-throughs or double checking vocals with someone else. Vocals could also have been planned better so Robert didn’t have to strain his voice during the chorus. I think talking to Amy about harmonising with him or singing two octaves between them would have sounded better.
Our biggest issue was with the outro as Ollie stopped unexpectedly. We needed to decide when we were going to stop as a collective and who was going to signal it, and thankfully we did on the night of the performance.
The only other notable thing would have been the intro on keys as it sounded like they were delayed due to hesitation. I think this might have just been a one off thing due to being in a different feeling atmosphere, as I know Albert knows his part well and has covered what he needs to play enough to know it by heart. He is also comfortable with improvising if needed to fill gaps or mistakes.
Aeroplane
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We had a strong start for this song and generally maintained the quality overall from start to near finish. Isobel’s use of a wah pedal during her melody parts sounded great and the execution of those melodies were clean and precise. Since I was acting as second rhythm / support for this song, I don’t think my volume being low is a terrible thing but it could have been a little bit higher in comparison to Isobel’s volume.
Robert’s voice fit this song really well and he put a lot of effort into it. It sounds like he somewhat studied or picked up on certain characteristics of the song’s original vocals.
The band as a whole followed the structure really well besides me during Isobel’s second melody part and the bridge. Izzie’s guitar solo sounded very similar to the original and the tone with the wah pedal fit well.
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Some errors I noticed as a whole band were that Isobel came in late after her second melody part and we rushed into the chorus from the bridge and it didn’t sound organised. This was later fixed in morning rehearsal before the gig since we focused specifically on this transition and the outro.
I made a huge mistake by not stopping on time for Ethan’s bass solo, which I realised immediately and made a mental note of something to strictly avoid.
Another big problem was the ending and who was signalling the ending for the band. Ollie also messed up by ending too early again and throwing Robert off. I was under the impression Robert was signalling us to stop instead. In the end, we decided on how many times we would play each bit and stuck to it.
Uptown Funk
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The intro sounded particularly good as it was easy to make an audience interact with us and the song and the tempo was reasonable. My personal performance in this was mediocre, there are several points I could improve.
The mixture of Robert and Marcel’s voices work really well. Marcel brought more of a Bruno Mars feel to the song but the duo working together was definitely better than either one of them performing vocals alone.
We did well to understand and follow the structure as a band considering it differed greatly from the original and even had a whole new section containing parts from different songs.
Isobel’s performance was confident on guitar, Ethan looked like he was having fun and remembered his parts well despite not knowing them until that day., Ollie struggled with the structure sometimes but overall kept it tidy and kept us all on track, both keys added so much to it, particularly in the brass sections.
Albert was noodling before the song and while Ethan was starting which didn’t sound professional and threw us off since we didn’t know if we were actually starting. This wasn’t a rare occurrence but stopped by the day of the performance.
We needed to work on the ending as it was so important that we ended the whole gig on a good note and in a way that would leave the audience feeling good. Hence, we needed to decide how many rounds of the outro bit we were doing. We did that right after we played this so it was ready for the next day.
My volume was still too low. I needed to experiment more with how changing pickups affects my overall volume and which pickups are most appropriate for each song with what settings on the amp. I tried adapting mid-song during breaks but I couldn’t tell if the monitor audio was the same as the main speakers.
The vocalists repeating ‘don’t believe me just watch’ coming out of the chorus was off-putting so we need to organise what vocals should be in that section for a smooth transition.
My personal faults were that I couldn’t only strum the bottom two strings with confidence so my part sounded weak, on top of me being too quiet. I could have changed this by consistently using the same guitar to practice and practicing more often in a band, though it was rare that we all had free time to come practice or the practice rooms weren’t taken.