The first rehearsals for the performance in front of the mayor went surprisingly well, We only just was told the song we are performing which is Californication by Red Hot Chilli Peppers which wasn’t a terrible pick for a song its not too bad. It took me the guitarist and the bassist only a few minutes to get our instrument parts for the verses and the chorus down and ready to play and the drummer only thing he has to work on is the timing of the drum fills for get us into chorus and pre chorus. The singers are learning the lyrics as I type this and should have it down by next band rehearsals.
I picked up the first few bars of the guitar solo by ear but will have to look up the rest when I get the time. I plan on rehearsing pretty much all night until I have all parts of the sound down and ready for the gig as it is in only two weeks.
Its been two days since I have updated this section of this project and its safe to say I am very confident for how this one song gig is going to go I leant all the guitar parts for the song in a day and half the song doesn’t seem so hard I feel I would have found this a lot harder last year and probably would have put a lot of stress on my self but nope all seems good for this song, we will see how practising with the band goes tomorrow.
This is in place of my band evidence as there was problems with the video and audio but any way…
I didn’t find learning this song was hard I was actually quite impressed with how fast and how well I could play the song and the solo all together. The song uses simple nice open chords and like one barre chord so its not super hard its just knowing the chords really. For the solo its not too fast its at a comfortable pace for me and its nothing too crazy I am more than happy with this song choice by Pav. For the second song I saw what the the other bands were given and saw Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis I just thought it would be really good song to perform for many reasons one being that every person in England knows this song another being the songs catchy as hell.
In this video the vocalists have one big problem and that is all three of them are all singing together trying to all sing the original which i’m sure you have all heard the vocals it really doesn’t blend well a way to fix this is to give each of the vocalists their own part to sing and for some parts get them to sing together to add more power to that section of the song.On a better note the instruments sound pretty tight in this recording for the first half with only a few slip ups nothing too major apart from the solo which is my own fault but the more I practice the more I will improve. When it comes to the pre chorus I increase my volume on the guitar as it doesn’t stand out as much when I keep it the same for the verses but I need to make sure i’m changing it to the right volume or i spent too much time messing around trying to fix it after its too loud or too quiet. We can
Straight away because me and Rhys was playing different riffs before Mikey counted us in to the song it caused us to mess up the timings of the the intro and made Mikey mess up his part too. The next time we try I mess up the first verse after the intro shows I could always practice the song more and can make the guitar parts as tight as I can get them. The singers still don’t sound as good as they could sound because they are choosing to sing together instead of splitting up the parts to put emphasis on certain pats of the song which really would make it sound better.
Another thing that would help the singers in this video is if they put a little bit more of effort into what they are singing, at the start of this song the singers sound very drowsy and tired and not much projection coming from their voices. The drum fill for the chorus sounds kind of off like it a very stiff beat in a loose flowy song I dont know but that could be better and the crash symbols on the chorus sounds slightly delayed that needs to be tightened. The singers keep forgetting the words in the pre-chorus even when they have the lyrics in their hands. So far majority of the time in the solo the bassist messes up and stays silent for a little while making the solo sound very empty and sort off takes away the feel of the solo. For me the solo went better than before only missing 2 notes other than that not too bad but still loads of room for better flow and feel for the solo.
For Chelsea Dagger the guitar in this video is atrocious. The tone is all off, in my defence the amp in that practice room does not cooperate when it comes to gain and distortion and it will definitely not help that I don’t really know the amp a lot yet still got to learn. The strumming and timing of the guitar is also absolutely terrible and sounds really bad this song needs a lot of work but it we be practiced.
Timing and coordination is weak for this video, the drummer is off on his fills guitar sounds lazy not to mention how empty and crap the singers sound. The video sounds like it is played by little children and this is highly because of the problems in timing. When I picked this song for us I had asked and had a big think on if the song was too challenging for us as a band and I thought we had a good chance at making this a good song to perform and practice, these videos are making me regret picking it.
Lets start with the singers, when it comes to listening and communicating I would argue the singers are the worst for it in this video. When any one in the band tries to suggest improvements or changes the singers will look confused and say they don’t know what we are talking about and stick to whatever they were doing before without taking in or trying to change it, also with the Chelsea Dagger screams Maia cant stop her self from screaming at the end of nearly every section of the song and every time there is a break in the instrumentals which partly sounds horrible because its all the time throughout the song and because we cant get the song to a good enough quality to carry the excitement or feeling to produce that scream so it just sounds so misplaced every time. Due to lack of drum knowledge I struggle to get the drummer to listen when I hear something wrong in his playing or when we try make improvements he doesn’t understand what we want him to do because we don’t have drum language so it tends to go unnoticed and stays the same.
The preparation for this practice was just terrible with half of us already negative about practicing because of how bad we sound and when we are in that room it always takes me a while to set up that amp and get a tone close to the tone for the songs which is not greatI need to learn more of amps and how they work to speed things up, same with singers messing around with the microphones for half an hour before realising they need a staff member to come and help them because they don’t know what there doing. The bassist isn’t so bad with it but we all should do our research as we should know how to set up the things we are supposed to be specialised in.
Balance and blend were definitely not considered in this video as we cant play/sing our parts right, we cant get good enough tone to even come close to the original and compatibility was at its lowest in this project. The singers sound very muffled and clashing with the drums, for guitar it is the same from start to finish for Chelsea dagger with a clean tone whereas the original is distorted in parts then clean for others this is a terrible blend and I feel bad for anyone who has to watch these videos.
Similar to the balance we had not considered any dynamics or expression for this video as we were too focussed on not sounding like we are on the wrong course so the instruments and voices all sound the same horrible way from start to finish.
Problem solving again same as listening and communication no one had made an effort to take feedback and use it to better their musical ability the singers were more focused on proving that we are wrong and they don’t need to change.(which I grew bored of quickly)
I feel the use of rehearsal time was wasted as we could have covered so much more instead of arguing over what song to start with or arguing who is wrong over something petty instead of just ignoring those little things and focussing on the main project. We did not maximise our time in these rooms and because of this we wasted a few other practice times catching up after having a bad few rehearsals.
My overall thoughts on this practice session is that I wish to never waste this much time learning any thing in music ever again as this made me a negative dude for a week. We all need to work on how we communicate and listen to each others ideas and recommendations instead of being all petty and stuck up about it. The progress we have made in this video is little to k=non and I think thats why I am so negative about it, I don’t like getting given every thing I need to then waste the opportunity.
The timing and coordination for this video is absolutely terrible with this being like the fourth time we tried to rehears Day Tripper and it was still looking like we are not going to be able to get this song in shape. With the introduction straight away as soon as the drums come in it is late and then played too slow so we had to stop. During the time we were able to get past the intro the vocal coordination is so off with singers singing wrong and different lyrics in the wrong sections of the song. The guitar timing is really not good either when it gets to the chorus my strumming patterns are all over the place causing me to have to stop playing to re adjust my self with the song.
Our listening and communication in this session was not effective in the slightest, Every time I told the girls they were a little flat with the lyrics “she was a day tripper’ and I tried to tell them and they said okay like they understand and then when they made the same mistake they said they didn’t know what I was talking about which shows how bad the communication was this day. I was also saying to the drummer he needs to be a bit quicker but he actually listened and sped up and acknowledged my words with a nod showing he gets me.
For our bands preparation I would say those of us who can learn our parts and get them ready for when we can rehearse do (with an exception of Dess not knowing the lyrics for four weeks.) The drummer could only practice on weekends but every weekend he did practice. For guitar I made sure to practice whenever I got the chance when I was home and not working. The bassist however did not utilise his practice time which is not great but he did manage to play alright but I would still prefer he at least practice the parts he his struggling with.
Balance and blend for this video was not great. I can hear mostly vocals and drums, the guitar sounds very quiet and also too distorted for the song choice, the bass seems level with the guitar maybe a tiny bit over or under but thats the only balance we have for this video. The video sound blend also sound terrible as the drums and vocals are the most dominant and it sounds like its drowning out the bass and guitar. for some reason the Tambourine is nice and loud though god knows why.
The dynamics where only considered for Chelsea Dagger as thats the only song we were confident enough with to start thinking about ways we can make the song more entertaining for the audience with dynamics or expression. In this session we were more focused on getting more confident with Day Tripper because there were many faults to go over and many ways we could fine tune this song to get a result we are all happy with.
Our problem solving wise I feel we could use some work on how efficiently we spot our problems and faults and focus on them until it is no longer a problem for us, for example I would sometimes point out some faults that I can clearly hear and give a little advice on sometimes people would say i’m wrong and its already perfect instead of just giving it a try and seeing if it makes a beneficial difference if not then fair play I don’t mind but at least give it a go.
For the bands focus and engagement I would say sometimes we get distracted with minor disputes or a different song which could cause us to progress significantly slower than we would if we were fully focussed although in this clip we made a solid plan to go through a full setlist and see how our practice went and I would say when we are this focused we tend to get a lot done and by the next week we do spot some improvements so this is a good way to really stay focused and get good footage as well.
I would argue in this video we really get the most out of our rehearsal time in this video. I would say we utilise our time by going through our entire setlist and sometimes even going over in reverse order straight after doing the full setlist to really practice our skill and see how long we can keep it going.
Leadership and collaboration specifically our collaboration for this video was on point because we all put our heads together and got some good quantity of recording and made good progress because of this. I like that the band has moments where we just blast through a setlist sometimes twice get it all recorded so we have more to evaluate I feel when this happens we all work very well together also when we are in this productive mood they all take feedback and advice a lot better and actually hear me out when i am pointing out things to improve on or a little bit of advice they listen and put it into practice.
My overall thoughts on the bands progress is we have made massive progression with working with a band with every one comfortable and confident and in the perfect mood to produce some great work it is a massive difference compared to the start where we would argue and get next to nothing done, never take any feedback and i’m glad I don’t have to deal with that any more.
In this video the bands timing and coordination is improved just not by much for some reason I was not paying attention and the drummer counted us in to rehears and I was not ready resulting in a poor start and me having to jump on in the next bar or so. Bass is also a little early on some little licks between guitar parts which isn’t great, the vocalists sound better now they are split up. Maia is hitting the oooos a lot better than before and now its the right note. Dess is sounding better with her parts I can tell she has been practising too. I also hear that the bridge section of the Chelsea Dagger needs a lot of work for timing as the drummer can’t quite get it yet either going too fast or too sloe or just misses the beat, this section still needs a lot of work but I am confident he will pull through
Listening and communication is sometimes good with every one listening and giving feed back on opinions and ideas and sometimes just having non of it like with Dess a lot of the time with feedback she finds strange little ways or excusing herself instead of just saying okay, accepting it and then working on it. I feel we all should take more time to give our ideas and thoughts on improvements some more time as I feel we would benefit from a little overview every rehearsal.
When it comes to preparation some of us like me and the bassist will go home practice our parts for the next day where for the drummer he only has access to his kit on the weekends and the singers don’t really practice as much as they could(some more than others.)
The balance and blend is a little rocky as it sounds different in a recording to what it did in real life but I feel in person the volume blend is okay with the guitar at a moderately quiet volume for Californication where the bass would have a not too loud but loud enough for a thick dominant bass sound and both guitar and bass have to be loud enough to be heard enough by the drummer and also not to be overpowered by the drummer and we all also have to consider the vocalists and so we can hear them I would say we found a nice blend for in person and on recording so we can hear each other clearly and can perform to our fullest.
With dynamics I feel its only considered towards the last few rehearsals as we did not even think of different volume levels and dynamics in a lot of our rehearsals. We aren’t very expressive in rehearsals either which must be a bad thing considering its on the help sheet, I will definitely be considering dynamics and expression a lot more in my rehearsals in the future.
I know our problem solving wasn’t always the best with people not willing to admit they are wrong for some reason possibly embarrassment and when told to do something different or given advice it was sometimes a challenge getting them to actually listen and use the words given to help themselves. I feel like about half way through after we performed to our peers for the first time our band members realised that we cant keep our setlist/ show like this as it was dreadful, but this basically every one to do better and pay more attention to working together and sounding good as a band.
The bands focus is normally a little weak as soon as we get in the rooms I feel we all need a second before we are able to knuckle down and produce some good music. The band engagement with rehearsals was quite unexpected as once we got going and after a few very bad sessions we managed put our heads together and then we were all fine and ready to learn and engage in our rehearsals for the performance.
I feel some rehearsals really utilises the time given to rehears whereas some times I really feel we wasted our time but for this video I know we used our time well, first we went over our setlist twice first it was Californication then Day Tripper and finally Chelsea Dagger then on the second time we did Chelsea Dagger, Day Tripper then Californication to make sure we had a good feel for the song before we started recording then went over the full setlist once for the video. I would say that is good usage of the time given.
The leader ship in the band I would say I led a lot of the things for the band like helping to order and split the vocals up so its not so horrible to the ear, helped the drummer with some of the timings and drum fills, and helped the new guitarist when he just joined by giving him parts to learn and a place in the band.I feel for this video it is pretty equal we all know what to do we are just each individually leading our selfs to make a good sound as a band. I would say in this session we collaborate quite well with each other in this video and we work well when we do this.
Overall I feel we have made significant progress as a band with our communication and how effectively we work together and our actual music sounds a lot better now we are all cooperating as well I think we have made huge improvements and will continue to. I do also feel like with just a few more sessions we will have the all the songs down and ready for the stage.
6:15
Timing and rhythm is so much better than it was just a few practice sessions ago with the drums a lot tighter with timing and a lot better sounding more close to the original drums on the track which is great. The pre chorus did sound a little patchy with the strumming pattern here, I think at the time I was experimenting with different strumming patterns trying to find one that would fit and sound nice for the part of the song. Bass seems to be nice and tight throughout the song with very few little mistakes and good bass technique to take him to the end of the song confidently
My note accuracy isn’t too bad just with a few minor but very easy hear mistakes which I could do without. I make that same mistake a few times in these rehearsal videos its just common mistake of plucking the wrong string. This can be fixed with a little fine tuning of the song making sure we can confidently play every section of the song without these little mistakes. One problem that keeps returning in these rehearsals is my solo when there is people or an audience my technique just goes out the window and I become too focussed on not messing it up rather than putting on a show. For the bass the notes are pretty accurate and even on the solo where he normally messes up it was nice and tight with great composure and technique.
Chord transitions I feel for me are great in this video considering speed, correct string pressure and almost perfect timing for the chord transitions which I am very proud of because its a nice change for me. Again the main negative part for this performance is just the pre chorus for Californication which just seemed like the wrong kind of strumming pattern and possibly a little too loud for that section as well this can be easily fixed by messing around with volumes and patterns until I find a match.
For tone and sound also massive improvements with a nice clean tone with a tiny bit of reverb to get it pretty close to the original track which is great compared to the past rehearsals and the peer performance. The drums were also improved and a lot tighter than previous videos and a lot closer to the original than ever before as well. The bass had a thick sound to it like the bass from the original and now the vocalists are more split up and organised which makes us look and sound more professional.
Technique I feel my picking and fretting was mostly fluent and the chords being played are mainly spot on ringing out how they should with great timings. Again with the solo I need to make sure my solo with this is song is up to scratch as every other aspect of this song is down to a great standard I cant be letting my solo fall down skill wise as all the skills for the song should be equally as good as the other and evenly practised.
The dynamics were also considered a lot more this time around with the drummer letting go of some pressure off the high hat to make it sound later at certain spots in the song before going back to full pressure to make it sound quieter and less wild this brings a lot of dynamics in my opinion also we all made sure to go a little bit harder and louder towards the end to make sure the performance would not sound the same from start to finish but give it a nice range of different volume levels to keep the audience hooked and entertained
The only improvisation was a flew slides a semitone up at the start of each verse before the lyrics come in to make the riff sound a bit less repetitive. Every thing else was intended to be like the original.
Stage presence is very limited in this rehearsal as we are all barley moving if any thing just swaying side to side or occasionally bobbing up and down to try show some confidence which isn’t great but in all fairness where not exactly gonna go crazy in a rehearsal compared to gig any way but still it does need a lot of work before taking the stage and more planning around what we can do because the more we plan before we are on stage the better.
Our overall progress has improved massively from even just two weeks ago I am please with the visible and audible difference between then and now with all the things I have spoke about considered. I also feel more so towards the back end of the project that we have really utilised our practice time and used it for good discussing, planning and practising every thing we felt we had to do to deliver a good performance and I feel it paid off.