PROJECT DIARY
Week 1:
On Monday’s session, we started straight away by playing I Put A Spell On You. We did not really know what to change in the song and just kept playing it through to try and distinguish any issues or things that could be made better. On Tuesday, we were in the studio for a practical session. We did not know which song to start on but eventually continued work on I Put A Spell on You with help from Liam with identifying what we needed to do on the song. As a group, we also worked on the ending of the song because instruments cut out then must come back in at the same time, I was making sure with gestures that everybody knew where to exit and then come back in. At the end of the session both bands performed their song to each other, and we both gave and received feedback that will help us in following sessions. In our next session, on Wednesday, we started by identifying risks in The Hub in order to do a risk assessment of our main practice space. This helped everyone to be aware of the risks we face daily in the space and informed us of what we can do to avoid and prevent these risks. Afterwards, we did a quick performance of our song to the other band to get feedback from other musician's perspectives. Thursday’s session in The Hub started with “Artist of the week” in which we discussed ABBA which was the chosen band. We were paying attention to the dynamics, harmonies, melody, rhythm, texture, and timbre of the song to decide if it was the “perfect pop song,” we decided against this and gave our reasoning. When we finished this discussion, we performed straight away to the other band.
(87) Hiding Under the Covers Rehearsals - YouTube
This is a playlist of all of our rehearsals throughout the project.
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Problems and issues that appeared
On Monday, only 3 members of the band had learnt the song over the time we were not in college because the other members did not have access to Teams to see the group discussion.
We gave both members a bit of time to learn I Put A Spell On You and then kept going over it as a band to assure everybody knew what parts to play and when.
The Dynamics in our song were very consistent all the way through, making it boring to listen to and play because the song is repetitive anyway, no change in dynamics made it seem a lot more boring.
We received feedback and pointers from Liam on the dynamics of the song and organised cut outs in the song and started the song quietly to build it up and create tension.
On both Wednesday and Thursday we had no guitar player, this changed the timbre of the song.
We continued rehearsing as we had been earlier in the week and made sure the dynamics still followed the pattern, we put in place by making sure all other instruments were aware of when to start getting louder.
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Reflection:
What have you learned from your session and how has this impacted your project?
Personally, I have learnt that dynamics are particularly important in keeping a piece entertaining for everyone because it can affect the overall emotion that the song conveys to the audience. As a band, we have learnt that eye communication and gestures are important especially when queuing stops and starts in a piece, this keeps everybody in time and will make any transitions a lot smoother.
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Targets for next week:
Provide at least two targets you want to achieve next week – give examples of how you plan to achieve these targets.
Next week I would like to get started on a second song so that we can begin to build our set and ensure songs will be to a good standard by the gig, I would like to make sure everyone also looks like they are enjoying themselves and does not look confused on stage.
Something else I would like to work on is making sure endings and beginnings of songs are almost perfected because this could affect the way the song is perceived and could cause issues with timing and even dynamics.
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Week 2:
On Monday’s session, we continued work on Witchy Woman and extended parts of the song for audience interaction during the piece to make sure interest is kept. We rehearsed this part multiple times to ensure everyone was aware of when to come back in. Tuesday’s session at the studio made us pay more attention to what we were doing wrong in Witchy Woman and what we could do to fix it. We also rehearsed I Put A Spell On You and realised we needed to rehearse it a lot more than we have been because we forgot things from previous sessions. On Wednesday, we had a look at how to set the PA system up in the practise room for both microphones and instruments, afterwards we spent the rest of the session rehearsing Witchy Woman so that everyone was aware of when to come in and remembered the changes made in the previous session. On Thursday’s session, we started to add more parts into Witchy Woman because we noticed the track had some parts that we had missed out, such as the last chorus only being drums and vocals.
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Problems and issues that appeared:
The guitar part being played in Witchy Woman during the bass solo, was clashing with what was being played in the bass.
We decided that power chords should be played over the solo instead, so the guitar switched to rhythm for the bass to lead.
Some of the band had forgotten the queues for stops and starts in I Put A Spell On You because we have not rehearsed it as much.
We started to go over this song twice every session.
We were not confident in some of the recent changes added to Witchy Woman and had to take our time getting used to it.
We kept rehearsing the same parts over again to make sure we all knew what to do and when to do it.
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Reflection:
As a band, we have learnt that rehearsing specific sections over again will ensure that part of the song will be on point and help us remember what to do in that part.
Personally, I have learnt that communication is very important to make our pieces sound better dynamically.
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Targets for next week:
Next week, we need to begin work on Parallel Worlds by Elliot Minor to have a complete set list.
We also need to sort out the order of the pieces and in what order we would like to perform them at the gig.
Week 3
On Monday, we started our session by beginning practise straight away. It was decided that we would attempt Parallel Worlds by Elliot Minor, however, given how unsuccessful we were in doing this song we decided to just rehearse the rest of the set. Tuesday was at the studio, and we again tried to rehearse the intro until the first chorus of Parallel Worlds, this was again unsuccessful because members of the band had not learnt the song properly. At the end of session performance, we ended up performing I Put A Spell On You, Dead Or Alive and then Witchy Woman. On Wednesday, the decision was made for us to keep Dead Or Alive in our set and to leave Parallel Worlds alone because with less than three weeks left until the gig we would not have time to ensure the song is to its best standard. We also decided the order of the set will be I Put A Spell On You, Dead Or Alive then lastly, Witchy Woman. We performed this set at the end of the session after having worked on some stage presence and audience interaction with Liam, such as what to do when I am not singing or while instrumentalists are setting up. Thursday’s session started with Artist Of The Week again (we discussed lyrics, specifically in This Is America by Childish Gambino). The session was not as smooth running as the rest of the week because we had a new member added to the band, another guitarist. We played our set to him so that he was aware of how we play the songs, and in which order they are played because he had not yet learnt them. We did not perform in this session because we did not have the time to.
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Problems and issues that appeared
Nobody had actually rehearsed Parallel Worlds at home other than myself, which caused significant issues in us attempting to start work on the song.
We spoke to the other band who had been doing Dead Or Alive and Liam about the issue, in order for us to perform the song at the gig.
In a quieter part of Witchy Woman ,three of us are doing vocals and getting the audience to join in, some harmonies that Alex did in this part were not working very well.
Liam had Oliver, Alex and myself repeat this section without instrumentation to see what we could do to make this part sound even better.
Our new guitarist was not aware of our set or how to play the songs.
We informed him of the three songs and played them so that he knew how we were performing, he also agreed to learn them over the weekend.
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Reflection
Personally, I have learnt the importance of communicating well with an audience between songs and even during them for audience participation.
As a group, we learnt that our energy and presence on stage can affect the way a song sounds when we play it. For example, if someone is in a bad mood they are not going to play the song to the best of their ability.
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Targets for next week:
Provide at least two targets you want to achieve next week – give examples of how you plan to achieve these targets.
We need to make sure that our new guitar player will be prepared for the gig by rehearsing the songs with him and ensuring he makes himself aware of any changes we have made or what we are doing differently compared to the original tracks.
Anything that we have changed at all with our set needs to be gig ready and our timings of setting up etc need to be quicker than they are currently.
Week 4
On Monday, we started by going straight into our set. Our new guitarist had the weekend to learn the songs so we played all three in full so that we could work with whatever he had prepared. A lot of the session was discussions between the two guitar players so that each was clear on which parts to play in each song. Half way into the session our drummer and bassist had to go and rehearse with their other bands, this gave both guitar players time to focus on their parts and balancing them. On Tuesday, Our band had the stage because we were at the hub instead of the studio. We decided on a band name (Cereal Killaz) and continued work on all three songs, We ran through the entire set a few times so that Leo could get used to playing along with us and made the decision that he will not be playing with us in I Put A Spell On You because there isn’t long left until the gig and the other two songs that he is needed on still could use some work. Wednesday’s session had us in the main part of the hub again. Paul gave us some feedback on our pieces, especially about timing, and had us play along to a click track to check how in time we were. This really gave us an insight on why we weren’t sounding our best. On Thursday, we were in the side room and decided it was best to just keep running the set and identifying any problems that we noticed and changing them the next time we played.
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Problems and issues that appeared
When we performed our set over click tracks, we noticed how out of time we were in pretty much every song.
We have all agreed that the next time we rehearse we will have a click track so we can really make our songs sound put together and less messy.
In Thursday’s rehearsal, during Dead Or Alive some of the drum fills were taking up too much space and causing us to go out of time.
We made our drummer aware of this and did the song over again, it sounded much better.
There wasn’t enough stage presence coming from my other band members.
I asked them to imagine we were actually performing at the gig and to move around more.
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Reflection:
As a band, we have learnt that we all need to be rehearsing to a click track when at home as well as when we rehearse together. This will help us achieve a better sounding set as well as making our songs sound neater than they currently do.
Personally, I have learnt that things wont sound better until feedback about the tiny things is given because we then know exactly what it is we need to work on.
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Targets for next week:
Provide at least two targets you want to achieve next week – give examples of how you plan to achieve these targets.
Next week I would like us to continue rehearse alongside a click track/ metronome in order to stay in time and perfect our set especially timing wise.
I would just like to generally have our set completely sorted because the gig is rapidly approaching.
Week 5
This week was very much repetitive. This was on purpose to ensure we are entirely prepared for the upcoming gig, we rehearsed our timings with our set over and over until we were absolutely sure we would be able to do all songs and set up in time. We also focused on transitioning from song to song to avoid any awkward audience interaction that may waste time during our set. On both Monday and Tuesday, we made sure that the transition between Dead Or Alive and Witchy Woman was smooth and quick yet allows Oliver time to switch from the acoustic guitar to electric. On Wednesday, the decision was made for us to plug the acoustic guitar into the PA system to avoid a “tinny” sound that was setting us back with it being plugged into an amp. On both Wednesday and Thursday I studied independently at home on the stage presence of each band during the songs we have to play especially Jon Bon Jovi when performing Dead Or Alive. In order to step up the entire band’s communication and stage presence I added in some directions specifically for the two guitar players in terms of stage presence, for example, in Witchy Woman they are standing back to back and centre stage while playing the intro. Thursday, was the session in which we realised we were pretty much done. This was because Leo had learnt the guitar solo in Dead Or Alive which definitely completed the song to its best ability.
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Problems and issues that appeared
The acoustic guitar was sounding very tinny and off putting while plugged into the amp.
We decided to plug it into the PA to solve this issue.
We felt as though the entire band’s stage presence could use some work as it was rather tense and boring.
We put things in place for each person to do during songs instead of standing there just playing their instrument instead of performing with it.
It was noticed that we didn’t really have much audience interaction throughout our set especially when there was room for it.
We added a drum beat over the last chorus and decided to lead the audience to clap along to said beat.
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Reflection:
It doesn’t matter if one person’s stage presence is amazing. If nobody else on the stage is conveying the same energy an audience will be confused and doubt a person’s skill because it is boring to not move.
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Targets for next week:
Personally, I want to make sure I remember the structure of Dead Or Alive because I sometimes confuse it.
As a band I want us to remember all the feedback we have been given and really put that into place at the gig.
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