Group Performance - Rehearsal 2

Today's rehearsal was our first with the whole band.  We had picked the songs 'Candy' by Paolo Nutini, 'Sunshine on Leith' by The Proclaimers, 'Mountains' by Biffy Clyro and 'Shout' by Lulu.

For today, we were each to learn our separate parts.  Apart from a couple of parts (David was unsure of the melody for the last part of Candy and I had to learn the instrumental part for Mountains during practice, for example.) everyone had learnt what they needed to learn, mostly.  However, I feel that we, myself included, should have went a bit further than learning the chords and structure and learnt our in-depth parts back to front.  Since we didn't, we had to sort out some wrong parts in the songs, so next time I will make an effort to learn every single song/part for every instrument like the back of my hand.

Practice today went well.  We nailed Candy, but I will keep giving Kelvin nods when we change parts, because it differs from the CD version (only in the way that the end is shorter).  Structurally, Candy is spot on.  Ryan just needs to learn the proper solo and David needs to become confident with the vocals at the end.  After going through Candy, we went onto Sunshine on Leith.

SOL went well; Ryan and I had a discussion over disputes in the chords we were playing, and Ryan's version was correct, so we changed it there.  There are talks of getting one of the violin players to play the 'solo' heard after each chorus, but I may just play a shortened version on piano.  Today we started focusing on dynamics after Annette came in and sang it with us.  It is amazing how much of a difference the singer's effort into the song can influence the band members.  When Annette starting playing with dynamics, I naturally played up or down to support her, and it not only filled me with more confidence while playing, but it made it sound fantastic.  David and Aimee are to put the same effort they'd put in if they were performing live every time we rehearse it.

Lulu proved a challenge, simply because of the various stops between verses.  I had to explain to Ryan how the chord changes stop/double/half after each verse, and he caught on very quickly.  I feel that was the least practiced song, as everyone but Oliver (when he came in) stopped at different times.  We need to work on this.  Apart from the stops, the song contains 2 chords (apart from the end where an extra A is added) and is very simple.  We agreed simply to learn it properly for next week.

Mountains was a bit different.  We had to stop and go back over that several times, due to conflicts surrounding what happens after the first chorus.  Obviously, we hadn't listened to this one much either.  After settling that, we played through the song, stopping after each chorus (as each is different) until we had them right.  Mountains wasn't very tight at all, but we got the structure learned as a band.  For next week, we need to learn it properly, so that we can come in and just play it.

We went over every song a couple of times after that, until it was time to leave.  After this rehearsal, I was feeling a little worried about the performance.  We need to put in more work.