Last night was the night of our group performance. Before I talk about that, I will talk about our final rehearsals on Wednesday.
I had two rehearsals that day - one at 12 o clock in colour sound studios (where The Proclaimers rehearse, yaaaay...) and one at 5 in college.
Charlie didn't turn up to the one at 12, but I think the rest of the band knew this. Owen had the car and struggled to park. He was late and had to leave early, so we didn't get much of him.
The two hours we had to practice passed VERY quickly. We only managed to get through Whitesnake about 4 times, and the Travis song a couple. We played Caledonia to start with, but we all knew that anyways as it's very simple and it sounded fine. Whitesnake was a worry, as we needed vocals for it to be structurally perfect, but we managed. I found I was playing several wrong chords at that practice, and went home later that night to practice. Since we played it a semi tone down from the original, I put it into Audacity and transposed the key, so that I could play along to the track in our key of Eb. After playing along with the song several times, with one earphone for the track in one ear and another earphone for my keyboard in the other, I observed exactly what the keyboard player played and played it along. I became very confident. So long as the full band played it exactly as it was played on the track (which they did) I would have no problems with that.
The same happened for Travis. I realised at practice that my piano melodies were clashing with Owen, so instead of relying on chord charts, I went home and listened to it all again, cross referenced what I heard with Owen's chord chart and learned that too. Structurally, it sounded fine at rehearsal, so after fixing the part I was playing wrong, I had no problem with it. I was very confident.
As soon as rehearsal there was finished, I went straight to college for a rehearsal I'd booked for my own band. Aimee wasn't there, so we went over Mountains, Shout and Candy.
Candy was perfect. It was fine. I filled in for Aimee's vocal parts, and we nailed it. We then moved onto Mountains. With the addition of my piano instrumental part, it sounded brilliant. I was originally going to do the harmonies at the start of the song (something we hadn't thought of earlier) but after playing it wrong at practice, I decided to ask Aimee to do it. If I had more time to practice, I would have, but concentrating on singing in a high register while playing piano, which is the only instrument playing, made me lose concentration on what chords I was playing. And since it's just piano and vocals at the start, a mistake there would be far too noticeable and throw the whole song off. We went through sunshine on leith a couple of times even without Aimee, and it sounded very, very good. Shout was the last thing we focused on, and like the rehearsal the day before, it went very well. Dave gave us signals o when to stop, and Ryan, Oliver and I focused on getting the chord swap at the end spot on, which we did. The last verse in the song is VERY difficult on drums, and Kelvin had a tendency to speed it up, so focused on making sure the tempo was kept steady. After that, we went through every song again until Dave couldn't sing and Kelvin couldn't play (Lulu is a bitch to play on drums, especially in the Drum Room when the boiling sun is shining constantly on your back) then left, each of us looking very much forward to the following night, when we'd be performing. Before I went to bed, I sent everyone on the Facebook group a good luck message and shared my excitement - I was pleased to see that the rest of the band was as excited and confident as I was for our final group performance exam.
As for how the performance went...
Soundcheck was worrying. The piano melody at the start of Travis wasn't the same as I'd played the other day, Minton, the drummer in the other band thought, and it threw him off. It turns out I was just playing it too slow (I know, what?) and after speeding it up it worked fine. Travis went well. Whitesnake went fine, and so did Caledonia. Soundcheck for that band wasn't bad.
Soundcheck for my band, however, was worrying. Ryan's guitar didn't come through enough on bubbles, and since I wasn't playing the verses (apart from certain bars) it sounded empty. We beefed the guitar up, though, and it went okay. We only sound checked two songs, which is standard, but for an exam, annoying - perhaps if we'd sound checked everything, things that went wrong during the performance could have been avoided.
As for the performance itself, I felt it went okay - maybe not as well as we'd played at practices, but it was by no means 'bad'.
For example, Candy felt slow and empty to me for some reason, apart from the end. I thought this to be a bad thing until someone told me that it really emphasised the build up at the end, which was good. Sunshine on Leith, however, had me terrified. At the start, I began playing in 3/4 - which is the time signature the song is in. I started it slowly, as it's a slow song. After a few bars of playing I began to get worried. Aimee hadn't started singing yet. I was starting to think to say something but she started - on beat 2. Confused, I adapted and quickly changed my rhythm to suit her odd starting time. But then I started to get worried again - she was singing in 4/4. I was playing in 3/4. The band exchanged nervous looks - was I playing wrong? Was it her? I calmed down, thought about it, then realised that I was playing it correctly. Aimee was just singing everything a beat too late. It was just Aimee and me - Ryan wasn't in yet, so I began to wonder - will they come in and play it in 4/4 or 3/4? Because we can't play it in 4/4 after having rehearsed it in 3/4! I decided to try and bring Aimee into our time by singing the harmonies when they were supposed to be sung - hopefully she would click. Dave seemed to have the same idea, and after a few terrifying seconds (or what felt like 20 minutes) we were all singing at the same time, in 3/4. After that, I relaxed and concentrated on my playing. It wasn't until we played it in the large auditorium that I started to wish I'd done more with the instrumental part - it sounded very empty. But I wasn't going to risk trying anything fancier when 1) I was sober, 2) The rest of the band hadn't rehearsed me doing anything more, and 3) I was being assessed. The song seemed to go down very well, and I was very pleased with all of us for the first two songs. I am beginning to feel the group work - playing, performing and harmonising are definitely my strengths as opposed to solo work. That is, after all, why I was picked for the music for scotland band.
The second set with the other band went well again, I thought. Travis was nigh on perfect, apart from the part between the second chorus - since it was unrehearsed with the full band, I was unsure when Charlie's vocals would come in, and hence I played by keys part during the quiet section a beat too late. Apart from that, it went well. Whitesnake went pretty much perfectly from my point of view. I really enjoyed it, but I yearned to put the higher harmonies in over Charlie. AGAIN, if we had more time to rehearse as a full band, I would have been confident putting the challenging harmonies in, which would have really made the song sound bigger. Alas, next time...
As for the second set with my band, I was very pleased. Mountains sounded a little empty again, due to the one lead guitarist, and my chords during the verses made it sound too muddy from where I was sitting, but other than that, it went very well. Lulu also went very well - almost. I couldn't see Aimee for the second stop because Ryan was in the way, and played half a beat too much after they stopped. While it wasn't disastrously noticeable, and didn't impact the song in any way, if I'd known perfectly when to stop, it would have sounded MUCH tighter. Also, I did notice Kelvin start to speed up on the final verse, which is very difficult. However, once the 'And I feel...' part came, I was totally buzzing - it was the end of any performance I'd have to do that night, and it went really, really well. All in all, I was pleased with the performance, and utterly impressed by every act on the night.
I must say one thing, though - while I felt we played well, after watching some of the other bands, I slowly began to feel that we were one of the weaker ones. Every single other band blew me away in some respect, be it for harmonies, song choices, performances, anything.
At the end of the day, I was very pleased with the performance night and look forward to receiving feedback from our tutors - which is ALWAYS helpful, critical and useful, no matter the outcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment