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What do I want to improve on, following last term's summative?

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What do I want to improve on, following last term's summative?

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I would like to improve on my stage presence and work on it over the next term in preparation for the next performance video required for submission in my next summative assignment. I thought my stage presence last time was not up to the standard I want to set for myself, and overall made me feel a bit detached from the band, and almost forced to play.

I want to watch more live performances from my favourite bands, as well as go to see local bands so I can observe the drummer and their stage personality. By attending more gigs and paying attention to the acts on stage, I feel I can take a lot of influence from them and apply it to myself when it comes to practicing by myself behind the kit.

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What production standards are relevant to my song for this unit?

- Well balanced, panned guitars
- Effects on guitars but not too over seasoned
- Tight, consistent drums with varying dynamics to serve the song, and the mix
- Vocals that aren't tuned which pushes the vocalist to strive for good vocal  takes.

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Has thinking about finer details ever distracted you from delivering creative work?

at times i have felt like i'm striving for something a little out of my reach and for the time being i need to stay within my own technical ability.

In relation to music, how do you combat this?

If there's something in particular on my mind that i want to create but can't imagine achieving this, i will spend more time developing my technical ability and take it in pieces before i can put my ideas together and fully convey them in a song.

Is there value in outputting quantity in relation discipline/work/project/practice in order to achieve quality.

sometimes there can be value in trying to push out material quickly in order to get to a level where you can be more experimental and spend more time to push out more well refined music.

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For this track, we didn't deviate too much from the original track. However, in order to give everyone in the band the space to let themselves go and show off, we put a solo section in the bridge where everyone in the band had a solo of 8-16 bars each. This was a good way of showing off technical skill built up during the process. My drum solo was fully improvised, so I feel as if it could've been better if I had planned the solo in advance.

Apart from that, this was still a good performance I feel, and the solid musicianship between us, and the communication was way better than the previous week. Whenever part of the song transitioned into the next, there were people keeping eye contact with me so everyone knew where they were, and mistakes were minimal.

I feel the thing I learnt from this song this week, and this performance, is that with tight musicians, you can turn something into your own creative blank page to paint on with your own ideas and skills.

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For black dog, we kept the song pretty much the same as the original version. However, we put a solo section at the end to close out the song. Rehearsal for this song went smoothly in Pre-Production apart from some parts where the timing is off beat where some of the vocals are. This threw a couple of people off. Once we got that down though the rest was easy.

The performance we did at the venue also went well, with only 2 takes needed of the song. eye contact was important for this song as we all needed to be tight as possible when coming back in after the verse line. counting for this song was rough at first as in some parts where there are 'pushes' in the drum parts, I had to make sure I kept a solid count whilst also playing those off beats.

I believe this performance went well, and was executed to the best of our ability could handle with just 1 day of practice. Whilst this song was easy to play, the trickiest part was just keeping everything level with my mind still working in the background.

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For this weeks CPW track, we saw a lot of potential in turning this song into more of a shoegaze/grunge type of track with more dynamic shifts, and having one of our guitarists step up to sing instead.

We started off by having a clean guitar intro at the beginning, which then kicks into a more heavy part accompanies by the first lyrics, and the rest of the band. For the verse, the dynamic shifts back to a lower level again, there was a chord change at the end of the verse which came up during pre prod, which instead of the last chord being a Gmaj, was changed to a G# major, which we felt sounded more pretty. Before each chorus, a buildup was added, followed by a brief pause, that then kicks in with the chorus. The drum part I had made was based on just a normal punk drum beat, however the kick and snare hits between beats 2 and 4 were shifted back half a beat, which I felt sounded more driving and served the song better.

For the performance, we had Lara singing for the first time, which sounded very good. There were a couple of moments where the pushes in the lyrics right before the choruses did throw people off, however we all got through it. The communication was good in this particular performance I felt, Ricardo and Lara made sure eachother came in on time, and me and Delores in the back were also paying close attention to eachother. Personally when on stage, I rely on the bass to tell where in the song we are, as I feel and hear that louder than anything else.

This performance I feel went well, and was the one we enjoyed the most so far, as we were able to take the song and turned it into something that we felt passionate about playing. The only thing I would say about my own performance is my stage presence. I need to look around more and make sure I keep people interested if others maybe aren't at times.

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For this song, we had changed the lyrics, the flow of the lyrics and also the vocal melody almost entirely for the verses. The choruses were kept pretty much the same, and we had Owen on the backing vocals which made the chorus seem way bigger.

In pre prod we were having a couple of struggles trying to figure out what to do with the song. We were having clashing ideas about what genre to turn the song into, but eventually we all came to the conclusion to just keep the foundation of the song and just switch up the verses with different lines, and more ad libs which were carried out by Owen. Also in the verses, instead of the main riff in the original version of the song, we changed it to be just chords instead, in which the progression 'Emin, C, A, G' was used so we could fit the change in vocal melody over the top.

The performance was very tight I think. With only tiny mistakes in my drum fills at times, it felt like everyone was on point, and we had managed to turn something which posed to be quite the challenge at first, into something that grabbed people, and gave us all something to show ourselves in. The fills in chorus are always fun to play, and i felt like i was able to switch up the fills every now and again to give the drum part more variation, and something more exciting to listen to.

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This week was when I started to write the drum parts for what would turn into my joint summative track 'Serene' with Ricardo, Lara and Delores. The song was original just something Ricardo would play in rehearsal when we were bored, and eventually I picked up on it and started to figure out how I could have an input in the song's writing process. As of now, ive got a drum intro which comes in quite heavily after the clean part in the beginning of the song, and in the verse, switches to a quieter cross stick pattern, where the guitar goes back to being clean again.

Before next week I will be writing more for the track, finishing up the song with more drum beats, and drum fills to put towards the end of the song, where I feel most of my technical ability will shine through.

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For this weeks song, we didn't change much or add to much to the track as we didn't feel there was much we could really do to it in the little amount of time we had to prepare our take on it. We had Owen doing the backing vocals in the chorus, and a couple of ad libs here and there to fill out some gaps there would've been otherwise.

The performance I feel went well as a whole, in that we had the song down before we went up on stage which allowed things to run smoothly and efficiently. On my part, it seems there were some slight fluctuations in tempo, and in the 'gotta get to rock bottom' part, I forgot to drop out and instead kept playing. Apart from these slight mistakes, I think this was a good performance that for us, didn't really require much alteration to it.

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This week we recorded the drum parts for serene. By this point I had all the parts I wanted to record planned out and ready to be played in the studio. The song actually ended up being faster than we originally played in rehearsal, which I thought gave the song more energy. The chorus is loud and driving, with a lot going on, and the verse is very laid back with a ride and tom groove, accompanied by clean guitars and soft vocals.

Towards the end of the song, Ricardo wanted me to break off the leash a bit and have some more, faster drum fills to climax the track before cutting out at the end. the first half of the outro had a drum fill made up of triplet 32nd notes that went around the kit, and then in the second half, and even faster version of the same fill made with straight 32nd notes. Right at the end, a stomping ending that brings the track to a halt.

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For this weeks track, we changed the song to be a fast paced rock song. The take of the track almost came together by itself in rehearsal, with Delores starting out with a simple bassline to open up in the intro, followed by me and Ricardo building up the intro. instead of a slowly building drum roll which I was initially doing to do, I decided to do a snare driven cross stick groove, which seemed to fit better than other said idea.

When the song kicks in before the first verse, I go full velocity on the kit with the guitars on full overdrive for 16 bars. When the verse comes in, I'm doing the same drum beat but now on the hi hat.

In the bridge, there is a short 4 bar buildup before the final double chorus kicks in, and the song gets closed out. Towards the end I added more drum fills to give the song a climax before ending it with a big finish.

The performance went smoothly as we had our version of the song prepared the day before in pre prod, we had been practicing at home so the performance could run efficiently.

There wasn't really anything wrong with this performance that I feel should be pointed out. The only little mistake was Trinity almost coming in too early in the first verse. Apart from that, we were well rehearsed and ready to play this take on the track.

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This week we went into the studio again to record guitar parts and vocal parts for our joint summative track 'Serene'. Upon arrival, everything was setup and ready to go so everything could get kickstarted quickly. The only thing Ricardo had to do was sort out the guitar tone. There was a lot of guitar tracks recorded with different guitar tones to make up the overall sound. The guitars in the chorus were quad tracked, with the lead being recorded on to tracks on top of that to make everything sound massive.

The vocals in the verse are soft and accompany the clean guitar well. Lara contributed to the vocal tracks by adding a three part harmony over the first two words of the verse. In the chorus, Lara also added backing vocals with some harmonies. In the bridge, Ricardo and Lara do some call and response with the lyrics, which really work with the track.

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For our live performance summative track, we chose to do Alan's on fire by Poison Idea. It's a fast paced punk rock track that i'm doing the vocals for as i've got a raspy rock singing voice. Upon first attempts, the song proved hard to play and sing at the same time, as I had to pay attention to remembering the lyrics let alone performing. Over time, as I got more used to the lyrics, this became easier and I was able to play and sing the whole song without looking at the lyrics.

When we did out feedback, there wasn't much that was said to improve on my part, apart from the tempo was being slightly compromised because I was also focusing on singing. This is something I took away and tried to improve to my best ability before the final assessed performance.

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This week, we did our final recorded version of our joint performance track 'Alan's on fire'.

By this point we were all well rehearsed enough to perform this live. We had all 4 people doing vocals on the song, which we'd never done before. I was doing all the main vocals, the rest of the band were doing gang vocals in the chorus to drive the song, and give the whole thing more energy.

The performance as a whole I feel went really well. We managed to get 3 good takes of the song, each being better than the last. We eventually decided that the 3rd take was the best one, and thus the assessed version was the 3rd take. If there was anything I'd do different, it wouldn't necessarily benefit the performance in any other way, but rather id be more comfortable, and potentially make my performing better. I'd most likely layout the kit differently in a way I can position the mic to suit me so I can put more stage presence into the song, whilst simutaneously not being able to move much.

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Ricardo De Sousa, Lara Mitchell, Joe Thorpe Take 3

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Ricardo De Sousa, Lara Mitchell, Joe Thorpe Take 3