Song Links:

\https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab1nJg4RKw0   don’t go away- Oasis- a song we will cover.  23/04/24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPNzMGDfnEQ  an acoustic version of don’t go away to see if we could take elements to make our cover better. 23/04/24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ9usrpAPao 500 miles – the proclaimers a song we are covering.  23/04/24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MIdCkszpIM a cover of 500 miles with a female vocalist.  23/04/24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D2qcbu26gs I wanna be adored – the stone roses.  24/04/24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF91QxJVDU8 I wanna be adored – the Ravonettes . 21/04/24

https://open.spotify.com/track/5VGlqQANWDKJFl0MBG3sg2 use somebody- kings of Leon. 22/04/24

https://open.spotify.com/track/2RUfZnDBLgXeO2A1XOj0ss The Importance of being idle -Oasis 23/04/24

https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-proclaimers/im-gonna-be-500-miles-chords-26900

Connell told me the chords to this but I have used this chord sheet to practice at home, the song is really simple as it is mostly open chords so we didn't run into any problems.

https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/oasis/dont-go-away-chords-39880

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4x8nOmuNHE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU6yzzESX8Y

this song uses mostly open chords and the minor pentatonic scale so is also relatively easy to play, I used the video to help improve my timing and be more confident in my ability to play the song fluently.

https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/kings-of-leon/use-somebody-chords-792141

use somebody is a simple song as well only using four chords makes it relatively simple to do well instead of it being complicated and not being played as well as we could have.

https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/oasis/the-importance-of-being-idle-chords-182968

the importance of being idle contains a lot of chords to remember so I used the chord sheet while rehearsing the first time shortly after I found myself no longer needing them and playing the song without it.

I also looked at legends in Edinburgh as it only cost £150 to book the venue with a student discount and if other students that also want to preform we could book the venue and sell tickets at £5 each meaning we would only need to sell 30 tickets to pay off the venue although there are other expenses and problems that arise such as finding equipment and getting it to the venue, actually booking the venue as I have not contacted them and 'Legends' doesn't really suit the genre of music we would be playing.

Our final option is to do our performance in the auditorium on campus this is a good option and there are no expenses for us and we would have Gary who is great at operating the sound and lights and would have us sound and look very professional.

https://www.edinburghcollege.ac.uk/facilities-and-services/venue-hire

https://www.oldtownpubco.com/our-bars/legends-bar-edinburgh/ legends website

https://themashhouse.co.uk The Mash House Website

https://sbomagazine.com/rehearsal-planning/#:~:text=Every%20minute%20spent%20planning%20is,of%20rehearsal%20time%20is%20purposeful.

65% were men

34.9% were women

0.1 were unidentified

The table above shows that 55% of people were in the 18-24 range.

Although this is good statistics as it shows people in our general area who would potentially attend the gig it doesn’t give us a larger focus group

To help that I found an article that had a much larger focus group they concluded that approximately 32 million people attend at least one music festival in the U.S. each year, and (46%) are aged 18-34 although the results are from the U.S. I believe the results would be similar although I struggled to find statistics to back this up unfortunately.

To capture this audience I believe posters around college and university campuses would work as it reaches the right ages shown by another article that said “students at both four-year and public two-year institutions are between the ages of 18-24” this would reach our target demographic and as the gig would likely be on a weekday students would be more likely to attend

Sources:

https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2015/for-music-fans-the-summer-is-all-a-stage/

https://www.hamiltonproject.org/data/age-distribution-of-undergraduate-students-by-type-of-institution/#:~:text=While%20the%20plurality%20of%20students,are%20age%2030%20or%20older.

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Miles" by The Proclaimers, it took a few tries to get through the whole song without stopping but we managed to get through it once just before rehearsal finished. The problems we ran into was that none of us actually expected to be rehearsing and it showed as we were unprepared and not as productive as we could be. On our band group chat we decided that as a band we need to communicate more with each other to have a successful rehearsal. We have spoke as a band today and decided that the songs we will be doing tomorrow are: '500 miles' by 'The Proclaimers' and 'don't go away' by 'Oasis'

I have practiced both songs at home on my own and with the recording so I'm feeling confident about rehearsal tomorrow and having done 500 miles yesterday feeling the rehearsal will be productive. I will record some takes of us rehearsing to upload onto this padlet.

Try to be more specific and add more details.

Don't go away - Oasis

I wanna be adored - The stone roses

Use somebody - Kings of Leon

500 Miles - The proclaimers

Importance of being idle - Oasis

We have rehearsed Don't go away and 500 miles and I wanna be adored Leah was able to get an audio recording of 500 miles during our practice as it was a good take. The rehearsal was better than last Monday. I am going try and upload audio files and videos of our rehearsals every week to be able to see our progress.

Song Links:

\https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab1nJg4RKw0   don’t go away- Oasis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPNzMGDfnEQ  acoustic version of don’t go away to see if we could take elements to make our cover better 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ9usrpAPao 500 miles – the proclaimers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MIdCkszpIM a cover of 500 miles with a female vocalist to see if we could take parts 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D2qcbu26gs I wanna be adored – the stone roses  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF91QxJVDU8 I wanna be adored – the ravonettes another band with a female vocalist

https://open.spotify.com/track/5VGlqQANWDKJFl0MBG3sg2 use somebody- kings of Leon

https://open.spotify.com/track/2RUfZnDBLgXeO2A1XOj0ss The Importance of being idle -Oasis

The other problem we had is the ending the drums slow down but we tried to slow them down to much to quickly but when Scott (our lecturer) came in to review he told to all follow Mary (our drummer) as she will slow the tempo and end the song

I wanna be adored. https://youtu.be/4D2qcbu26gs?si=pCBFFPCyAUMoScC0

https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-stone-roses/i-wanna-be-adored-tabs-85374

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRTf6Nc5FDo

after warming up I will try learning the songs in our set for our next rehearsal I will normally try and listen to the song and break it down into segments and learn it by ear although I normally give up on this quite quickly and use a chord sheet to learn and play although sometimes I just can't figure out a certain part so I resort to a YouTube video where they will often explain the part I don't quite understand and make sure I'm not playing any other parts incorrect, YouTube videos often have a part at the end where you can play along to the backing track to help timing and ensure you are playing the right parts at the right time.

To practice the songs I like to use my loop pedal I can create a loop with the chords to the song and play the lead guitar over it this worked well for my last college band as I done more lead guitar, for this college band Connell does the lead guitar so I often practice the rhythm part with the actual song which doesn't isn't always a good idea as we often don't play the song the same as the original so getting use to the record version of the song can mess me up when we are performing, a better alternative to this is to play along with a recording of us playing the song in the rehearsal room that way the song is consistent when practicing and when in the rehearsal room.

I don't have a regular practice schedule or routine I practice when I can and its normally only for an hour or two, often I don't focus on learning a new technique or actually improving my skills and instead just mess around and try to learn a song I've listening to that day, I would like to change this and I've started trying to learn more intermediate songs that will teach me new techniques and skills and force me to improve my skills and learn new ones.

After our rehearsal we we took the time to ask Mary if she still wants to be a part of the band or if her other work has become a bit overwhelming and she would prefer to get on with that, She said she still wants to be a part of the band and will start coming in more often.

-I Wanna be Adored

-New Shoes

-Don't go away

-Use Somebody

-500 Miles

We asked some of our classmates if they would like to hear our set and give us any feedback to help us improve our performance and they said we sounded pretty tight as a band and that we sounded good which we were happy with as the attendance issue had meant we hadn't had as many rehearsals so to hear that we were sounding good from our classmates gave us that boost in confidence.

we decided the running order to be:

Erosion - Tony's band 6:30 - 6:55

Kit's unnamed band - 7:00 - 7:25

Lexie and the lions (us) - 7:30 : 7:55

Hemp lemon (Adam's Band) 8:00 - 8:25

we have given a definite 5 minutes of turnover time but some sets will probably not go on as long as 25 minutes but we will then have some leeway if we run into any delays.

When we sat down we all decided who was doing the roles for each person to make the gig run smoothly:

Adam and Sandy - MC (master of ceremonies)

Me, Leah and Connell - Doors (tea, coffee and donations)

Kit, Michael and Yasmin - Stage directors

we decided the gig would be free entry and to have a donations box for cancer research for anyone who wanted to donate on their way in.

Personally I felt we sounded good and I am confident for our final performance I feel as though I am playing the songs consistently and to a good standard.

Our Lecturer Scott also warned us after this rehearsal that we might need an encore so we all gave suggestions in our group chat we narrowed it down to 'supersonic' by oasis or 'don't look back in anger' by oasis we narrowed it down to these as we all know them and have done with other college bands and external bands so we are familiar with the songs and they will need minimal rehearsal.

We never recorded this rehearsal as we wanted to spend every minute rehearsing to be tight for our performance.

overall I felt event went well and everyone fulfilled their roles well and made sure the event ran smoothly. I felt our performance went well but could have went better.

We came on stage and started playing 'I wanna be adored' to instantly grab the crowds attention right away I noticed my guitar was quite loud which wasn't very good for this song in particular as Connell was playing the main riff, to try and help this problem I turned my guitar down using the volume knob on the guitar which helped a bit but we also couldn't hear Leah's vocals very well, we smashed the bridge and the ending and performed the song very well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJIvtToDWkI 'I wanna be adored' - video

Next we performed new shoes which was going ok other than the monitor problem where me, Declan and Mary couldn't hear Leah or Connell clearly. When we got to the bridge Leah couldn't hear her que to go into the bridge and was going to start the chorus again luckily she noticed and quickly fixed her mistake I feel this could have been prevented had we spent more time during our sound check making sure we were happy with the levels and we could have planned the songs better from the beginning so we would've been rehearsing it from the start instead of adding it later.

https://youtu.be/wl_f57TpKBg

https://youtu.be/-pf2VVJbPjU

https://youtu.be/rerZfnyywFM

https://youtu.be/uJIvtToDWkI

https://youtu.be/rerZfnyywFM '500 Miles'

https://youtu.be/-pf2VVJbPjU 'don't go away'

https://youtu.be/wl_f57TpKBg 'use somebody'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7G8VR8_C-g&t=1s new shoes

https://youtu.be/uJIvtToDWkI I wanna be adored

While sound checking me and Declan shared a monitor and agreed we couldn't hear Connell and Leah at all so asked to have them turned up in our monitor which then meant Connell was a little bit too loud but it was manageable and other bands needed to soundcheck so we thought that the volume level would be ok.

and standing like we were performing meant we couldn't look at each other for que's and so we were more locked in on the song. We went through the whole set back to back three times before we decided to call it a day since we didn't want Leah to strain her voice.

I thought our role on the door went smoothly we welcomed people and took roughly £35 worth of donations. We could've put up more signs around college to promote the gig and help people find their way to the venue easier. We also could have been more prepared and ran a bake sale or offered tea and coffee to provide refreshments to the audience and ensure they they remembered the event fondly and potentially entice them to donate.

We were early for sound check as we were in the auditorium before all the other bands so our technician Sara suggested we sound checked first since no other bands had showed up yet. I tuned my guitar and prepared my amplifier settings and took a picture a picture of them so I could change it back to the same settings after the band before us had been on stage.

While sound checking me and Declan shared a monitor and agreed we couldn't hear Connell and Leah at all so asked to have them turned up in our monitor which then meant Connell was a little bit too loud but it was manageable and other bands needed to soundcheck we thought that the volume level would be ok.

If we were to do it again I would suggest we spend more time making sure that we are certain we are happy and confident in how we sound on stage as we just rushed through it and probably could've made sure the volume levels were right and sounded balanced in our monitors meaning we wouldn't have missed que's in the song and would've been able to hear one and other more clearly and been more confident since we can hear each other clearly.

during our set I felt we played well but made some small mistakes like Leah missing que's to start the bridge in "New shoes" but we didn't stop playing and she just picked it back up straight away. Leah also forgot the order of the set list and so we played 'use somebody' instead of 'Don't go away' in the middle of the set, this wasn't much of an inconvenience as we just went with it and played 'Don't go away' after. Overall I thought a lot of problems could have been prevented if we had spent longer on our sound check but we adapted to what we needed to do and played a good set all the way through without stopping due to any mistakes.

When doing my research on our set list I looked at covers of the songs we had chosen in our rehearsal room. I looked at covers mostly by female vocalists to give us idea of what our cover might sound like with Leah as our vocalist and I feel it gave us a better understanding of what our songs should sound like, one song I neglected from this idea was ‘the importance of being idle’ which later backfired as when we came to rehearsing it Leah didn’t feel comfortable singing it and we all didn’t feel as though it fit into the set as well as we originally thought and wanted to change it to ‘New shoes’ by Paolo Nutini as it was higher energy and we felt it worked in the set better and we were more comfortable playing it.

When learning the songs I used YouTube videos, this helped me massively as I could see the parts being played which helped me to visualise them when performing and it also showed me the correct fingering which made my playing more fluent and efficient, the YouTube videos also tend to contain a part at the end for you to play along with the full song and this helped my timing and remember the song structure.

When researching tips for rehearsals we discovered that well planned and consistent rehearsals would be key to ensure we were well rehearsed, confident and consistent for our performance. Knowing this we made our rehearsal schedule the same days and times every week to avoid confusion and put it in the afternoon as we know our band mates have a track record of running late in the morning, we also planned our rehearsal time so that we spent our time effectively and were productive as a band this would have meant that when we got to our final performance we all would have been really tight as a band and very well rehearsed and although the attendance of our band mates put us back a little bit the rehearsal plans and tips kept us well rehearsed enough for our final performance.

While our rehearsals were productive at the start due to our rehearsal plan we ran into problems when our band mate wasn't showing up to rehearse, to try and still use our rehearsal time effectively I made the move to drums for one rehearsal but this continued as our bandmate was often coming into college too late after our allocated time. Switching between guitar and drums was quite inconvenient since I now needed to learn the songs on two instruments. To learn the songs on drums I would watch a drum cover on YouTube to help me visualise the part I was playing ensure any fills were as close to the song as possible, I also practiced to the song or with a recording we had of us playing the song similar to what I do for guitar.

Since Mary's attendance wasn't great, We collectively decided to ask Mary if she wanted to step back from the band to focus on her own project and have me step in on drums permanently as our backup idea (since I now knew the songs anyway) to ensure we were well rehearsed for our final performance. Mary said she still wanted to play in the band and would start attending rehearsals again and learn the songs, So we decided that if she attended the remaining rehearsals we should still sound tight enough and feel confident for our performance. Although if she didn’t attend the rehearsals I would step in for drums during our final performance.

When rehearsing with me on drums we decided not to try and start new songs without Mary for the first couple of rehearsals since I might play them differently to the way she would. This meant that we were behind our schedule for practicing the new songs. we decided to try and play the importance of being idle which Leah decided she wasn’t comfortable singing to which we all agreed that the song didn’t suit the set as well as we had originally thought so we changed it to ‘New Shoes’ by Paolo Nutini, since we were already behind on practicing new songs and we had changed the song we decided to have an extra rehearsal to really help us hone in on the new song and link our parts together fluently and effectively to create a good sounding performance this helped massively as we caught up with the new song and just felt more comfortable playing them all back to back.