Kenton Theiter Gig
My Ensemble
For this unit we have been asked to form a ensemble to play in the Kenton Theatre in Henley on Thames. I am going to right up on a blog week by week saying what we have achieved in the practice session and what we hope we will have achieved by the same time next week. I am going to use audio evidence and video evidence to help paint a clear picture of the whole ensemble forming to performing process. At this stage I am unsure of all of the members who are going to be in my ensemble. I am sure that I will be working and performing with Harry Hood but whether or not we decide that we require more people and more instruments we will see.
Practice Diary
Week 1
In the first lesson of preparation for the gig at the Kenton Theatre in Henley we have started by thinking about the songs that we want to perform and the groups that we want to be in to form the basses of our ensembles. The first lesson I was with Harry Hood. We discussed pa lot of songs and spent the whole lesson playing little sections of lots of different songs and changing keys of songs so that it’s better suited to be in our range. Some of the songs we considered playing for the gig are, Hotel California by The Eagles, Chasseing Cars and/or Run by Snow Patrol, Under the Bridge by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Bible Belt by Dry the River and Stop and Stare by One Republic. All of the songs that I have just listed are the songs that we considered. We played around with a lot of them in the lesson and moved a few of them down a few tones so that harry could sing the main melody and I could sing a harmony predominantly three notes above his melody. We also had an idea of doing a mash up of Chasseing Cars and Run and Stop and Stare because we figured out a way to play them all in the same key and there is only one chord difference between all three of the songs in the choruses. Our favourite song and the bust idea that we left the first lesson with was Run by Snow Patrol. This was my favourite because it means I can sing harmonies and learn the piano part.
My input and what it achieved in the sessions that took place this week
The things that I have done in this rehearsal session that I believe makes the session better was contributing a lot of suggestions to the group of songs that we could play. One of my suggestions was Bible belt by dry the river. Because I'id these things this meant that the song was acutely played properly and the song ran through like it should of in the recordings. I think that my contributions in the sessions this week helped a lot to steer us in a good direction for the actual performance seeing as we did not have that much time. And in the end I was happy with where we were at because of my suggestion to play dry the river in both the wolf inside drama performances and for the Kenton gig.
My input and what it achieved in the sessions that took place this week
The things that I have done in this rehearsal session that I believe makes the session better was contributing a lot of suggestions to the group of songs that we could play. One of my suggestions was Bible belt by dry the river. Because I'id these things this meant that the song was acutely played properly and the song ran through like it should of in the recordings. I think that my contributions in the sessions this week helped a lot to steer us in a good direction for the actual performance seeing as we did not have that much time. And in the end I was happy with where we were at because of my suggestion to play dry the river in both the wolf inside drama performances and for the Kenton gig.
In the video above you can see Harry Hood on the left and
James Hancock in the middle and me on the right. We are practicing the Harmonies that we have written
for the chorus of Run by Snow patrol. We are still in the press of changing
these harmonies so they are definitely not set in stone. We are singing the
harmony acpella with only one chord played on the piano to give us all our
starting notes and a feel of a key. We are all trying to warm up and do vocal exercises
before we sing as to not damage our vocal chords or strain our voices so that
we can’t sing. When I listen back to this video I noticed that we are singing
in slightly different timings. So we need to work on the phasing of the phrases
that we sing and make sure we are as together as is possible because if we learn
the chorus right then it will be very good in the long run because we won’t
have to be thinking about changing it to something were not used to at the last
minute before the gig.
Week 2
The second week of practice for the Kenton Theatre Gig in Henley has gone well. Harry and I have learned all three of the verses from the song and when we play the song through it flows nicely from section to section. This week we have been debating weather to drop the key of the song because when we sing it in the key of C the chords are as follows for the verse: Am, F, G and then in the chorus: C, G, Am, F. When we play it in this key Harry’s vocals sound very nice but when I do the harmony that is three notes up it is a strain on my voice, especially I have not warmed up before hand. In the lesson we were lucky enough to get help from Alison who showed us a variety of different breathing exercises that will help us when we have to strain our voices when trying to reach very high notes. Some of the vocal exercises she taught us consisted of singing scales whilst lying on our backs on the floor, as well as humming scales and lip trills. I believe that these exercises were very effective so I intend on doing them if I have time before I sing in the future.
My input and what it achieved in the sessions that took place this week
The things that I believe I have done to add my input and my taking part in the session is that I am the one who looked up the chords and told the outer members what the lyrics were and I was the one who printed of the sheets of chords sothat the other members would know what to play. In me doing these things I helped the song a lot because it meant that the guitarists were playing theright chords at the right time and there was no horrible clashes of chords. And the singers were all singing the right lines in the right place. I am happy that I have contributed to this week because I have seen an improvement in our practices and the song is begging to run smoothly with everyone playing the right chords.
My input and what it achieved in the sessions that took place this week
The things that I believe I have done to add my input and my taking part in the session is that I am the one who looked up the chords and told the outer members what the lyrics were and I was the one who printed of the sheets of chords sothat the other members would know what to play. In me doing these things I helped the song a lot because it meant that the guitarists were playing theright chords at the right time and there was no horrible clashes of chords. And the singers were all singing the right lines in the right place. I am happy that I have contributed to this week because I have seen an improvement in our practices and the song is begging to run smoothly with everyone playing the right chords.
In the second wee we have continued practicing what we were practicing in the last week which is the harmonies from the chorus of run by Snow Patrol. I think that we have some made some good progress since last week and you can really tell it when you watch last week’s video and then watch this week’s video. One of the main improvements that you will notice is that I have learned more of the piano and can now play the whole of the chord sequence for the hours witch is C, G, Am, F. You can tell by my piano playing that my knowledge and ability on the piano are both minimal but i have managed to do the chords just to help us sing to something. The singing has also improved since last week because we have now fixed some of the problems that we had last week with when we were all singing the notes for different amounts of time and that made all of the phasing for the chorus wrong .
Week 3
In the third
week of our practicing for the Kenton Theatre Gig we practiced a lot with James
Hancock. James is also a singer so we have been working on finding another
harmony for him to sing in the choruses as well as possibly some harmonies in
the verses or even an octave up in falsetto of an octave below just to give the
vocals more power and more harmonies. So there were now three people in our
ensemble and we have been concentrating on the song Run by Snow Patrol. However
the three of us have managed to double book ourselves because we committed to playing
the music for a play called The Wolf Inside which is being performed on the 21st,
the 22nd and the 23rd. The Kenton gig in also on the 23rd
and also starts at 7:30, at this stage we were not sure how we were going
to sort this problem out but we did have an idea to play a song called Bible Belt
by Dry the River instead of Run by Snow Patrol. All three of us were doing the
music for The Wolf Inside and Bible Belt by Dry The River is Featured as an
intro song in the production. We decided that we preferred Bible Belt to Run so
we all set about learning lyrics and chords to the song. All three of us play
guitar so we will be able to figure out some guitar parts in the weeks to come.
We have conceded having wanted piano in our song so I have been practising a
very basic version of the piano however I think that if we do want piano we should
get someone with some experience playing the piano to play for us. I have also
been trying to do more vocal warm ups so that I can improve my range and not
strain my voice.
My input and what it achieved in the sessions that took place this week
One of the thing that I believe I have contributed in this seeing and in the paragraph above is arranging the Wolf Inside performances which were very good practice for us in regards to us doing as good in our performance as we can. Because I did this I helped the group get 3 practices in front of audiences of the song so that we weather very well practiced and we felt confidant. I was very well practiced and I did feel confident so I believe it has worked.
My input and what it achieved in the sessions that took place this week
One of the thing that I believe I have contributed in this seeing and in the paragraph above is arranging the Wolf Inside performances which were very good practice for us in regards to us doing as good in our performance as we can. Because I did this I helped the group get 3 practices in front of audiences of the song so that we weather very well practiced and we felt confidant. I was very well practiced and I did feel confident so I believe it has worked.
In week three he have decided to change the song that were going to play to Dry the River’s Bible belt. The reasons that we have decided to change our song from Run by Snow Patrol to Bible Belt by Dry the river is that we have all agreed to play bible belt in a production that some students at Henley collage are putting on. We figured if we’re learning it for that we might as well make it as good as we can and play it at the Kenton Theatre as well. Another reason that we have decided to play it at the Kenton is that we have learned the first verse this week and we are very happy with the harmonies and other singing parts that we have managed to put into the first verse and we think that there is a lot that we can do with the rest of the song. In the video above you can see the progress we have made in the short time since we decide to change the song to Bible Belt. In the video we begin with Harry and Jams singing alternate lines for the first two times round the sequence. After this they both join up and sing the lead line together while I am singing a harmony that is above what they are singing. There lyrics that we sing in the first verse are here:
Lo and behold you father, has been drinking again, this might be the darkest winter since records began. You are a lone moon steady with wintery calm, leading the children slowly across the farm.
Since I think that it is quite hard to hear what the lyrics are in this song when we sing it and especially in this particular video I think that we should all concentrate on pronunciation of our words.
Lo and behold you father, has been drinking again, this might be the darkest winter since records began. You are a lone moon steady with wintery calm, leading the children slowly across the farm.
Since I think that it is quite hard to hear what the lyrics are in this song when we sing it and especially in this particular video I think that we should all concentrate on pronunciation of our words.
Week 4
In the fourth week of working towards the Kenton Theatre gig we have been starting to sort out our structure to our version of Bible Belt. The original song has a long introduction and an instrumental section between the first and second verse that both use violins and various other instruments that we don’t have time so add. Bible belt by dry the river is a very slow song and long song, we have shortened the song by not playing the intro and instrumental section and made the song around 4 and a half minutes long instead of around 6 to 7 minutes long. We have also transposed the key of the song and moved it down a whole tone to make it more suitable for our singing ranges. This week we have started by learning the verses. We began with Harry and I learning them together with Harry singing the lead vocals and me singing the harmony which is manly three semitones above the lead vocal line. The verses have a lot of words to remember as harry and I found out. The vocal melodies in each verse also have some subtle changes witch add to the song and make it more interesting for the listeners. Harry and I have concentrated a lot this week on the first two verses and how we are going to sing them, we have been given useful tips by people when we have showed them what we are learning and we have had advice like projecting our voices and concentration on the pronunciation of the words. Even though we have dropped the song a whole tone it is still at the higher end of both of our ranges so we have been warming up before we sing it with a variety of different vocal exercises like; arpeggios going station on low and going to the top of our range then back down, lip trills and singing lying on our backs on the floor.
Input and what it achieved.
One of the things that I think I have contributed to this session and theparagraph above it is clear because I was one of the people who helped to arrange a structure of the song and I was one of the people who played the song through all the way firs, that me and harry and then we added members into the group to build up layers in the song to make it a better texture.
Input and what it achieved.
One of the things that I think I have contributed to this session and theparagraph above it is clear because I was one of the people who helped to arrange a structure of the song and I was one of the people who played the song through all the way firs, that me and harry and then we added members into the group to build up layers in the song to make it a better texture.
This week we have continued our work on Bible Belt by Dry the River and I think that we have made some good progress since this time last week. As you can see in the video above we play from the first verse through to the second verse, we have also looked very hard and the harmonies in the second verse. I have been concentrating very had on the harmony that goes on the words ‘Low and behold you father has drunk all the fuel’. In this harmony I have to go into falsetto because it is too high for me to sing comfortably in my range. I find falsetto very challenging if I have not warmed up properly so that gives me another reason to make sure that I warm up my voice as much as possible before I sing to ensure that I sing to my full potential. We have also been beginning singing this song through microphones and plugging into the collages PA to get our performance to feel more like a actual real performance rather that just another practice session.
Week 5
In the fifth week of working towards our ensemble performance at the Kenton Theatre we have been working through more of Bible Belt by Dry the River. We have made a good amount of progress because this time last week all that we were able to play was the introduction going into the first then the second verse. We can now play the pre-chorus. The pre-chorus is the section that comes before the chorus. In our version of the song the pre-chorus is going to be very different to the verses. We are using it as a chance to change up the dynamics of the song and show some versatility in the dynamics so that you can see that we are not just playing at the same level and the same loudness all the way through the song. In the Pre-Chorus the song goes very quiet. For the first half of it the guitars play one strum and all that you can really hear is the singing. The guitar chords on the pre-chorus are Bm and A. The Bm is a very affective chord because the whole of the song before that, eg the intro and the first two verses have been following the same two chord sequence which is A and D. Since it does go so quiet in the pre-chorus we have been concentrating on making sure the vocals are perfect. We have been working on trying to sing the Vocal parts with as much emotion as possible because if you are showing emotion through your performance that is what is going to get the crowds behind you and make them enjoy your performance. We have been thinking about the meaning of the lyrics in the song and what they mean to help us to connect with the emotional side of the music. This week we have also been with James Hancock a lot, James is the third member of our ensemble and we have been working with him to get his singing part in the verses and the pre-chorus to sound just as we all want it to. James has a very nice low voice so in the song his singing parts consist mainly of singing low octaves and duplicating what Harry is singing to thicken out the lead vocal melody.
My input and what it achieved in the sessions that took place this week
The reason I have contributed a lot in this week is that I am the one who allocated all of the different voices a, whether it be a high harmony that i sung or the low harmony’s and octaves that James sound and Harrys lead vocal line. I think that is very important because the harmonies are what make the song harder and nicer to listen to. Because I did this I think that the song was better structured and I think that the song was more musically advanced and more impressive. I know for a fact that it was because of feedback from people who were there.
My input and what it achieved in the sessions that took place this week
The reason I have contributed a lot in this week is that I am the one who allocated all of the different voices a, whether it be a high harmony that i sung or the low harmony’s and octaves that James sound and Harrys lead vocal line. I think that is very important because the harmonies are what make the song harder and nicer to listen to. Because I did this I think that the song was better structured and I think that the song was more musically advanced and more impressive. I know for a fact that it was because of feedback from people who were there.
This week we have really made some real progress towards hearing our cover of Bible Belt by dry the River in its entirety. We got both of the verses to a high standard and we have now put in the pre chorus and we have got this to a high standard however I know that there is still a lot of room for improvement. We have also worked out the chorus. There are a lot of harmonies in the chorus. James and harry are doubling up singing the lead line and I am singing the harmony that is higher than their part to make the song sound more full and to give it a sense of depth. We now know that there is only one section of the song that we all have to learn until we have learned all of the section and we have to sort out a structure for all of them to make the song the right sort of length.
Week 6
This week the whole song is really starting to come together because we have now got all of the sections. This week we mastered the chorus and we have got the bridge perfect. So we are now just running though the whole song and playing it lake we are going to play it on the night of the Kenton Theatre. We have also worked out some guitar parts that sound very nice together. In the guitar part I play the high octave of what the violins play in the actual song and harry plays the low octave of what they play and when we get them perfect together they sound really nice. I have been practicing the harmonies for the song a lot with Harry this week because the harmony are what give the song that extra boost and make sure that the song isn’t boring. I am happy enough that I have the harmonies to a high enough standard and I am happy that when we sing and play through a PA system the vocals lead vocals and the harmonies wont sound messy together. What James, Harry and I have been working on a lot this week is tidying up the song. We have been tidying up the song in a variety of different ways. One of the most important things we have been doing to tidy up the song is making sure that we all hold the harmonies and the notes on the different phases for the same length of time so we don’t have one of us ending the phase early and one of us ending the phase late. We have been practicing having us all ending phases together so that the song sounds tight and perfect. We have also been trying to tidy up the song by changing some of our guitar parts. We found this a very important factor to making the song tight and tidy because we have three guitars playing what is almost the same part at some points. If we did just have three guitars playing the same parts the whole way through the song then there would be no variety and the guitar parts would be booking. I believe that we have addressed this problem very well and we have made the guitar parts a lot more affective and improve the dynamics of the guitar by having one guitar drop out in one section then come back in the loud section.
For this week I do not have the video from t he second practice session that we have but I can explain what we did in the session instead. What we did when we had time given to us to practice during the lesson time was run through the whole song which we could do at that point very well. We then talked to each other about the things that we could do to improve it as much as possible. One of the things that we noticed is that we all need to be singing all the words for exactly the same leant of time instead of having one person singing a phrase for too long and one person singing the phrase to short. We are very happy with the progress we have made with the vocals in the song. We think that the harmony sound very nice when we sing the phasing and the word lengths right and together. I feel although I have perfected my harmony now because I have been practicing it for a good four weeks now and I have really managed to get it into my head now and i feel very comfortable when singing it. Harry and James are also starting to get very comfortable with singing there parts. There is room for improvement in a few little ways and one of them is that they should make sure that they are pronouncing the words. I think that this would be a good thing too work on because when we are performing at the Kenton theatre it is a big venue and the sound will bounce around the room and the words will be hard to make out if we do not all over pronounce them. It would be a sham if people could not hear the words in the song because the words are truly beautiful and have so much meaning and really add to the overall performance of the song when you listen to them and think about what they mean.
My input and what it achieved in the sessions that took place this week
The reason I have contributed a lot in this week is that I am the one who allocated all of the different voices a, whether it be a high harmony that i sung or the low harmony’s and octaves that James sound and Harrys lead vocal line. I think that is very important because the harmonies are what make the song harder and nicer to listen to. Because I did this I think that the song was better structured and i think that the song was more musically advanced and more impressive. I know for a fact that it was because of feedback from people who were there.
My input and what it achieved in the sessions that took place this week
The reason I have contributed a lot in this week is that I am the one who allocated all of the different voices a, whether it be a high harmony that i sung or the low harmony’s and octaves that James sound and Harrys lead vocal line. I think that is very important because the harmonies are what make the song harder and nicer to listen to. Because I did this I think that the song was better structured and i think that the song was more musically advanced and more impressive. I know for a fact that it was because of feedback from people who were there.
Week 7
This is the second last week before our performance at the Kenton Theatre. We have been working on polishing up Bible Belt and making uses that we are happy with every last thing about it. We are also performing Bible Belt on the 21st and the 22nd and the 23rd in a performance called The Wolf Inside so we are making sure that we have done as much as we can to make the song as good as possible. We have sorted out what we are going to do about our problem of double booking ourselves, we are going to have to leave the Wolf inside performance half way through on the 23rd and then run down the Kenton to perform there. We are also going to have to record a song for The Wolf Inside because the play ends with us playing guitar and we won’t be there so they will have to play the recording of us playing the song instead. We are very happy with the song at the moment and we are only concentration on small things like making sure we end phases together and pronounce words in the same way. We have also been practicing playing the song through the collages PA system in the live room to help us to get a feel of playing this song loud and singing the harmonies through microphones. We have also decided to make one more change to the song. That change is adding another chorus on the end and then adding the second half of the chorus on the end after that. We have decided to do his because it gives us a chance to vary the dynamics of the song towards the end and to make the song quieter and more emotional at the end. We also did it because we are very pleased of the harmonies and other vocal parts we have worked out for the chorus and it is nice that we can show them of and have the guitar very quiet so the everyone can concentrate on the singing and that the last memory of our performance to be the chorus with lots of harmonies and sounding very nice.
This week I am so happy with the way that the song is sounding and the more times that we perform it the better it gets. We have talked about all trying to put a bit more emotion into our voices when we sing the songs. We have been talking about how we’re going to do this too. Like by thinking about the lyrics and what they mean to us whilst we sing them. We have also all been practicing pronouncing our words better so that the audience can hear the stories behind the song.
My input and what it achived.
The reason that i helped in this sectsion is because i was the one who set up the practice performances 3 days befor the gi. Because we did these practice performances in the wolf inside drama productsion i know that we were happy with the song nd that we were very well rehursed. I also helped this week by helping us to all pronounciate the words and sing the right parts. Because i did this i beleve that the perfomance was better in the way that you could hear the wors and not just mumbls.
This week I am so happy with the way that the song is sounding and the more times that we perform it the better it gets. We have talked about all trying to put a bit more emotion into our voices when we sing the songs. We have been talking about how we’re going to do this too. Like by thinking about the lyrics and what they mean to us whilst we sing them. We have also all been practicing pronouncing our words better so that the audience can hear the stories behind the song.
My input and what it achived.
The reason that i helped in this sectsion is because i was the one who set up the practice performances 3 days befor the gi. Because we did these practice performances in the wolf inside drama productsion i know that we were happy with the song nd that we were very well rehursed. I also helped this week by helping us to all pronounciate the words and sing the right parts. Because i did this i beleve that the perfomance was better in the way that you could hear the wors and not just mumbls.
Week 8
This week there have only been a few days prior to the performance at the Kenton theatre in Henley. We have been very busy with three performances of the wolf inside which were on the Tuesday and the Wednesday and the Thursday before the Kenton. We have been running through the songs a lot but I feel that we are ready for the performance and there is not much more that we can do to make the song better. We haven’t been playing the song through the PA system when we were doing the music for The Wolf Inside so we haven’t been practicing through the PA system all that much. We have had some chances to use the PA and we have all been happy with the result when we did. So basically this week what we have been doing is performing the song as often as possible to get as much practice at it before we do the Kenton gig.
My input and what it achived.
My imput to this week are some of the small things that I did in this week and they are things like making sure that the outher membes of the ensemble have been getting the right times for the practices and are showing up on time. I think that this affects the outcome of the performance because wie ewill have had more practice sessions and we will have had more time playing the song through so the performance was overall tighter and just better that it would have beeen outherwise.
Kenton Gig Souncheck – The soundcheck at the Kenton theatre was on Thursday afternoon during the two lessons that we usually have with Richard studying the sound to the moving image. At our sound check we were all running our guitars though DI boxes to the PA system and we were singing though wireless microphones. In the sound check everything was very good. From where i was i could hear everything coming back though the monitor perfectly level. In the sound check we didn’t experience any technical difficulties apart from 2 of the DI boxes running out of batteries but we quickly fixed that problem by outing in new betters and it was fine after that. We did not have time to play through the whole song so we played the intro and then stopped and then played though the bridge and then the chorus.
The video below is a video of us backstage at the Kenton. We were practicing the song and one of the photography students called Lesh had his camera on him and he offered to record us and put it on YouTube. As it turns out, that was a very good idea.
My input and what it achived.
My imput to this week are some of the small things that I did in this week and they are things like making sure that the outher membes of the ensemble have been getting the right times for the practices and are showing up on time. I think that this affects the outcome of the performance because wie ewill have had more practice sessions and we will have had more time playing the song through so the performance was overall tighter and just better that it would have beeen outherwise.
Kenton Gig Souncheck – The soundcheck at the Kenton theatre was on Thursday afternoon during the two lessons that we usually have with Richard studying the sound to the moving image. At our sound check we were all running our guitars though DI boxes to the PA system and we were singing though wireless microphones. In the sound check everything was very good. From where i was i could hear everything coming back though the monitor perfectly level. In the sound check we didn’t experience any technical difficulties apart from 2 of the DI boxes running out of batteries but we quickly fixed that problem by outing in new betters and it was fine after that. We did not have time to play through the whole song so we played the intro and then stopped and then played though the bridge and then the chorus.
The video below is a video of us backstage at the Kenton. We were practicing the song and one of the photography students called Lesh had his camera on him and he offered to record us and put it on YouTube. As it turns out, that was a very good idea.
Evaluation of the Backstage performance at the Kenton (video above)
Unfortunately the performance that we did at the Kenton theatre was ruined by a dodgy microphone, it’s okay though, because we recorded one of our practice sessions that we did before we went on stage too. Thankfully the video of this practice run is very good quality and we sang the song pretty much perfect and it wasn’t ruined by dodgy equipment, unfortunately the video was a bit of a spur of the moment kind of thing so James dose not have a guitar to play. When I listen back to the video I am very happy with the overall standard of all of the singing and of all of the guitar parts and I think that we have done a very good job with the dynamics of the song. The harmonies in the second verse took a long time for me to get into my head because one of them is different to all of the other harmonies in the song. I also think that there is more emotion in this recording than in any of the recording that we have done in the past. I am very pleased with the section in the song where the first chorus comes in and it goes from very quiet to very load. I also think that the ending of the song is very effective when we change the last harmony to a lower harmony. I think the last harmony is a very good ending to the song. I also think that all of our work on articulation of our words has paid off, because most of the time it is easy to understand the words were staying and that helps the people who are watching the performance to get sucked into the story behind the song.
Even though I am very happy with the performance in the video, I do still think that there is room for improvement. When I listen back to it I do still notice that there are a couple of lines were the three of us don’t end the sentences quite at the same time. It’s such a small thing but when we end each phrase exactly together it makes the song and the whole performance so tight and a lot more impressive. I also think that if we had had a bit more time in the lead up to the Kenton gig we could have found more places to put in three way harmonies instead of just James and Harry singing there part together and then me harmonising three semi-tones above them. I think that if we added more three way harmonies and made sure that we all ended the phases at the exact same place it would be a lot better. I have noticed that we can also make some improvements on the articulation of the words when we sing the chorus and the bridge. It’s just because when we sing the higher bits we concentrate a bit too much on making sure we hit the high notes and we forget a bit about pronouncing the words.
Even though I am very happy with the performance in the video, I do still think that there is room for improvement. When I listen back to it I do still notice that there are a couple of lines were the three of us don’t end the sentences quite at the same time. It’s such a small thing but when we end each phrase exactly together it makes the song and the whole performance so tight and a lot more impressive. I also think that if we had had a bit more time in the lead up to the Kenton gig we could have found more places to put in three way harmonies instead of just James and Harry singing there part together and then me harmonising three semi-tones above them. I think that if we added more three way harmonies and made sure that we all ended the phases at the exact same place it would be a lot better. I have noticed that we can also make some improvements on the articulation of the words when we sing the chorus and the bridge. It’s just because when we sing the higher bits we concentrate a bit too much on making sure we hit the high notes and we forget a bit about pronouncing the words.
Short Evaluation of the Actual Performance at the Kenton (vid is on the way)
The actual performance that we did at the Kenton was ruined by a problem with the microphones. During the song the microphone I was singing into which was a wireless microphone started to crackle up when I was singing into it. About halfway through the song they brought on another microphone for me to sing into. I felt although this microphone was even worse than the other microphone and I did think of changing back to my original microphone but I am glad I didn’t when I watch back the video of the performance. As well as that there were also some problems in with the levels of the other microphones. Harry’s microphone was far too quiet and James’s microphone was far too loud. The actual performance went very well it is just a shame that the microphones messed up. I did get some feedback from people after the gig to find out how bad the microphone actually did sound and I got mostly positive feedback on the performance. People said to me that it is good that I didn’t let the broken microphone get in the way of my performance and it is good that we just kept playing through it.