BAND PRACTICE AND PRODUCTION WEEK 1

Today, in our first band rehearsal as Novacane, we started to write our first original song which is now called “Conscience Alley”. We have decided that we are going to be a pop-funk band, but we would like to experiment with a variety of different genres, including soul, R&B, jazz, shoegaze and indie. As this was our first band rehearsal we were all feeling very productive, and we decided we were going to just jam, and play what we felt like playing in order for us to start writing a song.

This was when Will started to play a riff on guitar and Jack started to drum along to the riff. From the main riff, Will thought of some chords to play, and then Leila started to write her bassline. Once we had practiced this a couple of times, I started to add a counter melody on piano which matched the bassline perfectly. After some of the instrumentation was written, Ellie and myself started to hum along to the track, and from this, we collaboratively figured out a melody line, and started to write lyrics. I already had some lyrics prepared in my songbook which I had been saving throughout the summer for when we returned back to college. This made the song writing process much easier.

After our first pod session, I continued to write some lyrics at home and myself and Ellie managed to come up with the first and second verse of the song:

I wanna know how

You make me try

Been here all night

Just to feel your high

I don’t care about all those watching eyes

She’s in your past, but I’m here tonight

I knew from your style, gonna waste my time

But I knew from your smile that I didn’t mind

I don’t care about where we go tonight

From the bar to your house, I could feel the vibes

As the week progressed on, Ellie and myself continued to write lyrics and the band continued to write instrumentation, and by the end of this week, we almost had our first song written. The structure of “Conscience Alley” is:

Introduction

Verse 1

Pre-Chorus

Verse 2

Pre-Chorus

Chorus

Verse 3

Pre-Chorus

Chorus

Outro

We are still yet to figure out the placement of the melody and vocal harmonies. So far, our song is three minutes long. This is a clip of what we currently have:

I have thoroughly enjoyed my first week of band rehearsals with Novacane. I feel as though we have made a fantastic start to writing our original material, and I am looking forward to hopefully finishing “Conscience Alley” and perhaps starting writing a new song next week.