CHRISTMAS GIG EVALUATION

Overview:

For our Christmas gig, we had to perform a fifteen-minute set of original music on stage, as well as having an original band identity and style. My band, Novacane, performed three of our original songs “Conscience Alley”, “Deeper Shade” and “Lesson Learnt”. As we are a pop-funk band, we also coordinated our stage movement, style and identity to the genre.

The Rehearsal Process:

The dynamics in our band during the rehearsal process, were great for the majority of the time. I would say that everyone in the band are good friends with one another and we are all quite an opinionated bunch. There were a few occasions during our weeks of rehearsing, when there was tension in the band. We disagreed on several ideas, and almost everyone in Novacane is suffering with their mental health. However, I believe that we channel our emotions and stress in the best way possible, through our writing and performing.

Our rehearsal process consisted of making sure we had one song completely finished per week, and then once the songs were rehearsed to a high enough standard, we rehearsed our entire set list and then brought our practice from pods to the stage, to focus on our stage presence. I definitely believe that in the running up to our Christmas gig, every band member was focused, organised and professional in their attitude; we all really want to do well.

The song writing process:

All three of our songs were written in a team effort. We all equally put the same amount of work into the songs and into our individual instrumentation. Everything we have done so far in the band has been a diplomatic process. The first song we wrote was “Conscience Alley”, then we had two more ideas for a 60’s jazz song, and an 80’s pop song, which we ended up moving aside because none of us were feeling like we were getting anywhere with it. We then wrote “Lesson Learnt” and finally, “Deeper shade”. I think as almost everyone in the band has been in external bands outside of college, we all have quite high expectations of the music we create. We wanted to make sure that every song we wrote, you could imagine listening to on Spotify or at parties, which is why I believe it took us longer to write each song. All three original compositions evolved how I expected them to. I am expecting our song writing to be even better next term.

Stage Movement:

As we are a pop-funk band, we aim for each of our performances to be high energy for both us as performers and the audience, but we also want to maintain a natural groove to our movement and music itself. A band that definitely inspired our stage movement was Vulfpeck. We all enjoy their music and throughout our rehearsals we looked at videos of them performing live. In the videos, we noticed that they always look like they are having fun, but it doesn’t look animated; it looks very natural. That’s what we wanted to do. I definitely think we achieved this, looking back at our gig video. Rehearsing on stage in the weeks prior to our gig helped this significantly. Although our stage movement had a natural groove to it, I feel as though we could have interacted with each other a lot more on stage, then the atmosphere would have really been electric, rather than just exciting. I think for our next performance, Ellie and I need to look at each other more when singing, Leila could move the headstock on her bass and move around a little more, and Will could come to the front of the stage for when he plays his guitar solos. Here is a clip of Vulfpeck performing live:

Independent Learning Process:

The strategies that I implemented when learning my parts for each song, was mostly learning each song by ear. Will would play a chord on guitar, and I would listen to it and copy it onto piano, or Leila would play a bass riff and I would listen to it and make up a melody to play with it on piano which harmonised with it. Each time we wrote a new song, I would go home and rehearse it on my piano until I could play it with my eyes closed. I feel as though I organised my independent learning time effectively and learnt my parts to a high standard. I feel as though my time management was effective and my performance reflected how well-rehearsed and confident I was. As previously stated, I think for future performances, I feel our band and interaction needs to increase.

Gig Preparation – Style and Identity:

As we are a pop- funk band, our identity and logo is vibrant and colourful. Our logo is a rubix cube as it is a nostalgic image, but we have changed the original colours on it to pastel colours. This is putting a modern twist on something seen as vintage. That’s what we are trying to do with our music. Our identity is significantly influenced by a band from Brighton called Black Honey. Their style is vibrant vintage and each band member colour coordinates with each other really well. Our style is stripes and bright colours. Myself, Leila, Jack and Will, wore a bright striped top and Ellie wore a bright purple top to stand out as the front person of our band. Here is a picture of Black Honey:

Gig Preparation – Stage Plans, Spec Techs, Setlists:

As well as writing the songs, it was a diplomatic process in creating our stage plan, spec techs and set lists which we created in our academic lessons. We all worked as a team to design our stage plan and to decide on our set list. Here is a picture of the stage plan we created not only for our Christmas gig, but for gigs in the future too:

We decided that we were going to do our set list in this order: Conscience Alley, Deeper Shade, Lesson Learnt. Conscience Alley is a high energy song as well as a crowd pleaser. The first years covered this song during our song swap challenge, so we decided that we had to start off the set with a banger. Then deeper shade for our middle set song, as this is an R&B slow song, it is perfect for something in between high energy songs. Then finally, Lesson Learnt, which is another high energy pop-funk song, with scat singing, guitar and drum solos. This ensured that our set begun and ended fantastically.

Conscience Alley:

Conscience Alley is a pop-funk song about making decisions when your drunk. It is a high energy, crowd pleaser, with vocal and instrumental harmonies, bass and guitar solos and funky drum fills. I personally was most confident about performing this song, as we had rehearsed it so much and performed during our street performing sessions and in our specialist techniques workshops. Looking back at the gig video, I think this performance went brilliantly. We played in time with one another and we played all of our parts right. The audience were enjoying the performance and so were we. I had never felt so confident on stage. I would say that the only improvement for this performance is to increase band interaction. So, during the bass and guitar solo, perhaps Leila and Will can come to the front of the stage to play, and then perhaps on my solo verse, I could come out from behind the keyboard to the front of the stage and sing with Ellie. I feel we could look at each other more and maybe even dance on stage.

Deeper Shade:

Deeper Shade is a slow soulful R&B song, about imagining the future with someone you are deeply in love with. It is quite a simple song consisting of 6 main chords, a basic bassline, drumbeat and vocal harmonies as well as a guitar solo during the second verse. This is our most recently written song, but I wasn’t nervous about performing it as we had rehearsed it several times on stage prior to our gig. Looking back at the gig video, I think that there are a few improvements to be made on this song more than our other songs. Firstly, my microphone was too loud during this performance, I was supposed to sing harmonies on the chorus subtly, however this was not the case. I feel, although I sang well, my voice was quite overpowering during the chorus. Before the final verse and chorus of the song, there was supposed to be a build-up back into the verse which went really wrong, although we rehearsed it many times. It was supposed to start with guitar and then piano was supposed to filter into it. However, some of us got so into the song that we forgot what we were playing. I started to play the chord to go back into the verse and nobody else joined in with me, so we had to start it again. I think rehearsing it more will iron this crease out. Apart from those two things, we played in time with one another, and the tones of both the vocals and instrumentation sounded fantastic. I was expecting maybe before or after this song, for Ellie to introduce our band and perhaps advise the audience to follow our social media, as we had been advertising the gig quite a lot, but that didn’t happen. For our next gig this needs to happen.

Lesson Learnt:

Much like conscience alley, Lesson Learnt is a high energy, pop-funk song about reflecting on someone who was once toxic in your life. This song includes scat singing, a guitar solo, harmonies and much more. I think this was the best performed song out of our whole set. The levels of the instrumentation were almost perfect, (although the piano could have been up a bit), we were confident and grooving to the song. We have rehearsed this song so much, I am pretty sure we could play it with our eyes closed. Again, as we know the song so well now, we really need to start working on stage presence and band interaction. I think for my scat singing solo, I need to step out from behind the piano to the front of the stage and really give it my all when I’m singing. I am used to being a lead singer, but in this band it is different, so when I do get the chance to sing, I want to showcase my talent and full potential.

One band which I am taking inspiration from for our next performance is Shakey Jake. They included the audience during a call and response section in their song, they introduced each song and the band members individually, had great chemistry and interaction and at the end of their final song, they reintroduced the band through the beat of the song which I thought was a really nice personal touch to the song.

I feel as though personally, and as an ensemble, we are ready to start performing external gigs outside of college. We all invited family members and friends and have already started planning for our O2 gig in May, in which we will promote with our social media, logos and posters.

For our future gigs, we are going to work mainly on band interaction on stage and hyping up the audience/s.