Genre Change Up Challenge

For this specialist techniques challenge, our task was to find a song that the entire band knew, and to completely change the genre of it, including the time signature. For our induction gig, we covered "Fuck Me Pumps" by Amy Winehouse, which is a soulful pop song, so as we all knew this song, we decided to change its genre to indie/rock. Big mistake.

The original version of "Fuck Me Pumps" is in a 4/4 time signature, with a soulful melody and tone on all the instruments. We changed the time signature to 6/8 and therefore sped up all the instrumentation, including changed the tone on the guitar and changing the soft, soulful vocals to raspy, more edgy vocals. As I am mainly a soul/funk/jazz singer, I found it difficult to sing in an indie/rock style, so Ellie decided to take lead vocals for the song. From that, I didn't have anything to do, so I played the melody lightly on piano underneath the song. And I am certain I got that wrong.

I wouldn't say that this task allowed me to develop any new skills, as I didn't really do much but listen to the melody and to try and copy it. It also didn't help that I really don't enjoy specialist techniques sessions, so when we do these sessions, I won't ever be satisfied with the outcome.

I personally don't think that this has helped us with writing our own original material, because in our band, we all discuss the sound we want to try and create, and we continue to write instrumentation and lyrics from there. But this challenge has taught me to perhaps step out of my comfort zone and sing something that isn't soulful for once to see what happens.

The video of the challenge is up above.