Individual practice and preparation - Mack The Knife

 Individual practice and preparation = Mack the Knife (Elle Fitzgerald version)

What practical preparation do you do before playing the song? E.g. sourced lead sheets, tabs, chord charts or notation; listened to songs on playlists; notated/learnt riffs by ear; selected correct equipment; took care of your voice with correct warm-up; made sure parts were allocated sensibly by instrument/ability etc.

- Before the performance of Mack the Knife I listened to the version we were told to do which is Elle Fitzgerald's version. I tried to work on my use of vibrato which isn't very easy for me however for the jazz style it is quite useful to make it sound more authentic. Originally my band had chosen to do Bebop before we changed our style to Trad so I listened to a playlist of Bebop jazz songs.

What musical preparation did you do? E.g. learning appropriate scales, riffs or rhythms; technical exercises to develop accuracy/speed; tone production; recording yourself and checking against original recordings.

- In Elle Fitzgerald's version of the song she forgets the lyrics and we had to perform the correct version of the song so that meant I had to look up how the rest of the song sounded. I looked at Bobby Darin's version, the difficult part about it though is that it is in a different key.

How did you help to develop the song? E.g. working out chords and harmonies from lead sheets; exploring different chord voicings; practicing improvisation and solos; writing parts, lyrics, arrangement ideas and working out stylistic textures.

- As a singer in my band, I experimented with scatting and imitation because jazz is known for improvisation so I wanted to try replicate that vocally, which I do think it sounded fuller. However I could've done more and got more experimental.

What role did you take in the band? E.g. musical director/workshop leader; taking sectionals; taking direction; responding to feedback

- Again in this band I didn't take on a specific role, I agreed on practicing in my own time with my band and I made sure I pushed moments where we could be practicing in the moment. My band was very collaborative and we were all on the same page for this task.

Rehearsal and development 

< This is my band practicing the original version.

1758796023888_original-986ef168-150e-47ac-a5a4-344d518bb168.mp4 - This is a video of me and my band practicing the "Trad Jazz" version, where we got our teacher Paul to play his trumpet in the song for us.

< This is a video of my band talking about what elements are in Trad Jazz.

What kind of performance situation was this? (Rehearsal, gig, recording, video shoot, audition etc.)

- This was a in-class performance, we were split into bands to perform Elle Fitzgerald's version of Mack the Knife and our own version in a different jazz sub-genre. This was getting recorded and we had to do a short presentation on how we changed it.

What were the stylistic traits for the other players/instruments in your band

- The vocalists tried to do harmonies and scatting, the guitarist played finger plucked chords, the drummer used brushes instead of sticks for a softer sound, we had the pianist play the chords and improvise some notes in the trad jazz version, the bassist did a walking bass line playing chromatic notes to walk up to the tonic.

How did you decide on your aims and objectives?

- We all collectively decided get the original song down in the first rehearsal, the singers split the verses so we all got 2 each, we all decided we needed piano in this task so although our pianist was unsure on doing it he gave it a go. Originally we were going to do Bebop but when we all listened to it because it is mostly is horn lead we all decided against it and then the only option left was Trad Jazz.

Give two examples of how you listened to each others' opinions

- We all listened to the opinion of our teacher who said it wasn't really Trad Jazz and it was more Ballad, we did attempt to change it with more improv and scatting but it came off the same in the performance. I had to listen to the opinions of my other singers a lot because the song gets higher after each verse meaning it was hard to find the right note so we all had to help each other.

How did you decide on order of solos, cues, key, lyrics, arrangement and improvisation?

- We decided on order of Solo's for singing mutually we all wanted the parts we got in the end, we also decided on who could open and close the songs so like the drummer did a light roll at the start of the original song and the bassist opened our song in the Trad Jazz version. The lyrics where on us singers to learn ourselves and go research into how the real lyrics sounded like. We all decided we needed to improvise between us because that is one of the foundations of jazz.