Individual Practice and Preparation - Show Me

Individual practice and preparation  

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 listening to the song we split off into 2 different bands and there was quite a few people in the class who wanted to do Show Me by Bruno Mars so they were put in a group and I ended up in that group. We all sat down together and listened to the song and picked apart all the different instruments and assigned roles.

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. 

- To prepare I learned how to work the G8 because that was my instrument, I had to learn how to change the sound to a steel drum sound because that was what I was supposed to be. I saw my teacher to the melody once and just learnt from that so when we had to practice I had to just get the timing right because the melody was quite simple.

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. 

- Honestly I could've done singing again but I just wanted to help make the song sound as good as possible so I volunteered to do the steel drum. Even though I wasn't confident with it I just stuck it out and once I learnt it and how to position my hands on the Nord I was fine.

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

- With the task we were given it was all about team work so no one was necessarily a ''leader'', we all just learnt our own parts and put it all together. 

 < This is the chorus (instruments)

 < This is the intro (instruments)

Show me 1.m4a < This is a snippet of our Acapella version.

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

- We were split into 3 bands and had to learn a reggae song both with instruments and acapella which would be presented to the other bands. We had to send a recording of our acapella version to our teacher and when presented we had to talk about each instrument we were and the elements it had.

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

My steel drum part was in the mixolydian scale, the bass was heavy playing the main riff, the synth was syncopated, the backup singers only sang in chorus and bridge. The guitar was playing syncopated strums, the main vocalist has little riffs and runs.

How did you decide on your aims and objectives? 

When we first got the song on he first day we all decided first we were going to learn the acapella version so we assigned parts and gave it a go, we all said at the end of that practice that we needed the instrumental parts learnt for our next practice so everyone had to go home and learn it. When we finished practicing with our instruments we knew we needed to get the acapella version recorded so we did that then at the end of the lesson we decided to run through what it would be like when we were presenting tomorrow so we all discussed our elements and our backup singer talked over our acapella version talking about the different elements then we'd all come in for a chorus.

Give two examples of how you listened to each others opinions 

Firstly I listened to my teachers opinion because we had an actual steel drum and I wanted to use it but he said it wasn't the right key for the song and that I should use the G8 instead. I also asked for one of my band mates opinion on if in the acapella version I should sing "Ba bum bum'' or ''Ba dum dum" and he said the ''dum'' sounded better so that's what I did.

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

Because we were just doing the original version there was nothing to decide besides who is on what instruments. We gave the lead vocals to the member who really wanted to do this song because it was only fair to give that to her.