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.
What my band did before playing the song was picking the song because we had to do one trad Latin and the other a cover of a song in Latin song. ''We'' decided on Smooth by Santana for the first song so we all had to go away and learn it, I just had to learn lyrics for this one.
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.
I just had to listen to the song over and over because no English lyrics were allowed in the performance and for the cover I had a Clave so I just came up with a beat that matched the song well.
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.
Percussion wise for the cover the clave really did give the song a more Latin sound. For Smooth I just had a verse and obviously sang the chorus' with the other singers so there wasn't much to add.
What role did you take in the band? E.g. musical director/workshop leader; taking sectionals; taking direction; responding to feedback
For once I took a leadership roll because my band was really in a foggy place with our cover song, originally we were going to do American Honky Tonk but we just couldn't come up with anything together so I said lets go back to the drawing board and thats when we landed on Sun is Shining by Bob Marley. It was still a struggle so I said to put away the electric guitar because it was just too powerful for the song and we wanted in piano and bass lead like Latin music. The rest of us picked up a piece of percussion besides the lead singer. I did have to heard the pack a lot so we could actually focus and get somewhere and it really did pay off in the end although not perfect we had something to present.
Rehearsal and development
What kind of performance situation was this? (Rehearsal, gig, recording, video shoot, audition etc.)
We were tasked to perform 2 songs one Trad Latin song and one cover of a song we have already done but in the Latin style. We were only allowed chords and lyrics if they were in Spanish, we would have 3 days to practice then perform both songs live with the class watching. We also all needed improvised solos.
What were the stylistic traits for the other players/instruments in your band
The piano was played short and spikey for a dramatic sound, bass was heavy carrying the songs throughout. For the cover we all carried the beat with percussion and made the song very percussion heavy.
How did you decide on your aims and objectives?
It was a ''democracy'' on the songs we had to do but some band members already had their eyes on Smooth so we went with it. As a band we didn't really pick our song but we just selected one that hadn't been taken by other bands. We all decided to learn the Trad song first then on our next lesson focus on our cover so the trad song we had to go home and learn.
Give two examples of how you listened to each others opinions
I listened to the band member who said that the singers should pick up a piece of percussion to make the song sound more full. Because an incident happened that cut our bands rehearsal I hadn't sorted out my solo so I listened to my other fellow singer who said just spice up your regular verse so I just did that and it was improvised.
How did you decide on order of solos, cues, key, lyrics, arrangement and improvisation?
We all just had the mentality if there's a gap just claim a solo spot. The singers just gave me my verse in Smooth because I wasn't too bothered about which part it was.
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