Untitled

Green Onions - Booker T & The MG's 

The song Green Onions is based around a 12 bar blues in the key of F minor and is in the time signature of 4/4 with the chord sequence of I,IV,V. The structure of the song goes intro, head, organ solo, guitar solo, organ solo, head/outro. 

The intro of the song is made up of four bars with stepped hi hat playing on beats 2 and 4 and the organ playing around the first chord of the F minor scale. 

After the intro, the song goes into the head and is signified by an electric guitar stab. These stabs happen in between beats 4 and 1 for the next 12 bars. From when that first stab happens at the start, the bass guitar comes in looping round the I,IV,V chord sequence along with the organ whilst the drums come in with a straight 4/4 beat alternating the bass drum and snare hits with the bass drum hits falling on beats 1 and 3 whilst the snare hits are on 2 and 4 with the stepped hi hat. At the start of the head and throughout the rest of the song the drums stay the same.  

In the next part of the song which is the organ solo, the guitar joins the bass on the I,IV,V sequence whilst all the other instruments stay the same. The organ plays a solo following the I,IV,V pattern for 12 bars which is played round twice and then changes back to what it was playing in the head. Afterwards, the guitar starts to do small phrases on every bar over beats 4 and the 1 on the next bar. This carries on for 12 bars as well which is also played round twice. In the next solo it goes back to the organ again after the guitar section and the guitar drops back to following the bass whilst the organ is doing another solo that sounds similar to the one before keeping the ideas the same around that I,IV,V pattern for a total of 12 bars that is again played twice round. 

For the last section of the piece, the music goes back to the head but this time only staying on chord one whilst the guitar is playing small licks. 

In the FMP i had to make musical decisions mainly for the acoustic band i was in i.e. what drum beats i should create for this piece of music or if i think a certain idea would be better than another one etc. The first decisions i started to make was if i were going to use sticks, mallets, hot rods, brushes or a mixture of all or some of it for playing the music in my band. These decisions were based on how i felt the sound of the drums should be/feel for each piece of music we created. Therefore, for some of the music we created i would use my mallets to give the piece a softer sound/tone to it or i would use my sticks and hit softly or hit hard if i wanted to bring impact to the song. It turned out in the end i only switched between my mallets and sticks as that was what i felt the music needed. I didn't think that i really needed to use my brushes, hot rods or any other kind of sticks because on certain pieces of music it wouldn't of worked because that wouldn't of made the right sound i would of liked. 

Another decision i made regarding the music, was to change the drum beat in our own version of  Bitter Sweet Symphony because i didn't want our version to sound too similar to the original record. I changed the drum beat slightly by adding a shuffle beat on the hi hat to keep the music at a slower steady pace and to make sure the music wouldn't be rushed in anyway by other musicians so the idea of our version would be very relaxed for the audience. This idea worked because i kept the bass drum and snare drum patterns the same as the original song so all the music still worked well and sounded as if we were playing the actual song but at a slower pace. 

In the FMP i hadn't really made a lot of musical decisions as people had their own ideas and knew what they wanted to do with them. Therefore, i didn't have much input because i felt like if i would try to voice my opinion people would disagree with it or not be bothered to test out the ideas i would put forward because they wouldn't think they would work. 

Piece 1

For my first piece of music i chose the song Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder to play on the drum kit. The track was published in the year 1977 when it came out on the album "Songs in the Key Of Life". 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sIjSNTS7Fs  1:07

I chose this song to do as one of my audition pieces because i feel it has such a great vibe to it when playing the song. I also chose this piece in particular because the genre of the track is Funk, R&B, Disco and you can easily get into the groove of the track when sitting behind the drum kit in my opinion. 

When i chose this piece to play as one of my audition pieces it was fairly simple for me as i already knew the track well and i just had to brush up on a certain part which is just after the chorus's before it goes back into the verses of the song. For this section i have to get the groove of the open hi hats correctly in time with the bass drum hits as the bass drum hits are on every beat and the hi hats are played continuously throughout that section. If you want to listen to this part of the song it happens at 1:07 on the video of the link above. I managed to overcome this though by keep practicing the section over and over in the song and i managed to get it after a few attempts. 

I feel the song worked as an audition piece for me as when learning the piece it did challenge me but i also had fun playing the track and because i practiced it a lot, i was able to keep the groove going with a steady beat whilst improvising with my own fills on parts of the song because i knew the song that well.

If i had to do this song again i would approach it differently by thinking, what other style of beat could i take from another genre that would work on parts of the song, could i possibly play the song with brushes, hot rods or any other kinds of sticks to give the song a unique groove to the track, or maybe even start the song with a drum solo that would be based around the main beat from the track so you wouldn't lose that funky vibe you get from the song when you're about to play the track to your audience. These are the different possibilities i would look into and try out to see what would work and what wouldn't work within or around the song. 

Piece 2

For my second piece of music i chose the song Magic by Coldplay to sing. The track was published in the year 2014 when it came out on the album Ghost Stories. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PvBc2TOpE4    3:38 

I chose this song to do as one of my audition pieces because i don't generally sing and my main instrument is the drums so it's a big challenge for me straight away by trying to do something i'm not used to doing. I decided to choose this song because i knew i would be comfortable singing it and i really like the song as the tempo isn't too fast and the track is nice and mellow. Furthermore, i think it's a good contrasting song to my other choice of audition piece because it is a different genre of music which is pop. 

When learning the song, i found it not too hard for me as i could reach most of the notes in the song when singing the lyrics. However, i did struggle remembering what high note i had to pitch to when going into the choruses and the bridge as i had to go into falsetto for the bridge. Therefore, i had to practice the song quite a lot to remember the lyrics and to practice the quick change to the high notes. Another part of the song i did struggle a bit with is the second line on the last verse as you sing a couple of words quickly before singing the rest of that line to go in time with the music. If you want to listen to the part i mean it happens at 3:38 on the video of the link above. I managed to do the parts i was stuck on though by keep on practicing them though and after a few try's i got there eventually. 

I think the song worked as an audition piece for me because i had confidence at trying something new and it put me out of my comfort zone.

If i had to perform this song again i might try and change it to suit my voice better as i feel that i tried to copy the song too much, try the song in a different key or even try to put my own style on it by changing particular notes or holding on notes for longer or making them shorter. 

Piece 3 

For my final piece i thought i would choose a song that was very challenging for me on the drums and different from your usual pop music so i chose a track called Sing Sing Sing by Benny Goodman in which he plays with a Big Band. Sing Sing Sing came out in the year 1935 originally written by Louis Prima but Benny Goodman did an instrumental cover of the song which became famous at the time as well. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2S1I_ien6A

I chose this song to do as my final piece because it's such a big piece of music with all the instrumentation that's going on throughout the whole song. I also really enjoy playing the song too as it's a very hard piece to play, you can quite easily make the song your own and i think that it's got such a great exciting vibe to it when playing the song. 

When learning the song it was quite hard at first as you have to get used to alternating between the bass drum and stepped hi hat as that is played throughout most of the track. It did take me a while to get used to alternating between the foot pedals as well as playing a rhythm across the toms with accents but i managed to play it in the end. I also like this track because you can change the rhythm of the toms and make it your own or you can put the rhythm your doing with your hands on the snare if you'd like.

I'm pleased i chose to do this track as my final piece and i think it's a good contrasting piece compared to the other two audition pieces as it is a different genre and is played with a big band and not a usual 3/4/5 piece band. 

I thought the Fmp was successful because we managed to put on a reasonable show to an audience and had sold out the first night so there was no tickets left. Secondly, i think it worked well as the music came together well with the story of the three characters that was getting shown on the big screen behind all of us musicians as the music portrayed the story well. For example, the band i was in played soft mellow music that changed into more of an up beat piece. This was to show that in a particular scene that we had worked on, our character was having an enjoyable morning with plenty of time to get ready for the day ahead.

However, i don't think our Fmp was no where near as great as what it could have been for our last ever show. This is because lots of people had lots of different ideas that sounded great but none of them got done as i feel everyone wasn't pulling their weight to make the show to the highest standard it could have been and a lot of people didn't really seem to care or have the enthusiasm for it to be pushed to a high quality. I think a lot of people felt like this because of some were fed up of others not trying certain ideas out or people saying no to doing other people's ideas without even trying them first. I think the way the idea of the show came across to most musicians as well about making music to three individual characters, certain people believed it was down to each band that revolved around that one character they were working on to do the work for that one character only and that wasn't necessarily the case. I'm not sure if this happened due to the lack of explanation about making music to the one character or more or if it was because of the process on how to go about rehearsing and making the music. 

Furthermore, it doesn't only come down to the musicians that made it a success or not it also comes down to the lighting/technical teams and the sound engineers for the whole show as i feel that the other teams were no way near to the standard i would of liked them to be as i feel the lighting team did a bad job of our lights. For example at certain times of our show it was almost pitch black and we would still be playing on stage and there were no lights on the particular musicians that were playing on stage, they would sometimes get ques wrong on certain parts of our show when to turn on and off certain lights on parts of the stage and they did not seem to have much of an idea at all for our whole show as i personally think that they could of used more mood lighting to set the scenes better and to make the performance look more outstanding by using certain lights at the right times. 

I think the set design team could of done a much better job too as i feel that where part of the stage was placed (i.e. the stage i was on) they did not seem to think of the fire exit clearance as my drum kit had to be crammed right in the corner of the stage i was on for people to get to the fire exit if needed. This resulted in half of my drum kit falling almost off the stage and falling to an angle on apart of the show as i was given no where near enough room for a drum kit to be placed and instead of feeling like i was doing a live performance to an audience i felt as if i was doing more of a theatre show and i was stuck in a pit behind some guitar amps. Therefore i could barely be seen on stage to an audience. 

Moreover, i think the sound team did a terrible job too as i wasn't even given a monitor to be able to hear other musicians on stage and instead i was given a front of house speaker that was placed almost right next to my ear which you would believe would be better but wasn't as every time i put my ear closer to it to be able to hear what was going on on the stage i could barely hear anything coming out of the speaker at all. This was rubbish as it made me play out of time on particular pieces and made me seem terrible when it wasn't my fault at all as i couldn't hear everything on stage that i needed to hear and was down to guess work sometimes which it shouldn't have been. Another point i'd like to make about the sound team is that i feel that they could not do their job properly because on one of the shows that we had done the front of house speakers were turned off for the whole show and the audience could only hear our music through other monitors that were placed on our stage. Therefore, the sound team should of realized this before the show even started so that the performance would of came across a lot better to our audience and on pieces of music bands were playing on, certain musicians couldn't even hear themselves or hear other people so others had the same problem as me and it wasn't just me who had this problem. 

If we was able to change certain things about the process or idea of the FMP i would of first said keep the idea of the show as i think that was a brilliant idea about using three different characters. However, i would of liked to see everyone playing on each piece of music on most parts of the show as a lot of the time when it was a particular band playing for the character they had to make music for, there was hardly anyone else playing with that band for that character. I would of also said that we should of had more rehearsals indeed and explained to us clearer of what we had to rehearse in our rehearsal times that we had as a band.

Moreover, we should of used more unique and unusual ideas in different pieces of our music for example i said about using basketballs or different objects to make different sounds and rhythms out of so that everyone could join in with and i said about possibly using actors/dancers to create a bigger and better performance so we could experiment with them by them doing bits of acting and dancing to make our story come across clearer to our audience as the feedback we got from our audience after our show wasn't brilliant because a lot of the audience didn't understand what our show was about but they said the music was good. 

If i could change anything else about the process of our show as well i would of said for us to move into the space earlier so the other teams would have more time to practice and run things with us musicians. 

Furthermore, we had a green screen that the media team let us use for a couple of days which is where you get a person or a bunch of people to do something in front of it and then put a different background behind them to make the scene look realistic depending on the actions the person or people are doing in front of it or to make the scene look really funny to the audience and i feel that we didn't use it enough as we only had a couple of scenes in our show where the green screen was actually used.

Today we were in the venue at 10 and the majority of people decided that we wasn't going to do the idea of the bomb idea for our FMP as certain people weren't sure where we could go with the idea and most people wanted to change the idea of it as they wanted to do something different so everyone formed a circle and started discussing new ideas we could do with our tutor. A few ideas people had were using the 4 elements like fire, water, earth and wind and to try and make music to the elements. I personally didn't think this was a brilliant idea as it would get too complicated making music to it i thought. A second idea someone came up with was going through the history of music from when it first started up until now so we would make music to the different eras of history and i thought that wasn't a bad idea because you can be as creative as you like with that sort of thing. The last idea someone chose was to base a story plot around a day in a persons life and we could make music to it. After discussing this last idea everyone decided that we can base this story around a person that's on the same course as us. In the end this was the idea everyone chose and we all decided we could base the story around three different peoples lives and the people we would choose to be the three main characters to base our story around would all be on our course so one of the characters we chose was our tutor Tom, Hayden and Josh. 

We then started developing on this idea so we would get film footage from people recording parts of the three main characters lives off of people's phones but only use certain phones that we know would have great cameras.

Later on after coming back from  a break, the few people that came up with this idea about using three different peoples lives as our story line for our show had made up a plot for each of the three characters (whilst having our break) to what they could do during this day of their lives and how it can mix with the other characters in the story.

As there are three different people to base our story around we decided to have three different bands that each individual character could have so for Hayden's band we decided that would be an electronic band so they would use the electronic drum kit, sampling drum pads, a couple of singers, a couple of keyboards with some cool synth sounds/electronic techno sounds on and then they would use various settings on amps to make guitars sound powerful so that they can cut through the sound and use effects like reverb, distortion and settings like that.  

We decided Tom's band would be an acoustic band with cajons, bits of percussion i.e. shakers etc, three vocalists, acoustic guitars/electric guitars but with a clean quiet sound to them, bass guitar and a acoustic drum kit.

For Josh's band we would have an ordinary rock band so there was an acoustic drum kit, vocals, bass guitar and an electric guitar accompanied with piano. 

After deciding what bands each character would be titled under we then had to decide who goes into what band and we did this by getting into groups of who are the drummers, guitarists, vocalists, pianists and anyone who wants to play bass and in these groups we would discuss who wants to go into what band for that individual character. I decided i wanted to be in the acoustic band as Hayden who's a drummer was already in the electronic band as he was one of the characters and the other drummers didn't really mind what band they went into. I decided to go into the acoustic band because i thought it would be unique and give a chance to try something different for a change like bringing in my own cajon into college and playing that or to bring my own mallets, hot rods, brushes and sticks in and find different ways to play a drum kit softly as an acoustic band so this would further my playing. 

After deciding who was in which of the three bands, my group decided to split into smaller groups to find out some ideas we can use for the music we would be making for our character of Tom. 

For my role in the Freshers gig I said I would join the promotion team and help by making the viral video with my friend Josh. This would mean having to go and record something and then edit it. We both decided to do the video for the gig as we thought it would be good fun and could make something good. The video was supposed to be made so people would get an idea of what our gig is going to be about and when and where it is.

To start planning on how to make the video we started talking about some ideas we might want to use as everyone decided to go with the theme of Halloween for the gig so we thought we would need something in the video to do with that.

We then managed to sum up three ideas after talking to each other and our first idea we had in mind was about going into a woods in the evening with a video camera and start recording something like a game called slenderman (which is where some man is dressed in a suit with a white mask and chases someone through the woods) and then by the end of it all we would have someone talking about the dates and times of the gig.

For our second idea, we came up with this idea about going into an abandoned building and bringing a few friends so they could pretend they were in a mental asylum running around screaming and then we would get someone saying the details of the gig during the moment of terror.

We struggled a bit coming up with something for a third choice so we said about making up something around the college a bit like what the last lot of second year musicians did but a lot better so we could then compete about making a better video than theirs by using the idea of the college still and we would still do the same thing as the other two ideas we had by getting someone to say the details of the gig in the video.

We then suggested all three ideas to the other teams that had been made and everyone quite liked our first idea by going into the woods and filming a version of slenderman so me and Josh ended up choosing that idea to work on.

The next thing we started to do was research about this idea of slenderman and see what we could do with this idea in mind. We both decided to just work with each other than taking on individual roles as it would be a lot easier for us to get on with making the video then.

Here are some pictures I was looking at to get an idea

http://wallpapo.com/wp-content/uploads/Slender-Man-Best-Wallpapers.jpg

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/201/b/d/slenderman_by_grox42-d57xijr.png

The evidence of this research was so that we could get a better understanding about this idea of slenderman and what other ideas we might want to incorporate into this idea.

Unfortunately this is as far as I had got to make the video as me and Josh were both struggling  with it as we wasn’t sure who would do all the editing of the video but by the time I had done this research, the people that was making a poster for the gig had done creating it so by this time there were posters going up around college about freshers and a lot of people were spreading the word about the gig anyway so after all of this, there wasn’t much need for us to make a video anyway as the information about the gig and what the gig is going to be like was getting mentioned on the posters anyway and by using word of mouth.

Today we were called in at 10 in the venue and we started working on what we started yesterday which was the song What a wonderful world by Louis Armstrong. Today I was trying to think of new ways in which i could change and mess around with the drumming part on the track to make it more of an interesting piece to play for myself. I started trying to add a couple of fills and changing from the hi hat to the ride cymbal which worked quite well when accompanied by Max playing the chords on the organ. From this point and onwards we had already changed the brass parts on the track onto piano/keyboard anyway so we had already changed the track by doing that. Whilst I was trialling different fills in places and trying new things out on the drums Max our pianist in the group was experimenting with chords by using different sounds, our guitarist was getting to grips with changing from chord to chord as he wasn’t used to this style of chords in a song and our bass player was also getting to grips with learning the song on bass and playing the song with us.

Today I started at 2 in the venue by people in my half of the day showing music to each other so we could get ideas from for our FMP show. Some music that was shown were good ideas of what we could try by using dynamics/eerie music to create the theme of a world that had just been destroyed by a bomb and people coming out of this vault to a desolated world.

Here are some of the tracks that were shown amongst my group:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2VCwBzGdPM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDgPl90_C74

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psJx4rKoCKY

After listening to some music and to some ideas people had about where we could use the music (for example when the survivors come out of the vault) then we split into two groups to go work on pieces of music for the FMP. Our tutor Tom put me in a group and asked us to go learn and work on what a wonderful world by Louis Armstrong in the small rehearsal booth in the venue whilst the other group worked on a piece of music they had to make up in the  venue on the stage.

Today we started at 10 in the venue making sure we knew what we had planned roughly for the FMP was okay with everyone which it was so that was good.

We then started discussing roles of what people wanted to do by going into groups so we can start putting the show together. The options that people had to choose from for the moment were: audio/video, set design and promotion and marketing.

I chose to go into the set design team as I already had a couple of rough ideas in my mind of what we could do with the stage and seating arrangements for example having parts of the stage on wheels so we can move parts of the stage around in the room to make it more interesting and we could move the seating arrangement in the break of the FMP so the audience would have to sit somewhere else in the second half of our show just to change it up a bit and make it different than just having a normal show with one place for the audience to sit and watch the show.

Afterwards, we started to discuss more roles of what each individual person can do within their groups they had just been put into for example I decided to do set design for the inside of the venue as I had them ideas in mind where as other people in the set design group would research and look up pictures or think about how to decorate the venue/corridors of the building.

Later on during the day after discussing everyone’s roles within their teams everyone split themselves into two groups depending on who wanted to be in the morning the next day or who wanted to be in the afternoon and making the halves fair so there would be a fair amount of pianists/singers etc in each halve of the day for the rest of the week so people during the week can start working on bits of music for the FMP. It didn’t really bother me what half of the day I was in so I had been put into the group which was in the afternoon the next day.

Today we started at 10 in the venue again and we had one of our original singers back today as she wasn't in for a couple of days as she was ill. This meant we could run through the song September again but with her and her harmonies among the other two singers we have for the song to see if the harmonies were ok. After running the song the harmonies were fine but we got told by our tutor Tom that our stage presence was brilliant as were all enjoying it but it could be a lot tighter with more practice on the song. 

We also managed to run the song Little Talks again on stage with the other band that i was in and this time i managed to add in the bass drum part that was hitting on every beat on the second verse until the build up in the song which happens at the end of that verse. After running this song it all went fine and this song is finished ready for the gig now but we will still practice it to keep it tight. 

Later on in the afternoon we had our other tutor Marc to help go through and sort out some songs with bands. In the afternoon we went through the songs I wanna dance with somebody and Shake your body on the stage.

The band i was in for I wanna dance with somebody got up on stage to get ready to show Marc a run through of the song for what we had so far. After running the song Marc started helping us with what we needed to change and what needed sorting out as us as a band knew that there needed to be change and maybe something extra but i think we had all just came to a stop in the song where we just wasn't sure what to do. 

Today we started at 10, in the venue running songs again on the stage. We managed to go through the song September today but one of our singers for that song were ill so we had to get in another singer just to cover her for now. When we did the run through of September it was a bit sloppy in places still and wasn't as tight as what it could of been but all we need to do now is just keep running the song on stage just to get it tighter. 

Today we started at 10 in the venue again running through songs. Rhiannon the singer who was in a couple of the songs i was in wasn't in again so our tutor Tom said to all of the singers if they could sort out certain singers to go on certain songs depending on who can do her parts in individual songs just in case she can't manage to do the show for some reason. 

We then decided to run through the song Sex anyway with Iona who was doing backing vocals on the song to do the lead singing just for now as Iona knew the song well anyway so the band for Sex got up on stage and we ran through the song. After running through the song it was ok but messy in places for example doing the ending of the song didn't sound like we had all played it tight enough when i am hitting the crash cymbal and china cymbal. We then ran through the song again and it seemed better this time and the only reason why the song wasn't tight as what we could of was only because of we hadn't ran through the song in a while as other bands had been working on songs on the stage. 

Today we were in the venue at 10 to run through bands songs to see if they were going to be ready for the gig as we have only got this week to see if the songs are tight enough as next week we are running songs with the tech people on sound and lighting people on lights all ready for the show on Friday. 

We couldn't run through the song September or the song Sex as Rhiannon one of the singers wasn't in so we decided to show our tutor Tom the song Dakota that we tried to run through the other day. When we ran through the song it was a little bit messy in places as the transitions in the song from when i go off of the crash cymbal back to the hi hats doing notes called 16th notes were untidy in places for when instruments would go back into the verses as they follow off of the drums for when i do the changes.

Furthermore, we tried it with a different singer as Iona who's on electric guitar couldn't do it and play at the same time so we had asked Jordan if he could do it but he didn't really know the song too well so then we got Liam to sing as he knew the song really well but he was playing chords on the keyboard for the song so we had put Jordan on the keyboard and Liam doing vocals. After running through the song Tom decided to scrap the song as his opinion about it was there's no point in spending time on this song when we could be using that time to spend on more important and bigger songs and we had already forty songs so we still have to scrap around ten as it's too many songs already which is fair enough. 

Later on in the day the band i was in for the song Little Talks  went through it and was really good and sounded fine although we still ran the song a couple of times just to make sure.

Afterwards, the band for Shake Your body ran through the song to see if we could now nail the song and get the stops right in the song after spending almost two hours on it Friday which was exhausting but fun. The band that i am in for this song came on stage to play through the song. We tried a run through of the song and it wasn't too bad it was a lot better than where we had left the song on Friday but the stops in the song where everyone would cut out wasn't tight enough so we tried to go through the song again and the stops were getting tighter and we decided to run through it once more and then we managed to hit the stops which was good. It wasn't to hard to know where the stops was it's just everyone remembering when to stop in the song. 

Today we started at 2 in the venue and we started to go through the songs that need rehearsing on or to start on another song. Tom suggested we go through the song shake your body by Shy FX as some people were talking about doing the song. 

Here is the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89WyX7RRcAo

We managed to make a start on it by using the Khaos pad, the acoustic drum kit, the electric drum kit (that i was playing), the bass guitar and a sub bass sound off of a keyboard. We used two drum kits and a lot of bass as this song comes under the genre of drum and bass. This means that the song uses a lot of drum and bass quite clearly so its good to overpower the song with drum and bass so the audience can get a good vibe off of it. 

Today we started at 10 in the rehearsal booths over in the music block as the first year singers were working in the venue for the first hour and a half. One of the band went into a rehearsal booth straight away and knew what they were working on where as the people left over including me were in another booth figuring out what we should work on as we didn't have some other people that we would need for songs due to them working in the theatre band for the next theatre show and others having to go off to the library to sort out bits and pieces. 

Tom came into our rehearsal booth and asked what we were thinking of working on in the meantime whilst we were wondering what to work on or new song suggestions. Sean our guitarist who we had with us in the booth suggest a song called Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men as the singers we have in the booth sounded very similar to the singers on the track, plus it sound it fairly simple but good to do for the gig. 

Here is the song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghb6eDopW8I

After deciding we were going to do this song we started work on it straight away by listening to it a few time and getting the lyrics up for the singers off of my phone as i had internet on it. After a while of listening to it a few times the band (which included me as the drummer, Sean as our guitarist, Max our keyboard player and Tilly and Dom as the singers) decided to give it a go and see how far we would get with it even though we still need a bassist and someone doing tambourine with clap sound on the snare on the electric kit. We managed to get to the chorus easy enough before having to sort out what came next in the song. We all listened to the song again and found out when to stop and start again in the song and when i would need to build the song back up on the drums to come back in with the choruses.

After figuring this out we had already finished and done the song in no time at all as it was really quite easy but fun to play and Sean knew he guitar parts to it anyway and Max figured out his part on keyboard by using the brass setting and me and him had the same sort of thing where as soon as we knew where the song would stop and start and knew how to play the song that was it, it was ready to be tried out on stage. Once we had finished the song and gone over it a couple of times it was ready to be tried on the stage over in the venue with a bass player and someone on the electric kit doing tambourine as well and by now we had to go over to the venue anyway which was good. 

When we got over to the venue we managed to put Mason on bass guitar for the song who is also with the people on my half of the day. A band went up on stage quickly to run through with one of their songs they had for 5 minutes roughly and then it was our turn to try this new song out with the Mason so he had a few minutes to quickly listen to the bass guitar on the track and see how it went. 

A little while later my band got up on stage ready to try out this song but we wanted to hear the song again just to give us an idea of how it went again and for Mason so he could understand where the stops and starts were in the song. Iona who was watching us on stage decided to jump on the electric kit and do the tambourine whilst doing claps, plus she already knew the song anyway so she was ready to play along with us. 

Today we started at 2 in the venue and one of the bands in my half of the day had already chose to go on stage to sort out one of their songs so there were a few people left including me not sure what to work on off of the stage. Tom asked us what songs we wanted to try and work out or if we wanted to continue with any songs that we had already worked on but everyone wasn't too sure really so Tilly who's a singer asked if we could do the song I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston and Tom started talking about how the second year musicians who have left now tried that last year in one of their gigs but got cut at the last minute before they put on the gig as they had difficulties with it.

However, a few of us including me doing the drums for it of course decided to give it a go so we started to listen to the song in a booth just outside of the venue where it was quiet so we could work out what instruments we would need and how we was going to overcome this challenge as this song is really quite hard to work out all the pieces to within in the song. I started looking at drum covers and listening to how the drums went on the track off of Tom's ipad. I could hear that there were electric drums at the beginning and i had an understanding roughly of how the drums went by now with claps at the beginning being played on the electric kit. 

After just starting to figure out parts for this song i got asked to go on stage to try out the song Wings by Little Mix. The band need for the song Wings got on the stage and we all listened to the song again off of the white board to remember how the song went. We decided we may need anther drummer on the electric kit to do claps for the song as there are a lot of claps in the song and i was already on the acoustic drum kit. We then attempted to play the song with the claps involved and didn't work out too well as it didn't sound right the beat i was doing on the acoustic kit as the song also uses a lot of bass drum and i find it hard to work with the bass drum pedal at college as it is not set up to my liking and what i am used to.