Evaluation and Reflection

My intitial thoughts on this project were the obvious "what song am I going to choose to perform and who am I going to choose to perform it with". I decided to perform "Use Somebody" by Kings of Leon and quickly decided to play it with Jaime smith (drums), Kai Hawden (bass) and Brock Charlesworth (lead guitar) with me on rhythm guitar and vocals. My main goals ofcourse were to make the overall piece as tight and uniform as possible and also finding a nice vocal tone to suit the sound we were going to make. I planned on achieving these goals by practicing as often as possible every tuesday (while fitting enough time in order to service the other bands that i would be helping out with) keeping record off our progression by taking videos and consistantly feedbacking information to eachother in order to share our ideas on what could potentially improve the song. The main change in the piece came later on around the 4th-5th week where I decided to swap out brock for Jacob on lead guitar as he could also do back up vocals and already knew the lead guitar.

Rehearsal time was spent wasting no time noodling or talking about stuff outside of the project as we simply literally didn't have the time to focus on anything else. This time was very prescious to us and we needed to make the most out of every second of practice. The main feebacking before swapping out Brock before Jacob was that our mix sounded incredibly empty without a prominant lead guitar to cut through the mix. The way we countered this was by sitting down and sorting out our guitar tones together so that we could compare and make two seperate tones that mixed well with eachother. The constant feeback and talk between eachother and how we could improve our piece was the main motivation for just pushing through and repeating back to back run throughs of the same song to the point of insanity. Our performance in the end developed from a empty, unsure mess to a warm full mix with prominant lead guitar and colourful vocal double ups.

I am very satisfied with my chosen performance in the final show and think most everything all the musicians I worked with on this song in particular did a great job paying homage to the original as closely as possible. I think the clean/slightly crunchy tone I made on my guitar for this song using the HX stomps was very fitting and suitable and was buried nicely within the overall mix. Jacobs lead tone cut through the overall mix quite prominantly similar to the KoL (Kings Of Leon) song and was played very comfortably and natural and sounded lovely in the theatre. The drums were very easy to play along to staying briskly in pocket with every other instrument for the majority of the song, although the snare drum could have used more of a beating as it proved to be quite quiet at times. Overall im very satisfied with the sound of my piece as I think all the instruments blended nicely in the mix. I had Jacob implement some backing vocals just as simple double up's to give the vocals some more heft leading into the chorus during the build up's. If I could go back and improve something in the performance it would be my overall stage presence. Despite being a relatively calmer song, I was thrown off a little bit at the start as my stomp malfunctioned a bit switching over to a different patch which I was able to correct quickly. Although I was slightly dynamicaly thrown off in the beginning of the song, I managed to move around a little bit more lively nearing the ending climax of the song before ending in the calm fashion that it does.

Going back to the stomp tone, I didnt really spend too much time on it as it is a relatively simple clean tone with just a slightly added crunch to give it a little more sting. I did this by using the Badonk amp head partnered with just one of the random Line 6 Cali IV cabinet. I arranged the EQ to have slightly boosted lower and middle frequencies and left the higher frequencies alone to get a warmer rumblier tone. Although I originally planned to just have one tone for this song, I did create a second channel by just copying and pasting the same tone and slightly boosting the gain on the cabinet as well as boosting the drive on the Blues drive pedal.

Apart from my own song, I collaborated with many other musicians and bands including 10 other performances. I used these performances to get as used the stage as possible and get a real feel for different instrumental roles and areas while gigging. For example, I was able to enhance my stage dynamics and run and jump around the stage when playing "scream" (Brocks song) because I didnt have the weight of a guitar or bass doing only vocals for the song. This way I was able to interact with the other members of the band and make full use of the stage layout and scaffolding. The only performance that I know was not fully perpared for this gig was Lewis's song "Purple Haze". This is due to the fact that Lewis had only got in touch with people the week before the final show to help him with his song. The structure of the song was only established after the run through in the theatre about 2 hours before the actual show. Having known the song previously, we managed to string together the song pretty comfortably and did a decent job at it, although I didnt really have an accurate tone prepared on the stomps.

Posters and social media post on my personal account as well as band accounts were made leading up to the event. Physical posters and advertisements a raffle for real prices were also spread around the college to intise people to come for even more than just music. Communication before the show and after were cruciall to putting together a successfull show that was both tight, efficient and scheduled. Setting up speakers and DI boxes that were labled according to the channels that they were lined into the PA mixer, Moving amps and cymbals from the new block into the theatre by passing the access cards around and live sound testing while setting up the lighting panel all required coordinated communication up and down the theatre. Noodling around and people just stood around wasnt too much of an issue in this instance but when someone was caught messing around or just doing nothing a quick reminder to get back to sorting out the theatre was all that was required. Besided from that everything from the setup to getting on and off stage ran incredbly smoothly.

I was involved in setting up the lighting penal and stage monitors as well as the speaker from each side of the stage. A majority of the early hours was spent with Ashton moving drum equipment in and out of the theatre as well as properly setting up the double kicks which I remember took a while as this particular double kick required allen keys awkwardly. I noticed someone trying to tune one of the reso heads for the drum kit and went over to help show them how to tune up each lug evenly and with enough slack to avoid getting a tonne of tone passing through.

I think the main thing I improved on during this project was my technical knowladge as well as getting used to the stomp pedals which proved alot more efficient than using regular combo amplifiers and stacks. This is good as we will most likely being using these for the remainder of our course. I am more familiar with the PA and controlling the channels and EQ knobs which will help with my band outside of college.