For communication to be easier when contacting the band and tech team, I decided to make WhatsApp group chats for each team. In the band group chat, I discussed the timeline and created polls to ask when everyone is able to have band practices and at what time so that I could plan rehearsals and book studios in advance.
Since this was just before the Easter break, we weren’t able to book the studios to practice with the full band – the drummer doesn’t have his own drum kit to practice on and the only drum kits that are accessible to us are the ones in the uni studios. Instead, I asked one of the band members, Nico, if we could practice at her flat since she has an SM58, electric guitars, bass guitars and keyboards that we can practise with.
REH ON APRIL 11TH
- This rehearsal was at Nico’s flat, since it was during the Easter break and therefore didn’t have access to the uni studios to practise.
- Not much was achieved during this rehearsal, since the original songs that were to be performed were still not finished, so we were still figuring out these compositions
- Our drummer, Rei was not able to attend this rehearsal, but I didn’t see this as an issue since we had no accessible drum kit
- At this point, Nico had created a new version of the song “token”, being more within the jazz genre, which was presented to the artist, Laiara
- We all agreed that this version of token was good to be performed on recording day
- Since this is a new version of token, Justin had to learn the new chords on the guitar
- Since I only said for this rehearsal to be 2 hours, after the 2 hours had passed, I realised this was not enough time to do a proper rehearsal
- With Justin learning the new chords of token, the band didn’t get to practise at all together, therefore Rex not doing anything during this scheduled rehearsal
REH ON APRIL 15TH
- This rehearsal was also done in Nico’s flat, but with no drummer or sax player
- Since the band didn’t go through anything in the previous band practice, I was keen on having practiced at least two of the songs that will be performed
- With the other original songs not being fully finished and token being the only one mostly finished, I wanted the band to focus more on rehearsing token
- I have revised the set list for the performance a few times since Laiara’s original songs kept changing, but at this point of the project, the current set list is: a cover of “help yourself” by Amy Winehouse, then original songs “token”, “meet you now”, “love of your life” and “pay it forward”.
- “token” is the song that has been practised the most, so I am more confident in this song being performed
- The artist is still unsure about what instruments are needed for “meet you now”
- “love of your life” is another incomplete song, which has not been played to the band either, and all we know is that the main instrument for this song is the bass guitar
- “pay it forward” has the main instrument of the keys, but the chords and the bpm for this song have been changed a number of times as well
- A lot of the songs are still incomplete by this point, which makes me unsure on how the actual performance will turn out
- Unlike the original songs that were incomplete, doing the cover of an already released song made it a lot easier to practise for the musicians
- This rehearsal was also scheduled to be 2 hours long, since some of the musicians had plans right after, so with this time crunch, I pushed going through the songs as much as they could