LO4 - Being Able To Perform As A Musical Ensemble

Types of audience: eg peers, friends and family, public

Communication: type eg verbal, physical, musical; with band members; with audience

Stage presentation: image eg costume where appropriate, stage make-up; stage presence and awareness;

use of space eg movement, placing of equipment; sight lines

Musical competency: intonation; instrumental tuning; pitching during performance; tightness; tempo;

handling of section changes; beginnings and endings; technical proficiency; critical listening and response to

ensemble requirements eg balance; sensitivity and dynamics

Performances

The Monarchs

One Step Closer at Gig Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1atpCpkt_o

For this performance the audience that we played to mas mainly classmates/peers and family because it was more of a private event with an entrance fee.

You can see in this video, how Mo (the lead singer) is communicating with the audience whilst tuning his guitar, just making conversation with them so that they don't get bored whilst the rest of the band set up. You can also see how at the end of the performance each member of the band looks at each other to signal when we were going to finish on the final note.

The presentation of the band was just casual, we all decided to dress how we usually would so that it gave our performance more of a casual feel and the overall impression of our band was perceived as laid back. You can see how the band gets more into the song and moving around a lot more inthe outro guitar solo towards the end. We were a lot more limited to the amount of space we could use up in this performance because the stage was quite small so there wasnt too much movement.

The tuning of instruments at the beginning of the video wasnt very good because Mo neded to retune his guitar, fotunately he managed to retune it accturately and the rest of the song sounded in tune. Our overall togetherness as a band was actually quite good because our stops were all together, nobody made any slipups that would effect pauses in the song and we all remembered the song structure. The overall balance of our performance was quite good becuse each part could be heard without any difficulty. The dynamics as a band were quite in sync with eachother as well, we were quieter on the verses and gradually built up in sound in the pre-choruses leading up to the chorus and he guitar solo.

Reverie

Headline slot at Party In The Park


For this perfomance the audience that we played to ranged between all ages, form babies and infants all the way to pensioners. This performance was for an event organised by the local social club in Tilehurst and we played in the local park to the public.

You can see in some parts of the video that we often make eye contact eachother to signal that a different part of the song is coming up, we usually did this when the song was coming to an end. Emma (the lead singer) would often communicate with the audience letting them know the title of the next song we would play so that they know what the song is and what to expect.

The presentation of the band was also just casual wear although the majority of us were wearing sunglasses, mainly because we were faceing towards the sun whilst playing but also for more of an image build. You would also often see me or Emma getting into the song by swaying rhythmically or looking as if we are putting a lot of effort/emoion into our play, this was so that the audience would feed off of our energy and have a better time listening to us. The positions we were in on stage was a fixed position that we decided on for every gig that we play, this was so that the audience can relate to our performance and for personal preference on the bands behalf, for example; I feel more comfortable playing on the right of the thing singer as a pose to playing on he left.

The tempo of each song was fairly acurate throughout the duration of the performance, we didn't noticeably speed up or slow down throughout any of the set. Our tightness o songs such as Lines by Lucy Rose proved how in sync and well practiced we were as a band. The song lines requires a lot of changing time signatures and tempo changes with pauses.  The endeings of the songs is something that we as a band need to work on, you can't really see in the video but we always end up improvising towards the end of the song istead of working out when to actually stop, this could be a real problem because it can start to sound messy and unprofessional. Our balance as a band was relatively good because we had a profession sound technician helping us with levels and the final mix. Our dynamics were also quite good, especially i the song cold blooded by the Pretty Reckless, this is because the song drops in and out of texture constantly throughout making us unintentially change the dynamics to suit the song.

LO3 - Being Able To Develop As A Musical Ensemble

Rehearsal: ways of rehearsing eg personal practice, group rehearsal, sectional; use of equipment; methods

eg use of tempo, use of click track, playing along to pre-recorded music, acapella, use of structure, use of

improvisation

Reflection: eg watching videos of performances, band meetings, practice diaries, rehearsal logs, peer

feedback, audience feedback

Rehearsal

The Monarchs
One Step Closer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXb0vkfwsc0

In the link about there is a video of one of my old bands practicing for an up and coming gig at the Henley Youth Festival. Recorded a rehearsal of us playing One Step Closer so we can watch it back and listen to what we need to improve on and any changes we can make to any of the parts. When listening to the video you can see how we need practice linking the chorus into the third verse.

This video also really helped me out with what I was going to play in my guitar part because I was still working out what I should play in the song. When playing this song whilst recording I was just jamming around different ideas to see what would fit the song best. Luckily I managed to piece a couple licks. This was also a good reference to help me remember the licks I played.

Can You See Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2pMR3fBmDM

Again in the link above we decided to record a rehearsal of one of our songs  to prepare ourselves for an up and coming gig at the Henley Youth Festival. In this rehearsal you can see how we needed to improve on various different things, such as the structure/texture (when each person should come in at which time), the lyrics needed to be revised more because Mo forgot some of the first verse, and we needed to work on our levels and main mix over all as a band because the lead guitar and bass couldn't really be heard very well compared to the vocals, drums and rhythm guitar.

 
This video helped me to remember what I should in the guitar solo parts of the song. The majority of this song for me was quite improvised other than the choruses and I needed a reference to help me remember what I should play for future performance. This video really helped me to pick out different guitar parts that I wanted to include in my actual version of the song.

Emma Charlotte
Black Horse and the Cherry Tree
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDkOccNTTyM

In this link is a video of Me and Will playing as session musicians for the new up and coming solo artist Emma Charlotte who was competing in a singing competition.
This video was made to help us time how long we took playing through the song so we could work out a correct tempo. This video also helped us work out how we could make the vocal part more interesting.
Making this video helped us realise that we were playing the song too slow and in order to get it to fit into Emma's time slot in the competition we needed to speed the song up. This also helped to make the performance more lively for the audience to watch.

Reverie
Lines
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wheykw3ZsGE

In the link above is a video of one of the many practices we did of a Lucy Rose song called Lines. The reason behind this video was so we could monitor how much more we need learn to make the song sound like the original. Despite lacking a bassist and a full scale acoustic drum kit we still managed to pull off a fairly substantial performance of the song. This song is particularly hard because the constant time signature changes and the tempo changes towards the end in the choruses. When listening back to this rehearsal we as a band noticed that it is vital that all of our instruments are perfectly in tune with each other due to the vast amount of octaves that we play throughout the song.

Reflection

In order to get a decent amount of feedback before we play big gigs, the bands I've been in usually play small warm up gigs to see what the crowds reaction would be like to our material. It is also good to get a chance to see what it would be like to perform the songs on the actual night.

Lines (Warm Up Gig)

Here is a photo of Reverie playing at Gig Night in
preparation for the Henley Youth Festival.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7RriDTczvI

In this video Reverie played a last minute gig at Gig Night in preparation for the more popular gig at the Kenton Theatre for the Henley Youth Festival.
This performance helped us to determine how much more practice we needed of the song, what the crowd thought of the song, what we could improve on before the bigger gig and how it would feel performing this song to an audience.

One of my old bands called The Monarchs made a habit out of recording rehearsal logs in order to remember certain parts to knew songs or new ideas that we each came up with in the band. This especially came in handy for when we started to write new material in preparation for up and coming gigs.
The Stop Idea Rehearsal (later became One Step Closer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE96D6ouSGk

This video demonstrates us putting an idea into action and discussing various different ways we could improve on this new idea. Eventually this idea became the pre-chorus to one of our original songs One Step Closer (as seen in previous links).

LO2 - Being Able To Plan As A Musical Ensemble

Forming an ensemble: ensemble types eg string quartet, rock band, jazz band, vocal group; auditions

Choosing repertoire: resources eg music library, CD collections, online music players, sheet music, real

books

Choosing roles: eg band leader, musical director, frontperson, administrator, publicist, choreographer

Forming An Ensemble

String Quartets
A string quartet is an ensemble of four various different string instruments to form a group. A string quartet usually consists of two violinists, a violist and a cellist.
The two violins usually represent the soprano and alto voices , whereas the viola usually represents a tenor voice. The cello is then composed to represent the bass of a choir.
Usually the first violin takes up the leading role and plays the main melody whilst the second violin and the viola fill in with the inner harmonies, the cello then acts as a supporting bass line.

Rock Bands

Rock bands usually consist of a group of musicians who play electronic instruments supported by an acoustic rhythm section (a drum kit).

The typical line up of a standard rock is: Lead vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drum kit. Although some bands use pianos and synthesisers too depending on their personal taste.

A lot of rock music is noticeable because of the distorted guitars and rock like drum patterns (straight 4/4).

- The lead singer sings the main melody of the music with lyrics to aid them put across a message to the listeners.

- The lead guitarist usually plays licks, motifs and ostinatos to support the main melody. This usually what can help you work out the song because they lead guitar bits are usually so prominent. The lead guitar also sometimes plays guitar solos in order to indulge the audience and show off their technical skill as a musician.

- The rhythm guitarist usually takes more of a back seat role. The lead guitarist usually relies on the rhythm guitarist to play off of and get inspiration for different licks and motifs. The rhythm guitarist usually just plays chords in the background to help drive the song further and back up supporting melodies.

- The bass guitarist is probably the most subtle out of all of the plays in a rock band, playing way behind in the background . The bassist usually sits back with the drummer and has more of a quiet role in keeping the rhythm steady. The bassist usually bases the base line on the chords of the rhythm guitar so that it keeps a prominent and steady backing for the song.

- The drummer is the person that keeps the rest of the band in time with each other. Without the drummer everybody else would probably be all over the place. It is important that the drummer can keep a steady even beat much alike a metronome click.

 

Jazz Bands

A jazz band is a form of musical ensemble which plays the genre Jazz music. A classic jazz band usually consist of two different sections, a rhythm section and a horn section.
- The rhythm section of the percussion, double bass or bass guitar, and usually at least one instrument capable of playing chords, such as a piano, guitar, Hammond organ or vibes; most will usually have more than one of these. The standard rhythm section is piano, bass and drums which is sometimes augmented by a guitar. In the bigger ensembles which play more swing jazz use additional pianos, accordions and banjos.
- The horn section consists of wind and brass instruments which play the melody and the main accompaniment. The instruments in this section usually consist of trumpet, saxophone and clarinet. Later jazz bands began to include trombones and flutes.

 

Vocal Groups

Vocal groups such as choirs and barbershop quartets usually consist of 4 specific roles. Soprano - the more higher pitched singer(s), usually a female due o the higher vocal ranges.
Alto - Lower than the soprano but usually can be a male or a female because the vocal range isn't as hard to hit as the sopranos.
Tenor - The tenor singers are usually male because the range is that of a middle male vocal.
Bass - Bass is usually sang by the male(s) because the vocal range is so low.

Auditions

In most cases when you apply to be part of a musical ensemble, whether it be a jazz band, orchestra, rock band or vocal group you would need to go through an audition process.

The reason behind sitting an audition is so that the other players in the ensemble can assess your ability to play and see how well you play along side them. It is important in a ensemble that all of the players are of a relatively equal ability so that they don't have to rely on each other as much.

 

Choosing Repertoire

When performing in a musical ensemble your repertoire needs to be something that reflects you as a band. Many people who wish to start out as a band choose to do covers of famous bands that influence how they want to sound once they start writing their own material. Other performers choose a repertoire based on popularity of the pieces, such as an orchestra or barbershop quartet. Orchestras usually play famous pieces by older composers such as Mozart and Beethoven to demonstrate their technical playing ability and their togetherness as an ensemble.

 

Barbershop quartets usually choose a repertoire based on the popularity of the song due to there being very distinctive barbershop songs that grab the audiences eye such as Lollipop and Barbara Anne.

 

When learning the different songs, depending on the type of ensemble you are in determines how you usually get the music for your repertoire. If rock bands were planning on doing covers of songs they would usually gather the sheet music from the Internet or work it out by ear through listening to recordings of the songs. Orchestras usually get their music from music libraries because of how dated it usually is and how much of it they would need.

 

Choosing Roles

Most of the roles within an ensemble depends on the characteristics and personality of each member. When putting together a rock band, the leader of the band (the frontman) is usually the person who is the loudest, most confident and gets the crowd going, this person is normally the lead singer, although sometimes it is other members as well. Once bands get big enough and are serious about their future together, they usually employ a manager to take on the roles of booking them gigs, looking after the administration side of he band and organising the members.

In some cases bands and musicians alike employ people to take on the role of composing their music for them, this is usually to take the weight off of their shoulders because they have so much other stuff to concentrate on.

LO1 - Understand The Elements of A Musical Ensemble

Elements: band members; organisation; communication eg musical interaction, interaction with audience,

 

listening skills; co-operation; rehearsal; repertoire; strengths and weaknesses

Elements of a Musical Ensemble

 

For this section of the unit I had to design a PowerPoint presentation and present it to my class. The presentation had to include all of the elements of a musical ensemble.I decided to do each heading as a separate slide and back up the majority slides with evidence, such as videos and images.

 

For this slide I decided to include examples of frontmen and sidemen for famous bands. I chose each example for a specific reason to compare with the rest of the examples.

 

Frontmen

Freddie Mercury: Freddie is the front man for queen but has almost a dual personality, he is shy and not very talkative off stage but when it comes to on stage he is one of the most influential frontmen ever.

Julian Casabalancas: Julian acts different to Freddie because he is louder and more confident in interviews than he is on stage. When seeing Julian perform live he takes on the persona of a iconic rock musician, not really interacting with the audience or moving much on stage but still giving his all into he delivery of his vocals.

Pete Doherty and Carl Barat: I chose these two because they are different from the rest, they are both front men for their band. Pete and Carl interact with the audience in a whole new way compared to any other band i can think of. They have both developed this brotherly love, almost romantic which makes the crowd go wild whenever they get close together on stage.

Sidemen
Matt Helders: Matt is one of the more involved sidemen, it is always easy to identify him within a song. He always plays drum solos and difficult, complex rhythms whilst singing backing vocals or backing up the lead vocals in the background. The drums are one if the main features of the Arctic Monkeys.
Noel Gallagher: Noel is an example of your typical sideman, quite and keeps himself to himself but his contribution to the music in Oasis is what makes them one of the best bands of their time, without Noel they probably wouldn't be half as famous as they are now.

For the Organisation i chose to use the college's production of Joseph hand the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat I chose to do this because I thought it was a good example of how organisation is important for a performance.
In order to prepare ourselves for the final performances of the musical we had to organise a date for when all the cast, crew, sound team and band were able to attend. The date for practises was then arranged to be on every Sunday leading up to the event.
Organising the event was a little more complicate. Although all of the teachers had organised the advertising and a venue for it to be performed in, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber managed to copyright the play write so that it could only be performed in religious buildings such as churches.

Communication
For the communication I thought it would be a good idea to use Foals as an example because they require a lot of communication to keep together with the complicated rhythms and melodies that they use.

Interaction
Queen's performance at Wembley is a brilliant example of how Freddie Mercury uses his incredible vocal range to interact with the audience and get them all fired up for the rest of the songs the band is going to play.

Listening skills are one of the most important features you need to consider when playing in a musical ensemble. Portishead's Geoff Barrow uses his listening skills constantly throughout all of their songs to improvise different scratching rhythms along he track.
Red Hot Chili Peppers demonstrate their ability to listen to each others playing constantly when they play live. They like to show how they have perfected the ability to play off of each others interacting rhythms and melodies. 

To demonstrate co-operation within a band I decided to use a video of one of my old bands as evidence. The video demonstrates own the band is discussing various ways on which to improve a new song idea that they came up with. This is a perfect demonstration of co-operation within a band because it shows how everyone is giving their own input into what they think could be done and then the rest of the band putting the ideas into action.

For showing how a band needs to rehearse I supplied a video of the same band from before demonstrating how in a practice we still made mistakes and therefore needed to rehearse more often to be able to give a convincing performance.

I also thought it would be a good idea to add some evidence of what it is like when a band doesn't practice before a big performance. This comical video demonstrates how a band thought it would be alright to just get up on stage without many rehearsals, and when it goes all wrong they take it out on the guitarist.

Repertoire is very important when you are in a famous comercially successful band. As a pose to discussing how various bands have chosen their repertoire and why they have done it, I decided to use an example of how a bands repertoire can change with time to develope a more mature music taste. To help me show this I used examples from Take That to show how they have changed compared to their earlier music.

 

To Identify the strengths and weaknesses within a band I decided to make a table on what makes a good band and what makes a bad band. I have supplied a video demenstrating an example of what a bad band could be considered as. Various notes I have made are from watching this video.

 

My Experience - So Far - 28/09/2012

For the past 11 years that I have been learning and playing the guitar I have managed to gather a fair bit of experience in the field of performing in an ensemble as a musician. I've played in around five different bands as a secure member of the line up in my life time, one orchestra, two choirs and I've also been a session guitarist for various different bands briefly.

Bands

- No Limit: As a guitarist I've always wanted to perform in a band and i first began to gain an interest of this when I was in my first year of Secondary school and I managed to get united with various other people with similar interests. This is when my first band formed, we wouldn't ever cover any songs that already existed and instead wrote our own material in the genre of Garage Rock. Although it was pretty terrible our knowledge of performing in a group and our music writing abilities improved a lot at a very young age.


- Total Mayhem: After my first band 'split up', my interest in playing with other musicians grew and i soon found myself being asked to join an already existing band in year 9. This band mainly focused on Funk and Rock music and we only ever covered songs from famous bands but our ability to play off of each other whilst performing got very good and our timing was a lot tighter than my previous band. 


- The Pope Stealers: Total Mayhem eventually died out after time although we were all still playing together and jamming every now and again just for fun. After a while we decided that we wanted to give the band another shot and got a new singer. As soon as we finally managed to find ourselves a singer we already had our first 'Gig' arranged at the Oakward Centre in Woodley in front of about 200 adults and children. We only played one song but apparently it went down quite well. After we played one gig we wanted to play more and eventually started to get more, playing at birthday parties. After a while we all went our separate ways due to musical differences until the 'Stand Down Day' (the final day of school for year 11's) at Waingels College when we all got asked to do a 'Pope Stealers reunion' for the last ever Assembly for the year 11's. We played in front of about 300 people playing a few songs, one of those songs was our own interpretation of the song 'This Love' by Maroon 5.


- The Mullicanos: The Mullicanos were an indie rock band inspired by people such as The Libertines, The Beatles, Arctic Monkeys, Hard-FI, The View and Dirty Pretty Things. The band had been formed for a while before they asked me to join. Them all being older meant that they had a bit more experience all playing together than I did. Never the less I managed to soon catch up and we all got used to playing with each other. Not long after I joined I started to write my own songs and lyrics and eventually introduced the songs to the band, much to my delight they actually liked them quite a lot and we set on learning them and perfecting them for gigs to come in the foreseeable future. With a whole load of covers under our belts and after I had finished writing about six different songs and the band had learnt them all we decided to start gigging. Our first gig together was a half our set in a venue called ‘Facebar’ which is a popular music venue in Reading. The gig was in aid of funding Waingels College’s sixth form World Challenge trip and it had a very good turnout of over 200 students. Once we got better known throughout the school community we started to promote ourselves and organise more gigs with local promoters. We started playing gigs all around Reading in venues such as Plug n’ Play and East West, supporting various bands, such as Not Quite White, Hidden Image, The Quotes and we even got asked to support the band Viva Brother on tour. Once we got a following of over 200 hundred fans that would try and come to the majority of our gigs, we decided it was time to start headlining some of our own gigs. The last gig we played together was a headline gig that we played acoustically, our set was about 45 minutes long which was the longest set we had played.


- The Jacks: Towards the end of the first year at Henley College I decided that it was time to form a new band and i eventually did with Will Howell (drums), Joe Pape (rhythm guitar) and Henry Coates (bass guitar), with me playing lead guitar. We tried to practise every week and work on writing new songs every practise, as well as practising our own versions of covers from bands that inspire us. With influences such as The Libertines, The Hives, Arctic Monkeys, The Kooks, Blur, Foo Fighters and many more. every week our skills in  performing and playing improved and our ability to play together was also improving rapidly.



Orchestras

Through playing guitar in an orchestra in Junior school I managed to play in various different schools and churches improving my confidence and ability to play with other musicians other than the standard band line up.

Choirs

When i was in Junior school as well as playing in the orchestra i also sang in the choir. Even though i can't sing at all it helped build my confidence as a performer and we performed in places such as churches and concert halls like The Hexagon in Reading. I stopped singing in the choir when i left the school to go onto secondary school.

Session Playing

Quite recently me and Will Howell helped Emma Brown in a singing competition at Sub 89 called 'Open Mic UK'. In the competition, like X Factor you have to sing in front of a large audience (not as big as the X Factor one) and in front of a panel of judges who assess you on your ability to sing and as an all round performer. Me and Will play Guitar and Cajon for Emma whilst she sang her own interpretation of the song 'Horse In A Cherry Tree', fortunately We got through the second round and now have to perform again in the third round.

Practise in preparation for the show at Sub 89.

Playing at Magoos

I also played in makeshift two band for a one off night at magoos.

Performing Rolling in the Deep by Adelle at Magoos.

 

Performing Undercover Martyn by Two Door Cinema Club at Magoos.

Playing at Henley Youth Festival

Here for Henley Youth Festival i played in two bands. I played on Gig Night at the youth centre and at the Kenton Theatre for the Gala.

Gig Night Performances:
Can You See Me - The Monarchs

One Step Closer - The Monarchs

Lines - Reverie

Youth Festival Performance:
Lines - Reverie

Gala Performance:
Can You See Me - The Monarchs