With days to the assessment

The assesment for the gig is now drawn close and son I have upped my game with rehearsals in an attempt to pull off as strong a show as the band is capable of. Overall, I am impressed with the set and feel each song captures the style especially within the rhythm section where the consistent grooves seem tight and consistent.
I have tried to create a balance between freedom for the players and accuracey of each song as although I am attempting to recapture the style to an extent I would like there to be a significant amount of originality and individuality about the performance. Authenticity is important however I would like each player to feel comfortable with the performance and bring out their own characteristics as much as I will.
Now completed, the set list concentrates on a varitey of styles within acid jazz. the running order at the moment stand at this:
Runaway - Jamiroquai
Dream Come True - Brand New Heavies
You are the universe - Brand New Heavies
Whatever it is I just can't stop - Jamiroquai
Smiling Faces - Incognito
All Fired up - Brand New Heavies
Talkin Loud - Incognito
Deeper Underground - Jamiroquai
Roots(Back to a way of life) - Incognito

While preparation is fierce I have also designated time to transcribing the grooves for my Individual essay. This has been a long process however, once it comes to analysing each track an outline of the drums and bassist's part shall make the process enerally more straightforward.
Next blog should be after my gig!

So far so good!

Rehearsals have been to an extent consistent but when you're band contains so many people all performing in their own projects, plus another good few, getting a full band together is almost impossible. Reflecting back on the last few practices has demonstrated to me how much this individual project relies on others which makes me grateful that I have chosen such hard-working dedicated musicians.

As a band I now feel comfortable that 3/4's of the set is at the performance standard required for a degree project however I still feel there are areas that need polishing to grant me a reasonable pass. As my project topic is an analysis of the grooves of acid jazz I have been mainly attempting to arrange rehearsals with myself and the bassist to really get a solid, full groove. Work has also begun on my individual essay where I am at the stage of defining 'groove' and discussing the concept of acid jazz and its routes.

With everything generally in order I feel like progress has been extensively more efficient in this eased environment and am now looking forward to the end of year project. I hope to arrange a small live set of the songs we have been rehearsing to build on confidence in the live environment.

Progress shall be expressed in the next blog!

Potential Set List

Since lasts weeks expansion of Jamiroquai to 'The grooves of Acid Jazz' I have now researched into 3 seperate bands to include in my project. These three bands include The Brand New Heavies, Incognito and as before, Jamiroquai. Each portrays a unique style demonstrating the diverse range of stryles that make up the genre which will benefit my research greatly when it comes to analysing how the bass, drums and percussion play together. I have already gathered together a potential set list that demonstrates influences of Jazz, Funk, Cuban and Latin elements. One area that has weakened my show is the fact that I will have no Synthesizer present and so most of the electeronic sounds are being substituted on guitar and a limited keyboard. Although this may take away the authenticity factor it is not an area I wish to focus on as I prefer the idea of an original and personnal rather than attempting replication. This has already become apparent in rehearsals as we experiemnt with seperate ideas in an attempt to create the acid jazz feel with th instruments at liberty. With next practice this Sunday I am currently transposing a piece for the singers range while also notating out the important brass section that need to be inserted. Overall, band is coming together nicely and I am looking forward to the end product. I just with the holidays coming up I can manage my time sufficiently to create as effective an end product as possible.

A change of plan

This week has seen a general alteration in my end of year project proposal as my original idea has proven to be insufficient to sustain an entire research project. My designated tutor has suggested ideas and bands to open my project to a broader topic. At the moment it seems that Acid Jazz is still my main route and I still hope to research down the musicological route of the layering of the drum tracks and bass to create the rhythm section. Although this idea has opened up new topics and bands to research and perform, I still need to take into consideration the many variables such as the authenticity I can create with the musicians I have at liberty and the justification I have for each track I choose. I now have an idea of the musicians I propose to ask and a few of the Jamiroquai tracks I hope to insert into my performance. By next week, I shall hopefully have a greater understanding of my topic of choice and the tracks I hope to use in my end of year performance.

Individual Project Proposal

Individual Project

So with the second semester just around the door it has become a pressure to consider my individual project and the topic of which I am going to consider. Although I have considered a variety of project proposals I feel that I have to choose what is best for capabilities and resources at hand. With this in mind I have decided to base it on the Acid jazz band Jamiroquai, focussing mainly on the rhythms and grooves that the band have created throughout the last 18 or so years they have been around. I hope to demonstrate how these grooves have developed with each alteration that the band has had in line up and with the sales of their records. Now that I have organised my band, work has begun to get the first four tracks sent out in plenty of time for the first rehearsal. Although time is slightly against me due to other commitments within and outside of college I hope to have the project and research strongly started by next week.

Ensemble performance and feedback

So from my last update the performance has been and gone and we now have watched back our performance and received our final grades. Firstly I would like to back up to the weeks before the assessed gig and the many lessons and stressful times we had.

It did seem that from two weeks before the gig we were going to be incapable of pulling together a 40 minute set that was of a decent standard for the deadline especially with all the snow that had fallen causing a total breakdown in communication and rehearsal time. Even though there were issues, it became clear that even under this pressure the end product can still be achieved with focus and determination. It is apparent, as a band, we work significantly more efficiently in one week than the countless weeks of no progress we suffered through. Reflecting back on the recent events really revealed to me how much work could have been accomplished in this time slot if we had put our minds to it since day one. It also got me considering my general rehearsal time and work ethic and how if I tried to work as if I was under slight pressure the results would become much more awarding.

Anyways the day of the show came and for the most part, we played a successful show. Although there were a few glitches we all kept in a professional character and pushed through. Personally I felt I performed well with the acceptance to a few areas I could have demonstrated better. It did feel though that we had achieved something that had not been accomplished at Perth College for a while by performing a style that for a great deal of time had not been seen.

So after watching the gig back the overall performance seemed to be at a reasonable level and I was happy to see that all my hard work paid off as I received an A for the performance. I now hope that my research project will reach the same level of success. Grades should hopefully be handed out in the next few weeks.

That concludes the ensemble research and with its end comes many new beginnings. I hope now to explore the route of jazz further in my spare time and use this boost to better my understanding of the complex style. It is also the beginning of my individual project as I now begin researching into ideas and styles to independently create from scratch...well...with a little help from a few others!

An update will commence soon!

Another Track!

So it’s nearing the last month of the Take Five’s ensemble project and there is still a lot of work to be done before the final product will be ready for performance. However, in the weeks that have past I am fascinated at the extent of which we have developed as a band and utilized all our research and mentor‘s advice to the Jazz band we now stand at. Although it has taken us a while to get to this stage in these last few weeks the rest of our set should hopefully fall into place.

Mainly working on the three tracks we have done –Sing, sing, sing, Why Don’t You Do Right and Minnie the Moocher – we began introducing the finer details of the cotton club jazz era such as dynamics, stabs and blending of instruments to replicate the horn section.

As a drummer my confidence has gradually grown from week to week with help from our drumming mentor and I hope in the weeks to come that this will gradually increase with the professionalism of the whole show!

Until next time!