A Game of Two Halves

Well that was an interesting rehearsal.

The first 20 minutes were soul destroying.  I'm talking real proper awful terribleness that made me want to pack it all in and never play or listen to music ever again.

The rest of the time was probably the best rehearsal yet.  How weird is that!

Before it all kicked off

I thought it'd be a good idea to warm up by doing a few acoustic songs.  Big mistake.  A blues/soul band were in the room beside me running through their set (Mustang Sally, Knock On Wood, Tush, etc) and I could hear them quite clearly.  They were rather good but I clammed up completely and couldn't play or sing for toffee.

After running through a few songs and thinking I had maybe dreamt ever being able to play the guitar, I gave up and tried giving the set a go.  Best decision of the night by a country mile as I immediately felt far more comfortable (it's amazing how much confidence a bit of practise at something gives you).  I ran through the set in its entirety and I'm not struggling singing any of them now so they just need repeated practise to iron them out and get them memorised.  With that in mind, I can use the rest of the rehearsal time working on the guitar side of things.

It's clear to me that I work far better when I've got a project to focus on so I'm going to set myself a challenge.  I'm going to document the process I go through in learning a song.  From having to rely completely on the chord & lyric sheet all the way through to the finished article, fully arranged and memorised. Depending on the song, I might stray from the original arrangement ('cause I like making it sound my way) and to make it a bit more daunting for myself... I'm going to video it!



To start with, I've decided to give What a Good Boy by Barenaked Ladies a run through since I was talking about it in the last blog.

If I'm being pedantic, this is actually week two for this now as I played it for the first time in a very long time last week and it sounded... just as bad as you'd think that sounds - thankfully for my fragile ego, I don't have video of that session.

This week I had my first stab at putting in some variety and colour into my playing which basically meant throwing in some random picking alongside the strumming pattern.  It sounded better structure wise and has given me some ideas to try at the next rehearsal and my singing was also a lot better than last time - still not quite getting the high parts so there's a way to go before I'm happy but it was certainly better than I expected it to be at this stage.

You can see for yourself what I'm talking about below.

Anway, onto the set.  That's the main reason I'm rehearsing after all!  I won't run through the notes for every song like I've done previously as I'm fairly comfortable with what I'm doing for them now.  The main take aways were:

• I still need to watch the plosives for Punch & Judy, particularly at the very start
• I'm still singing too low a register when starting History Repeating 
• I still need to watch my phrasing on Two Tribes (but getting better)
• I'm having a rethink about editing War Pigs as my original plan of an early end point doesn't sound right. 

I felt like I wasn't fully paying as much attention to playing as I had been previously which is a shame as I think I was more comfortable singing but I made more mistakes than before.

That said, I was pleased with the tone and phrasing of each song so left feeling rather chuffed and a bit proud of myself as that was the happiest I've been with how my vocals sound and I'm starting to feel a little bit of confidence creeping in.

Pay attention dagnammit!

One technical point to remind myself of.  I've a feeling the vocals would sound better with a bit more more reverb behind them.

Righty oh, until next time.