Christmas Gig Self-Assessment

The Christmas gig went very well, I believe that my bands performance was brilliant and I could tell by the crowds reaction that they really enjoyed our performance. I also personally enjoyed the gig and thought it was easily the most fun I've ever had on stage. Our Setlist was It Must Be Love, I'd Rather Go Blind, Holiday, Cry Me River, Crazy (Original Song) and Sweet Home Alabama/Freebird.

I thought that my two bass solos sounded great and I was very pleased. Crazy and Sweet Home Alabama both had bass solos. I'd have to say that was one of my strengths during my whole performance. I practised and worked a lot on my bass solos so that I could improve as a musician and bring forward some solos on the bass guitar that other bands might not have thought about doing. Another good aspect of my performance was that I interacted with the audience and as a matter of fact, the whole band did. When it comes to giving a good performance, your performance technique is a factor which can lift an already good, musically, performance to a whole new level, it can really make the difference. Entertaining the crowd can be done by having good stage presence and good performance technique. We all moved around on the stage and interacted with the audience, this was definitely one of our main strengths. Clapping and getting the audience to sing alone was a good thing that we managed to do whilst on stage. I noticed that the crowd in It Must Be Love were swaying from side to side, they must have had a posstiive emotional response to our performance of that song. I think that is pretty good because when I perform I want to personally enjoy the performance and get the audience to enjoy it as well, so when the crowd responds in such a way that makes me feel a lot better knowning they enjoy it. I think for It Must Be Love i could have walked around on the stage more. I did move which is good in a sense but it would have been even better if I would have walked around and interacted with my bandmates and the audience more. I believe that the same applies for my bandmates as well. Musically in that song I thought that everyone was tight and spot on. The drums at points felt like they were losing tempo but that could be due to the syncopated feel of the song and it is a very hard song to play on drums, especially for someone who doesnt drum like Xana but considering her position, I think she did well. To help her improve she could use a metronome. I reckon that if I used a metronome it would help me become a better musician and it would help towards my performances for the future. I want to be able to play to all sorts of syncopated rhythmes and beats, odd time signatures and generally work on my timing. This song tested it to a certain degree. Owens solo was great because the tone on the guitar sounded superb and it managed to emulate the saxophone which sounded very harsh, so having a distorted guitar would be pretty similar to the saxophone. It Must Be Love is a great song that I believe everyone pretty much knew. Even if they didn't know the verses, nearly the whole crowd were singing along with Charlotte in the chorus.

We had to consider every song for the audience because we knew it was going to be a handful of parents and all the college students. It Must Be Love is known by pretty much everyone. I'd Rather Go Blind is more likely known by the adults there, so the teachers and parents. Holiday is a pretty big song so all the students should know it and a few parents might. Cry Me A River isn't too well known and I would only expect the adults to know that one. Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird are very well known fun songs that people love to sing along to. Pretty much everyone knows those two, even if they don't know that its by the Southern Rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I'd Rather Go Blind is one of our best songs that we really enjoy to play. In this song, as I've stated before, it only has two chords therefore theres a lot of room for me to play all around the neck of the bass to add texture and dynamics. I was happy with the feedback from everyone and Marcus made a fair statement which was knowning when to add im bass fills, to not do it all the time. A good bassist is a bassist who knows when to play added notes, you can't do it all the time. I want to take this onboard to help improve me as a musician. I want to learn all of the scales everywhere on the on the neck of the bass so I can play bass fills in different areas of the fretboard and not stay stationary. I felt that everyones performance was spot on for this song. Charlottes vocals were really powerful and soulful, she did a very good job on I'd Rather Go Blind. Owens solo was brilliant. He managed to play chords and solo at the same time which I was very impressed by, it was a very different and unique solo that melodically worked. I felt very connected emotionally when playing this song, it has a lot of feel and soul in the song.

Holiday was a lot better than when we performed it in our interim gig. I still made mistakes though which I wasn't too happy about.that. It was during the bridge when it's just the bass, drums and Elesa's vocals. The stage lights kept on going on and off to add an effect but it only resulted in me not seeing what I was playing. To prevent a mistake like this again I need to learn my parts well enough that I won't have to look at the fretboard to see what I'm playing. I think all of my band need to do that as well and rather look at each and the audience instead of the fretboard. I hope to improve as a bassist so that I know the fretboard well enough not to look at it when it comes to performing songs. Practising will help me achieve this target, I need to get used to using my bass guitar more and more. I thought that I let my band down for that song. My bass for that section, the bridge, went briefly wrong but other then that I didn't make any mistakes. My bandmates as usual were excellent and didn't make any mistakes that were noticable to me or the audience. This song really appealed to the audience because the majority knew the song and enjoyed. The bridge resulted in the audience singing along so that was good that we managed to interact with the audience.

Cry Me A River was a good song because it was relaxing and calmed everyone down. I think its important to have balance in a setlist. We managed to balance it out pretty well to be fair, there was a nice mix of rocky songs to more laid back chill songs. The guitar sounded very nice with some interesting hard jazz chords that challenged Owens playing ability. I found this song very hard to learn because it was all by ear but it was very satisfying when I learnt it. Xana was only playing the high hat and ride so there wasn't a back beat to help me keep tempo but I decided to tap my foot and nod my head to help keep me in time with my bass line. If you watch back the video you can see that it looks like I'm playing the bass awkwardly, but I was muting palm muting to help add texture and add a new tone to my bass to give it more of an upright feel rather than a treble like rock or metal bass tone. I decided to have more bass and less treble and mid. Owens guitar was clean, it sounded very warm and calm. Charlotte and Elesa both had vocals on this track, they both did a good job because it's vocally very low for a woman.

Crazy was our original song that we wrote together which wasn't too bad. It had a calm reggae vibe which appealed to the audience. We messed up after our solos which was annoying, we didn't come in as strong as I had hoped and Charlotte was late with her vocals for the chorus. Areas of this song were a little flat like the solo section. The chords could have changed possibly instead of sticking with the Bb minor to G# major. Some variation could have improved the song. I think it wasn't a bad song though to be honest, there were some good moments, like where we play the same riff powerfully at the end, good way to finish I believe.

Our last two songs which we combined together were Sweet Home Alabama/Freebird. This went down really well with the audience because they're really well known and whats there not to like about to great classic rock songs like these two with exceptional guitar solos that Owen managed to play to a high standard. I was so impressed that he learnt both of the songs solos by ear. I think from now on I will set myself the target of trying to learn songs by ear and not looking at tab. It will help me improve as a musician and its a good musical skill to have, to be able to easily pickup a song by just listening and figuring out the chords. To reflect on the feedback I was given by Marcus, he said I need to calm it down with my bass lines and not lose the rhythm and groove or everything could all fall to pieces. I think this is a fair point because I was adding alot of extra notes into my bass line for Sweet Home Alabama. A lot of it was based around the major pentatonic scale. I did at some points, like in the verse, switch it up and only play the root notes. In the chorus I would play the 3rds and 5ths of the different chords to add dynamics and texture. I had a bass solo in Sweet Home Alabama, it was really fun to play. I think the audience really enjoyed it. It was good though because it challenged me so it helped me to improve as a bassist. Charlotte missed some lines after Owens second solo. To help her improve she could look at someone for a que. Freebird went very well, I think our stage presence and performance technique for that song was the best we had ever done. Owens solo sounded amazing and as a whole that was a perfect song to finish with.

Overall I was very happy with the Christmas gig. A lot of hard work went into the performance and I think it paid off. There were some patchy areas like not enough band interaction at times and looking at the fretboard for too long but I now know to practise for longer and work at my songs more when I'm at home. If I practise songs enough then I won't need to look at the fretboard. I think my band were pretty much near perfect with their performance.