Simple Plan - Save You (cover)

This is our bench mark cover of Save You by Simple Plan. Like Lived a Lie, we need to work on the timing and the volume of each instrument and maybe to get the audience to participate more in out performance, we could attempt to make it a little more sections of the song a little more inventive to make it sound more complete. I could also try not to hit myself with the drumsticks, that would help a whole lot although I did manage to keep playing although I broke character.

You Me At Six - Lived a Lie (cover)

This is our bench mark cover of Lived a Lie by You Me At Six. We had all just learned this song and it is one of the first times that we've all played it together. We need to work on the volumes of each persons instrument and we need to work on the harmonies too as well as the timing of certain pieces of the song.

Different roles

The main vocalist, Emma Simpson, decided where it would be best for everybody to stand. The layout of drums right at the back, the rhythm guitarist on the front left side of the drum kit, the lead guitarist and bassist on the front right side of the drum kit and the singer stands directly in front of the drum kit so, in theory, we’re relatively close to one another. The Rhythm Guitarist, Amy Wilkins, decided upon the clothing and she decided that it isn’t exactly essential to have a specific ‘uniform’ for the concert and decided that it’s best just to all wear an item of black clothing or wear dark clothing in general. I went through what we should do if something goes wrong. During our rehearsals, we went through lots of different scenarios for each member of the band for if something went wrong with their instrument or any of the other equipment such as the amplifiers, drum kit, leads/wires, microphones etc and we thought of the best way to deal with each of these situations. This took 3 rehearsals to fully cover.

If every band member takes different roles, that means the responsibility is all shared amongst the members rather than just one person and it gives each individual member more time to cope and deal with each of these roles instead of having every single role and doing everything at once. So overall, it makes it a lot easier on every band member if the roles were shared out between the members.

How everything was put together

One member of my band, Matthew Napper, the bassist was the person who organised most of the rehearsals and events whereas I worked on the musical abilities and performance of my band and I. Every rehearsal, we decided where everybody comes in and starts playing the songs (we decided that each song should start with the Guitar and then the drums and bass (apart from our first song where the drums came in 2 bars before the bass). The vocals were always decided by the original song and as to where they come in there.

Development of the songs

Each member of my band chose a couple of songs each and evaluated each of them to see which 3 songs would show the most ability in our musicality. The three songs are all contrasting and display different musical abilities in each. Some of the abilities we attempted to portray through these songs are the harmonies and synchronisation with instruments along with everybody's musical abilities.

Once we decided upon which songs we wanted to perform, we then listened to the songs over and over again to try and adapt our own version to the songs instead of actually learning it as it is played. We had a little bit of help with some chord progressions by searching them online but with some songs (such as our first song, Save You by Simple Plan) we transposed the chords to a different key to compliment the singer’s voice and, yet again, to make the song more unique to us. I then sat in the rehearsal rooms at college from 10:45 until 16:45 behind a drum kit one Wednesday and worked on the drum beat continuously for the two songs I am performing.

Rehearsals?

We, my band and I, at the moment, suggest a time, twice a week, other than lessons and outside of college, of when we can rehearse. We rehearse 5 times a week in total. Each rehearsal in College is 1 hour and 30 minutes long (it has been known to go on for longer) and outside of College, each revision session is roughly 3-4 hours long with little breaks in-between. In the near future, we plan on making a weekly schedule of when to rehearse so we will have 2 set times outside of College as well as our Music Performance lesson in College.

My Role

As part of the musical band, Exit, I am the lead guitarist and supporting drummer. It is my responsibility to play the main melody (of riff if you like) to the songs as the lead guitarist and as drummer, it is my responsibility to keep to a specific time signature and keep the beat and timing for the rest of my band. I also have to play drum fills to ‘fill in’ the interludes between different sections of the songs to make it sound more complete.

You Me At Six - Lived A Lie

Lived a Lie, written and performed by the band, You Me At Six, is our third and final song. We wanted a song we can have a lot of fun with and we went along with the logic of if we're having fun, then the audience will definitely be having fun too. We wanted our final song to be a song we can play loudly and get the audience involved with so we chose this song due to its popularity and the hope that most of the audience would know this song as well as us.



Emma Simpson: Lead Vocalist

Amy Wilkins: Rhythm Guitarist

Matthew Napper: Bassist and Backing Vocalist

Jack O'Casey: Drummer

The Black Keys - Gold On The Ceiling [Official Music Video]

Gold on the Ceiling (written and performed by The Black Keys) is our second song choice. We wanted this song to be the complete opposite to our first song so this was an entire electric song. We followed the main structure for this song as we really liked how it sounded originally. We also had the lead guitarist (me) playing the keyboard section on guitar due to the fact that we had two guitarists so it was decided that it was a good choice. The bass also played the same line just before the guitar solo but 2 octaves lower.



Emma Simpson: Lead Vocalist

Jack O'Casey: Lead Guitarist

Amy Wilkins: Rhythm Guitarist

Matthew Napper: Bassist and Backing Vocalist

Natalie Henderson: Drummer

Simple Plan - Save You (Official Video)

This song is Save You, written and performed by the band Simple Plan. This is the first song that we are planning on performing at the first years BTEC Music Performance gig at the Grand Hotel. We chose this song because we thought that it would be a nice opening to our band. We changed the entire chord progression for this song to make it our own unique version. We also took out the guitar solo because we wanted it to have more of an acoustic sound to it (although we used electric instruments but with a clean setting) and we all decided that the guitar solo contrasted what we wanted this song to do.



Amy Wilkins: Rhythm Guitarist and Lead Vocalist

Emma Simpson: Backing Vocalist

Matthew Napper: Bassist

Jack O'Casey: Drummer

Band: Exit

My band consists of 4 members, Matthew Napper, Emma Simpson, Amy Wilkins and I, Jack O'Casey and one session drummer, Natalie Henderson. We all have a varied range of instruments which we can play and each member was allocated to their preferred instrument or one that needs to be played.

Matthew Napper: Bass and Vocals
Emma Simpson: Piano and Vocals
Amy Wilkins: Rhythm Guitar, Percussion Box and Vocals
Jack O'Casey: Lead, Rhythm and Bass Guitar, Piano, Drums and Vocals
Natalie Henderson: Drums and Vocals

As none of our songs required the use of a Piano, Emma comfortably volunteered herself to be the lead vocalist for our band. As we already have a vocalist, Matthew decided to be the bassist for our band (which coincidentally is his main instrument too). Amy prefers to play Rhythm Guitar to any other instrument she is capable of playing so we gladly allowed her that option although she was also the main vocalist for our first song and Emma sang backing vocals and the harmonies. Due to her ability as a soprano vocalist, she complimented Amy's alto voice very nicely. As we didn't have a drummer at the time, I opted in to play the drums for two of our songs and I played lead guitar for the third. Natalie played the drums for that song and, despite the fact that she had a lot less time than the everybody else to learn the songs, she performed the drums for that song exceptionally well.