I chose to present my work in the form of a performance. I chose a performance as my method of presentation because I felt because Snarky Puppy also have live performances and there is more of a atmosphere created by the players and the audience, rather than recording which takes away the authenticity of live sound. When performing you get a physical response from the audience that gives you feedback from the audience and the music. The audience participation with claps and cheers at the end of my performance indicated the enjoyment of the audience. In jazz tradition, there are sections in songs dedicated to an improvised solo. This changes every time the song is performed live which gives the audience something new every time.
The biggest challenge that I faced was planning realistically. Meaning, in my first timeline, I underestimated how much time it would take me to transcribe everything. This had then given me a limited amount of time to practice as a group which then hindered it from being so much better than it was. I have diverted from my original plan due to underestimating how much time it took to transcribe. Because of this, I’ve had to decrease the medley from 5 songs to 3.
Working with other people was a main part of my project. I needed to work with other musicians to complete my end product which was a performance. The way I organised everyone was to work on sections individually. For example, I worked with bass and drums first, then saxophone and then guitar. This was easiest because the musicians that I used learnt music better by memory instead of by music scores. I feel like I completed all the work that I needed to do. However, I spent more time on transcribing than anything else which made the performance side of my project lack clarity.
In my EXP, I encountered organisational and practical problems. Theoretically I could have transcribed five songs to put into a medley however, by the time I realised how long it would take to transcribed each song I came up with the conclusion that the thirteen weeks that I had to complete my project would not be long enough. By my mid point presentation I cut it from 4 and then to 3 to ensure that we were able to give enough time to each song to make sure it was of a good enough standard to perform. Doing five would not have given me enough time to practice because the songs are challenging and complex there would not been enough time to perfect the timing and play with confidence.
Key techniques that I have learned since starting this project is learning how other musicians learn best. For example whether i show them how to play the music or give them a score of the music. This worked well for me since the musicians i used preferred to learn by ear. which makes it easier for me because this is the same way I learn music. Reading a score is much more straightforward because it is there rather than playing by ear.
As well as developing performing skills, one of the key areas of this project was understanding how to arrange for the instruments in my band. When giving music to the musicians, I needed to understand the way in which the instruments that we used operate. This involved some sessions with the players to understand the instruments and the performers' physical imitations. I also had to research some areas of music theory that were relatively new to me. Concert pitch was an area that I researched in my project because I needed a better understanding of transposing instruments work because I had saxophone player in my band. This was useful for the method I used to teach the saxophonist the music. When I gave the score to the saxophonist I had to ensure that the key was the same for the other members of the band. When playing a melody on the piano and calling out notes I needed to recognise that the notes I was playing were not the same notes that the saxophone would be playing. Even though I researched concert pitch, I was not able to use my knowledge effectively because I had not grasp the concept of this to the extent where I would confidently transpose the notes.
Practical skills I have improved on is being the music director. Taking charge of rehearsals making sure that songs are played correctly by stopping and reflecting on what was playing and instructing the players how it needs to be played. For example sure that there are dynamics played in the right places of the song e.g. in the beginning of Shofukan.
My key areas of research are transcription and arrangement skills. in researching transcription skills I learnt how to transcribing easier by recognising that it was the most common way to transcribe. My research was mainly practical based to know the songs well enough to be able to transcribe as closely and accurate to the original song. In my research around arrangement skills I learnt how to change the instrumentation used in the original songs to work with the instruments and musicians that I had available e.g. in Lingus, there were three guitars used in the original song. Each playing different things like playing a main melody to carrying the underlying cords. However, I didn't have that many guitarists that I could use so I had to even out the parts to the instruments I had like the keyboard.
When doing research I feel that I have completed sufficient research. However, I feel that I did not research do as much academically as I did in my practical research. I found harder to research as I could not find anything relevant to my project. Because of the nature of my project, I spent most of the time doing practical research which was backed up by some academic research but not as much as I would of like to have done.
As I am going to study music performance in university I feel that it is important for me to have transcription and arrangement skills as I feel it would play a big part in my studies and career.
In conclusion, I am happy with the my project that I had put together because I was able to achieve a project that was highly demanding. By completing this project, I was able to improve myself as a musician. The areas that I improved on was my organisation skills when working in a band. As a performer, this was one of the hardest performance and I was able to put together 3 songs that were very ambitious.
