We intended to re arrange and create a successful backing track, that would change some of the elements from the original (Lorde Tennis Courts), and make it our own. We would do this by changing instrumentation,(thinking of piano, guitar, maybe percussion). Also changing specific elements of the original backing track. We intend to change these elements to the backing track of this song, dynamics, tone, rhythm, and texture, also maybe changing the structure, for example where there was a melody we remove that with still using the same chords and change it to just an instrumentation part. We are also thinking of changing the phrases in our instrumentation a bit, such as adding small phrases (fills) over some parts of the melody. We intend to change the backing track to this song in these ways, we intend do give it more texture and also change the feel of it a bit. All these changes will effect the tone and change the feel.
First Rehearsal:
We decided that I would play piano and Sophie would for a while experimented with guitar, drums, and trumpet but settled on guitar, as the others didn't really have the right feeling we wanted. We played through the chords along with the backing track just to get the feeling and then started changing elements from the original backing track. We emphasized on the chords a lot more, and changed the tone by adding different rhythmic elements, also the instrumentation really changed the tone and the texture. After the first chorus we experimented with rhythms and playing over the melody. We decided to add fills (piano playing fills, guitar sticking with chords), to give it more of an instrumental feeling, for the next part in the song the bridge. Also after the chorus is sung twice, for the rest of the song using the a different arrangement of the chords from what was written we do an instrumental part and I improvise on the piano. In our version the backing track is focused on a lot more, there fore having more intricate parts compared to the original. After the improvisation part we were going to play the chorus once more then finish it there, but found out that, that wasn't possible so we decided to end after the improvisation/instrumental part. We also changed the dynamics our backing track is a lot louder especially in the chorus and is really brought out. We changed the rythm in the backing part instead of just playing the chords as whole notes we comped and changed it up so you could really hear our backing track, we also changed the rythm by doing fills/ short phrases in one part of the song over the melody.
Final Rehearsal: Today we decided to add congas into it, mainly in the softer part of the song, Sophie would switch from guitar to congas and then back to guitar. This made the song have more depth and didn't crowd it with too many people playing the chords in certain sections, and this added more of rhythmic feel and defined the beat. We also developed more of our backing part so instead of just comping we now have more of a specific rhythms for the chords in each section and we worked on our instrumental part, clarifying the rythm Sophie would play while I improvised and finalizing it so it came together.
We changed quite a few elements in the backing track mainly effecting the tone/color and texture because of what we did with the dynamics, phrases, rythm, and changing the structure by just having one part for instrumentation and no melody.
Recording Day: Today we were recording our piece. We had about 40 minutes to rehearse, we finalized and perfected our piece before recording. Just before performing we had some trouble with the written music. As we didn't know how the recording area was set out and thought we could share reading of the same piece of music. We resolved this and ended up just being able to record. The recording went well playing our own singular parts but because we couldn't really hear each other, the timing and rythm went out between the two instruments in some parts. We are not sure how bad it went out as we haven't heard the recording but hopefully it still sounds held together, and only went out in some parts. We could of helped this from not happening by having more of a steady beat to listen to especially in the instrumental part to keep it all together, also making it a bit less crowded with different rhythms between the instruments would of helped us stay together more. Over all we think our recording went well except for going out of time in some parts of the song. We didn't make any big mistakes and didn't get lost in the piece.