15.2 Rehearsals

Over the first term, Band C shaped and developed workable creative ideas during band rehearsals, meetings and private practice. In this unit 15.2 I will discuss how our band approached rehearsals, issues that we faced that may or may not have been solved, the conduct and topics of band meetings and whether or not my own private practice and preparation helped or even hindered our band rehearsal process.

We started off doing very regular weekly practice as a band, both on a Monday after school and on a Tuesday lunchtime before our double performance lesson. We used our Facebook group to arrange our rehearsals and discuss what we’d be practicing in that rehearsal. I was pleased to find that I didn’t have to act as a band facilitator as I have done in the past with other bands and projects outside of college. 

Everybody in the band actually posted and inputted in the group, making discussion very efficient and immersive. It served as a good place to post feedback after rehearsals too; my band-mates could easily suggest areas that we should aim to focus or improve upon next time. The Facebook group was very multi-purpose. Aside from organising and discussing band rehearsals, it was also used for discussion of song ideas and band image (discussing our outfits for live performances) in the run-up towards the end of term gig.

One of the main issues that started cropping up and reoccurring was that Aidan started a new job and became unable to attend rehearsals on a Monday evening which meant we lost a rehearsal per week. I specifically remember one time where Tim was unable to attend too, due to a meeting, and the band had to practice without the rhythm section and we really struggled to stay in time and we also realised that day just how much we relied on Aidan and Tim to actually keep track of our place in the song. We got lost on the structure of some songs in that rehearsal because of that. To be honest I think this issue was a fault of our own. I’m obviously not saying that it’s certain people’s faults that they couldn’t attend; however, what I am saying is that we needed to be better at practising in the absence of other band members. Upon reflection, improvements could have been mind, such as practising with a metronome (both during private practise and during band rehearsals that Aidan was unable to attend. Perhaps myself or someone else could have written out copies of song structures for everyone to read and learn so that we wouldn’t get lost without some members of the band.

Separate from the Facebook group, we did hold some band meetings where we could discuss things face to face. Band members’ conduct was very good at these meetings which allowed for productive discussion. There were never any moments were everybody was talking over each other. Everything was very informal and jokey and I think in some ways that’s a nice thing to have amongst band members but in some respects I do think that we were susceptible to going off topic into tangents about other completely unrelated things or generally just laughing too much. If we went into band meetings with a bit more self-discipline and a more motivated, work based mind-set then I think we could have discussed more. Something I think we should have done at meetings which would have been very beneficial is logging onto a computer and watching back our recorded performances from the previous week and discussing what went well and what didn’t go so well. It’s one thing to reflect on performances straight afterwards or in the evening on the Facebook group, but to actually sit down a week later and watch an actual recording would give a completely different perspective on our performance. For example, the sound actually sounds very different from the stage area than it does to other classmates seated in the room.

I felt that in general; my own private practice has never been a hindrance to the band rehearsal process. I have spoken in detail about my personal practice routine in unit 15.1 as well as unit 23.1 and I believe that personal practice is one of the key factors to effectively developing as a band. The famous phrase “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link” accurately reflects my opinions on band dynamics. It is important for band members to have had a similar level of preparation coming into band rehearsals so that no one individual is less practiced and knowledgeable than the rest of the band. In my own personal practice I use a variety of different websites as teaching tools: Youtube, Ultimate Guitar, Sognsterr etc in order to learn the songs we have needed to play in Band C in the first term. Where there was any disparity between the original track and the published tab, I would use my own ears to determine what sounded right to me instead. I find a lot of my learning stems from my individual interpretation of the track, rather than trying to play something note-for-note.

In conclusion, the first term provided Band C with many challenges that needed to be approached as a unit and on the whole I feel like these challenges were dealt with constructively and efficiently. With anything band-related I feel like there is always room for improvement. As I mentioned previously, our band could have been more focused and on-topic during band meetings and we could also strive to be more productive in the absence of other members for rehearsals. These are my thoughts and opinions regarding the whole process in the first term and how I shaped and developed workable ideas within my band.

15.4 Evaluation

In the end of term gig I performed in five different bands but seeing as this unit is about the evaluation of progress I will talk about the main two bands I was in: Band C and Band F. I will look back at the whole first term and analyse both these bands, explaining the strengths and weaknesses of both. I will focus mainly on the potential of these bands and discuss how good things could have been.

Band C

In Band C, we deviated from our normal trend of playing well known classic rock songs and decided to play ‘Take Of Your Colours’ from the self –titled You Me At Six debut album. In hindsight I don’t think this was the best song we could have picked for the end of term gig. From an audience perspective the song is very upbeat, jumpy which makes sense because it’s a pop-punk song and is in a major key. I don’t have a problem with pop-punk, it’s just that I used to be in a very pop-punk band outside of college and to be honest I’ve grown fairly tired with that genre. To make matters worse, I played 4 out of 5 pop-punk songs at the end of term gig (2 You Me At Six songs and 2 Paramore songs). I felt like the genre didn’t really work well with our band. Mads for instance is a country singer at heart and although she really tried hard with this song, she expressed to us afterwards that she didn’t enjoy singing it all that much. Jack and Tim like classic rock and play music by bands like Led Zeppelin etc in their free time and, although they are both good musicians in their own right, I feel like they didn’t have a feel for the nuances of the genre like Aidan and I do (as we’ve both played songs like this before in the aforementioned outside-of- college band). A lot of the sound of pop-punk comes from having aggressive pick-attack and in this song in particular there is a lot of rhythmic palm muting in the verses and in the outro there are palm muted triplets and I feel like as a band we didn’t really capture that tonality and style adequately enough. On a more positive note I felt like our physical performances of the track were pretty good. In that respect, I feel like we did capture the energy of the track a bit more as we were moving about and making good eye contact with each other. Another very positive thing I liked about Band C was our relationships with each other. I know Aidan and Jack from secondary school and I’ve actually been in bands with them both previously, I have become close friends with Tim and we are in a band together currently outside of college with Aidan. I have become friends with Shaune and Mads too and I think the highlight of this first term for me is being in that band with such friendly people. There was a real sense of cohesion and I think the social, inter-personal aspect of a band is one of the most important. Our communication in Band C was excellent as a result of this. As previously mentioned, our discussions about song selection were very good and similarly we were able to schedule regular rehearsals effectively and in the lead-up to the end of term gig we rehearsed a lot and benefitted greatly because of it. In rehearsals themselves our communication amongst ourselves was very good and we were able to effectively highlight parts of the song that needed working on as a band as well as individual aspects that we could change or improve upon. In conclusion, I found Band C to be the most positive and co-ordinated band that I was a part of in this term. There was definitely a level of professionalism and there were standards that we adhered to in order to develop as a band. Communication and organisation were very good, as was the social aspect and our physical interactions on stage during performances. We could have improved a lot by sticking to the strengths of individual band members. We had learned during our two band choices in our class performances that we work well as more of a classic rock band doing Thin Lizzy and Guns ‘N’ Roses than we do trying to do a You Me At Six cover. If we were to continue as a band I think we should try and cover something by Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones or something along those lines.

Band F

In Band F, after Amy Booer left, we stopped trying to find songs that were piano based and instead looked towards the pop-punk genre once again. As we had played ‘Misery Business’ as our second compulsory track this term, Callie suggested that we played ‘Crushcrushcrush’ from the same album. As a fan of Paramore’s older music myself, I relished the opportunity to play this song on bass. Like ‘Misery Business, ‘Crushcrushcrush’ is in Drop C# tuning and the pre-chorus emphasises the low C# which, especially on bass, has a huge impact. The bass line is very fun to play and in the verses it actually walks around a little bit and it’s definitely not the typical root-notes bass line that is expected from a pop-punk song. I definitely thought that the line-up of this band was much more suited to play a song like this than Band C. Having two female vocalists to sing Hayley Williams parts was great. Callie’s powerful vocals went well with Sophie’s rich, deep voice in a yin-yang kind of way. Tom and Matt’s guitar playing was very faithful to the original track despite Matt later telling me he wasn’t that happy with the song choice and Aidan’s style of playing suits the genre nicely as previously mentioned. There were definite downsides with Band F though, despite how positive I’ve made everything sound.  The main issue with Band F was the organisation and discussion as I talked about previously in unit 15.1. Everything felt very cobbled together and rushed; I don’t think we ever sat down for a moment as a band and just talked about how anything was going. During practice and rehearsals especially there was little to no creative feedback about how we were sounding and what needed improvement. In conclusion, I thought that Band F had the most potential out of the bands I have worked in over the term, however, a lack of communication, co-ordination and overall dedication meant that we fell behind and didn’t achieve our full potential. In my opinion, not meaning to sound boastful, I think that band had the most talented individuals in the class and I think it was a great shame to see that talent wasted.  On the night of the end of term gig I thought we did actually perform ‘Crushcrushcrush’ very well but I think that’s only due to strong individual practice. That’s what that band was: 6 strong individuals rather than 1 strong band.

15.1 Song Selection

Song Selection

Putting the End of Term Gig aside, during the majority of the first 14 weeks of the course I was a member of 2 different bands. In Band C I played predominantly lead guitar, the line-up consisted of: vocalists Mads Quinn and Shaune Moorey, Aidan Henderson on drums, Tim Osborn on bass, and Jack Keogh and myself as guitarists. In this first term we had thorough discussions, both face to face as a group in college and making use of a Facebook group, to decide our 2 band choice songs for the term. Our main aim was to find 2 songs that everybody was happy playing, rather than just resorting to ‘majority rules’ and leaving 1 or 2 people disappointed that their views were overlooked. My second band, Band F, was created part way through the term so that second year student Amy Booer could play keys in a band for her course. I decided to play bass in this band as it’s an instrument I’m fairly comfortable with but have an awful lot to learn and I was hoping that this band would serve as an opportunity for me to develop as a bassist. Band F was the largest band in the class consisting of: vocalists Sophie Lamont and Callie Mead, Aidan Henderson on drums, Matt Alfrey and Tom Coxhead as guitarists, Amy Booer on keys, and myself on bass.

Band C

Originally, it was discussed in class that we would go and learn ‘Teenage Kicks’ by The Undertones as it’s based on a simple verse-chorus structure and would not be hard to pull of. There are quite subtle but still noticeable vocal harmonies in the original track that Mads and Shaune were going to expand upon and Jack and I basically just double up the same guitar part the whole way through with the exception of the short solo I was going to take at the end. I went home and learnt the whole song in the evening it was suggested but I noticed it was almost too simple. Simplicity is not a bad thing, if anything the easier a track is the more it can be tightened up and perfected, however, with this track I felt the simplicity was almost too constrictive and didn’t allow for any of us to shine individually through our technique and playing. I flagged up my concerns in the Facebook group and it was quickly established that the others had come to the same realisation as me. With that in mind, Mads suggested ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ by Guns ‘N’ Roses. I told everyone that I was very happy to play it as long as everybody else was and so it was agreed upon. Like ‘Teenage Kicks’, ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ is an absolutely classic song that everybody knows and, if perfected, would certainly sound very impressive. From my perspective, that of lead guitarist, the song is incredibly virtuosic and challenging but definitely not too challenging that I would be unable to play it.

The discussion we had in college regarding our second song choice was remarkably quick and unanimous. Sticking with the theme of classic rock songs, Shaune suggested ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ by Thin Lizzy and that was agreed upon. Jack and I thoroughly enjoyed playing this song together as there aren’t defined rhythm and lead parts as such. Instead, we both played the same parts for the majority of the song, playing the distinctive guitar harmony riffs in the solo and post-chorus. Mads and Shaune alternated singing parts rather than singing together, this was especially effective in the chorus where it goes quickly back and forward between them both when they sing “The Boys Are Back In Town”. Tim had a lot of fun with the walking bass line in this song as did Aidan with the classic rock drums and some interesting song structure.

Band F

Song selection with Band F was quite frankly an absolute mess. For band choice one there really wasn’t much of a discussion about song selection. I was just informed that we were doing ‘How to Save a Life’ by The Fray and that I had to learn it. I assume there must have been some sort of discussion but at this point in the proceedings we didn’t have a Facebook group set up yet so the conversation must have happened face to face without me. Whatever it was that happened I definitely did not get any say in the matter at all. The process of song selection for our second band choice was somehow even worse. It was originally decided that we would play Killer Queen by Queen as apparently Amy was a competent pianist, Matt would have a lot of fun with Bryan May’s lead guitar parts and overall it’s such a phenomenal classic of a song. The main problem was that the singers found the song incredibly hard to manage as well as the fact that Amy dropped out of the band. Matt, Tom and I were very passionate about trying to play the song, I even resorted to learning all the piano parts and got Tim Osborn in to play bass in my place but in the end we had to completely compromise and perform ‘Valerie’ (The Amy Winehouse cover of The Zutons) with the original line-up minus Amy.

Personal Practice

Band C

My Sharona:

For this song I mainly learnt it by ear and practiced by playing along to the official video. When there was a trickier spot in the song that I couldn't easily work out by ear I referred to this tab from Songsterr.

Sweet Child O' Mine:

I was very lucky with our first band choice because I already knew how to play the song having played it lots before. To practice I played along to the long version of the song on Spotify.

Misery Business:

Once again I lucked out and I already knew how to play both parts of the song. I have played along to the track on Spotify and I have also been playing along to the drum track as this song is pretty rhythmically challenging.

The Boys Are Back In Town:

A good tab for this song was surprisingly hard to find. Ultimate guitar for instance only had really bad tabs. In the end I went to this tab on Songsterr which I found to be pretty good. I practiced by playing along to the song on Youtube and if anything was wrong with the tab I just figured it out by ear.

Band F

My Sharona:

The bass for this song really doesn't differ a whole lot from the guitar. Essentially it's the same thing but an octave down for the majority of the song. This made learning very easy as there was very little for me to actually have to learn. For practice I played along to the official video and any part of the bass line I didn't know I just worked out by ear.

How To Save A Life:

The bass line for this song is really quite simple. I found a 90% accurate tab on Ultimate Guitar and where it faltered I just used my ears to figure it out once again. I'm not a bassist so I'm not particularly great at trying to embellish bass lines with my own style but I've tried my best with this song. To practice, I played along to the video.

Valerie:

Initially it was decided that we were going to do Killer Queen by Queen because we wanted to take advantage of having Amy on keys in our band. Unfortunately it was changed by our singers last minute because they said they were struggling to learn it. So after having learnt the bass to that, I had to learn the bass to Valerie. It has a very repetitive but fun bass line so I picked it up from just listening through the video of the song once and then playing it to myself over and over. Admittedly I didn't practice this as thoroughly as I normally do but after having spent the weekend learning Killer Queen I felt that the song was easy enough to not really practice for hours on end.

39.5 The Importance of Licensing and Royalties

The Importance of Licensing and Royalties

In the modern age of music, music copyright, licensing and royalties play a very important part in earning money from the business. Those musicians with a better understanding of how licensing and royalties work are more likely to be financially comfortable than those who don't.

There are three main companies for songwriters, composers and publishers which exist to collect licence fees from anyone that uses music for a business benefit and then pay royalties to music creators in the UK and around the world. These are PRS. MCPS and PPL

PRS for Music as an umbrella, which has two important sub-companies: Performing Right Society Limited (PRS) and Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society Limited (MCPS). PRS represents songwriters, composers and music publishers and collects royalties on their behalf whenever their music is publicly performed. This includes performances of both live and recorded music or music from TV and radio, in premises from concerts halls to corner shops. MCPS also represents songwriters, composers and music publishers, but collects royalties on their behalf whenever their music is reproduced for products such as CDs, digital downloads and musical toys. [1] Venues and businesses need to purchase a licence from PRS for Music which enables the public performance or reproduction of music in that venue. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 states that if you use copyright music in public, you need the permission of every writer or composer of the music you wish to play. PRS for Music acts as the middle man and a music licence gives the owner the legal permission to play the millions of songs controlled by them without having to contact the music creators directly.

PRS for Music asks venues to provide full details of all music performed as well as gathering information from TV and radio. With smaller businesses, surveys are used. From all that information they calculate the royalties due to each member of PRS for Music. Royalties to PRS members are distributed in April, July, October and December each year.

The third company, Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) is an entirely separate independent company from PRS for Music. In most instances a licence is required from both before you can legally play recoded music in public. Both organisations licence the use of music and collect royalties but each represent different people. PPL collects and distributes money for the use of recorded music on behalf of record labels and performers. PRS for Music collects and distributes money for the use of musical composition and lyrics on behalf of authors, songwriters, composers and publishers.

Another source of royalties I would like to mention are synchronisation (or synch) royalties. Synching refers to using the music together with visuals e.g. a song in a film, tv show or even live theatre. In terms of numbers, the royalties paid can be up to say $250,000 for a movie film score.

Music Streaming Services

I wanted to briefly mention royalties from music streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora. A lot of artists are outraged at the ridiculously low royalty rates that they receive from plays of their tracks on these services. Spotify say they pay an average of £0.004 per play to their artists on a section of their website called Spotify explained. However, I don't think things are as bad as they first appear.There are a lot of very positive statistics on that site too, for instance they have given out $1bn in royalties, $500m of which were paid in 2013 alone. The global value of the recorded music industry has been steadily falling and Spotify aim to provide a better service than piracy and convice people to pay for music once again. I am a Spotify premium user and I have barely pirated any music since. Statistics collected by spotify actually show that 55% of 18-29 year olds pirate less when offered a free legal alternative. Spotify premium users pay more on average per year than normal US consumers that  purchase physical music or download digital music. Spotify actually pay 70% of their total revenue as royalties to rights holders and compared to other video or radio streaming services they pay considerably more. Spotify is a huge and very useful marketing platform and even if the royalty rate may be low, the chances are more people will hear an artists music and then they may want to go to their concerts or buy that persons's merchandise.

Historic context of copyright

"Copy, transform and combine it's who we are, it’s how we live, and of course, it's how we create." Kirby Ferguson - Everything is a Remix Part 4 [2]. In this part, he goes on to talk about the original intentions of copyright and how ultimately the system is a failure. "Our system of law doesn't acknowledge the derivative nature of creativity. Instead, ideas are regarded as property, as unique and original lots with distinct boundaries. But ideas aren't so tidy... and when the system conflicts with the reality the system starts to fail."
In America in 1790, copyrights and patents were invented to make sure that original creations were protected from being copied for a limited period of time in order to give creators a window to earn a profit. Copyrights covered media and patents covered inventions. After copyright expired, creators work entered the public domain to be freely used and built upon by anyone. That was the goal of copyright: to have a large public domain where ideas, products, arts and entertainment would be available to all for the good of humanity. The idea of 'intellectual property' turned copyright into what we know in the music industry today.
One famous example is that in 1981 George Harrison lost a $1,500,000 lawsuit for subconsciously copying "He's So Fine" by The Chiffons in his song "My Sweet Lord". More and more copyright acts are being developed and put into effect as time goes on and some musical corporations exist for the sole purpose of suing others. Famously, Bridgeport music sued the hip hop group N.W.A. for using a heavily altered 2 second sample in one of their songs. This effectively killed sampling, no matter how small, and made it difficult and expensive to use samples in songs. Copyrights and patents were invented for "the encouragement of learning" and to "promote the progress of useful arts". In the modern era of music, copyright doesn't understand the need to "copy, transform and combine" and rather than progressing and expanding off of each other, artists are constantly being sued for copying and theft of "intellectual property".

Music 'Piracy'

We are currently living in the 5th age of media, the Digital Age. Preceding the Digital Age in chronological order are:

• Oral Age. Campfires and singing (10,000 years ago)
• Scribal Age.  Writing and documenting (5,000 years ago). This is the point where people realised that in order to establish ownership of media, there needed to be proof of creation and ownership.
• Print Age. Mass produced texts and sheet music (1,000 years ago). Towards the end of this age was when copyright came into effect in order to stop people from literally copying sheet music.
• Electric Age. (around 100 years ago) This age covers physical music like vinyl records and cassettes, radio, television and film.
• Digital Age. The age we live in now. The internet is dominant, music sales from iTunes etc are huge and illegal downloading is huge too.

Back in the day, before the internet, if you wanted to steal music you had to walk into a store and physically steal a CD or a cassette and get out without the guards noticing or the alarm bells ringing. Nowadays with filesharing and the fact you can just take the audio from any youtube video, obtaining songs for free is stupidly easy. Everything used to be physical, sharing music with a friend meant lending them the tape or maybe even a 12" vinyl. If you wanted them to hear a playlist you made, you had to physically make a mixtape and hand it to them. Copying a tape faded it, listening to a vinyl could scratch it. There was a fragility and very important realism to how music was shared and copied. In the digital world, stealing from someone is more like stealing an identical copy rather than taking a proper copy of a record. A million people can download the same song effortlessly for free, something that was impossible 20 years ago. It's also important to note that there is no loss in quality from sharing and copying digitally too. Immediacy and convenience are very important words when talking about this subject. As immediacy and convenience rise due to disruptive technologies like the internet, meaning and value lowers. I did some quick maths and I found that, buying music legally from itunes at 79p a track, it would cost me well over £4,000 pounds to fill my 32gb ipod with songs. Not to mention the fact that I have to sign up, make an account and enter lots of details and credit card information to do so. Whereas, I can very easily find a proxy for ThePirateBay and donwload that 32gb very quickly for free. Music 'piracy' isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Arctic Monkeys' debut album sold over 360,000 copies in a week and remains the fastest selling debut album by any band and this was largely due to the internet and free downloading and sharing. The Arctic Monkeys found that early on people knew all the lyrics to songs they had barely had a chance to perform. Illegal downloading isn't always a bad thing and can often boost the career of a band due to the fact that music can spread enormously quickly and easily. In the modern music industry, a much larger proportion of a bands profits come from live performance and merchandise anyway and music sales aren't necessarily the majority of a bands income. In fact, an extremely recent article from digitalmusicnews.com has found that the top 1% of artists earn 77% of recorded music income and they say "Whatever money is left in recordings, you're probably not making it."

On the other hand, famous examples of lawsuits against illegal downloading services exist. The most iconic case of this is Metallica vs Napster. Napster was a peer-to-peer network where users could easily upload their digital music and it could be re-downloaded by any other user. At its peak, Napster had 80 million registered users and arguments exist that it was a huge promotional power and contributed to many bands successes. Lars Ulrich of Metallica found that a demo of their song "I disappear" had been circulating before release and led to some radio play in the states. Lars traced it back to Napster and was horrified to find their entire discography free to download with ease. Metallica sued for $10,000,000 and Napster as a P2P site was shut down.

DRM, short for "Digital Rights Management" is an anti-piracy technology used by copyright owners to remote control how people can install, listen to, view, copy and share files. DRM can be thought of as a sort of digital padlock on a file and some argue that is should be considered necessary to protect 'intellectual property' just as a real padlock protects physical property. Have you ever bought a song on iTunes and realised that you can only access that file on 5 other computers? That's DRM in action. DRM in my opinion is a really bad thing as in effect it creates the illusion of ownership and inconveniences legitimate customers. An example of DRM being a terrible thing is when, rather ironically, Amazon remote deleted Kindle users copies of George Orwell's 1984 & Animal Farm. The reason behind it was that the books were sold by a third party seller without the rights to do so. If this had happened with the physical books, Amazon would have no right to enter your property and burn your book, yet amazon seem to have the power and the right to remotely delete content with no notice, warning or consent.

The issue with copyright in the digital age of music is that it really doesn't understand immediacy and convenience compared to meaning and value. Music copyright is still tailored to how things were before the internet where physical items were more personal and valuable. The world is constantly changing, technology is forever advancing and once in a while something entirely new comes along that changes everything forever. In that way, music is forever adapting and having new forms and right now we still haven't really figured everything out yet.