rehearsal Archives - CRAIG WESTWOOD

Performance Session

Craig — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 23:11:00 +0000

A really great session today with Andrew. I’ve introduced another three songs to the set: Taken to Another, and new songs Waiting on the World and Till the Day is Done, the latter having literally been written last week. I’ve suggested a slide guitar approach with this last one to Andrew. The improvised accompaniment he’s done today really works, I think, and it’s down to formalising this in the next few weeks before we perform it. Thanks Andrew for the pic.

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Last rehearsal

Craig — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 13:39:00 +0000

Last rehearsal with Andrew was on Wednesday before my first open mic at The Hop next Monday. This went pretty well I thought, only a couple of slips. One particularly with the mid-section of (Don’t Hurry) Slow Down, where I simply can’t see the fret board while singing, to get the upper bar chords right. I guess I’ll have to modify my singing over that part for now, until it becomes more “muscle-memory”.

Anyway, the nerves, I admit, are setting in a bit now. I’ve been rehearsing at home and do about an hour each day since Wednesday, but the rehearsals have not been going so well. That is, until I decided to raise the guitar up slightly, so it’s sitting higher and more comfortably placed, especially for those bar chords on Slow Down.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing some research on stage nerves online, and found a brilliant set of quick tips from singer and voice coach, Adrienne Osborn. These have helped me put a few of the old gremlins aside. Let’s see if they will do the trick on Monday.

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Performance session

Craig — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 11:56:00 +0000

Andrew had me going through my set, firstly making sure my mic positioning was correct. As I’m suffering from a bit of back trouble (the benefits of getting on a bit….!) I’ve had to modify my footing, so I needed a bit of instruction before this came right.

I don’t know why, but I’m having a touch of block somewhere during the opening song. I don’t know if this is just nerves, or lack of concentration or something, but it’s always somewhere during Chasing it Down that I am forgetting a word or a phrase somewhere, and it’s not that I don’t know the song, far from it… Anyway, second time around it came out good.

Then we started to work out Andrew’s parts fully. Watching the Rain is sounding very nice, and Chasing it Down is coming together too. Anyway, a little work is still needed on (Don’t Hurry) Slow Down, but the other two are coming together nicely. As I know Andrew’s style is a little different to mine, I’m asking him to fill in a second part where it feels comfortable. I’ve also given him some recordings of the live songs that I did over last weekend, these were just miked-up practices, so he gets an idea of what I’m going to play and can get familiar with them.

Last practice run through in two weeks time, and then we’re performing it…

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