Unit 9: Gig summary

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For this performance we were told to play the 3 songs we were using for the CD project. The gig was in college on the 22nd of October 2025.

I was playing with my band Rex and I was also playing with Kai as he played the guitar and sang. Therefore, i had 2 setlists.

Rex's setlist

- Save the world

- Time of your life

- Gold under the sea


Kai's setlist

- I won't be coming home

- Play your game

- Rocking, Rocking down the line


A week before the gig my band Rex we're in desperate need of a bassist, since our regular bassist is in the year group below, therefore he wasn't allowed to perform with us. Because of this we asked Kai to play with us since he was the only other bassist who had played with us before in our class, and he agreed to do it on the note that i play drums for his set, which i also agreed too. 

Unfortunately due to the short notice, Kai had to teach me all 3 songs in only 2 days. Since Kai was only planning on playing guitar and singing, I had to come up with my own drum parts for the songs, we also didn't have time to run through Rocking, Rocking down the line, which led to me improvising at the gig.

I found the 2 songs fairly simple, although there were some pauses in "Play your game" which i found quite challenging to keep on time, I was also having to guess when the pauses were since i had forgotten due to us not being able to rehearse as much as we should have.

Since the first song (I won't be coming home) song is blues. I played a swing beat and used the push pull technique on the ride cymbal in order to play group 3 hits on the cymbal which is just triplets on the ride.

I mainly stuck with simple 4/4 fills on the snare or low tom since Kai had told me this is what drummers did in the 50s.



Evaluation - Kai and my performance

I was surprised with how it turned out, although a few mistakes were made, we now know what we can improve on next performance. I do think my drumming fitted the genre very well and i think i did pretty well considering i had learn the two songs only two days before the performance.

Things both me and Kai can improve:

During the whole performance i noticed there was a lack of stage presence, which could've made the performance a lot more exciting. I also wasn't a huge fan of how the snare sounded in this performance it just sounded extremely tight, so next time i will make sure to either tune it or get another snare to use.

There also was a lack of communication between me and kai, which led to confusion on my behalf and Kai also forgot to introduce songs before playing which might've led to confusion in the crowd.

Right at the end of the first song (I won't be coming home) I accidently misjudged the ending and stopped around a bar too early and ended up coming back in to play too late. I also messed up by missing a few hits on the high-hat since i don't usually play swing, but luckily I recovered quickly, though next time i will do as much practice as i can.

For the first song Kai had described his vocals sounding quite monotonous, which he wasn't too happy about and thought he could improve this for next time.

On the second song i accidentally missed the first beat, because I was unsure when to start since kai went straight into the song without a count in.

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