leavenband.blogspot.com

Friday, May 11, 2007
Update in upcoming plans

There are some changes to the Confirmation Camp gig. In short, they are in need of a simple praise and worship team who is versatile and experienced in "praying over" and to play impromtu songs. Right now, none of us are able to do it.

Hence I pulled the band out of it, and ask them to look for another team to do it. Another reason is that I think you guys will have problems with logistics. Going there is one thing, but to bring everything by ourselves is another thing, especially since that guy in charge is quite an amateur when it comes to camp, I don't think I want to risk another 'canteen operation'.

But all of you can volunteer to be facils, it would be fun for you. But most importantly, by participating in the camp you would be able to see how the pw team does it. Just in case we have a chance to do a camp in the future.

As for practices, we will carry on. Since we have no gigs upcoming other than the tentative campfire, we will now concentrate on learning new songs and go through the old ones. Especially since we did not adequately learn the songs we were playing recently.

It will be a good time to build up our pw repertoires so that whenever there are any opportunities to play for mass, the band is ready.

Likewise, build up the pop repertoire so that there are any opportunities to play for any gig, the band is ready.

It is no secret that the band is not ready, for any form of gigs.

Nick!@12:59 AM | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Thursday, May 3, 2007
Gigs can ALWAYS turn out bad...

Let me tell you about my own self-experiences in gigging.

I tell you this: in ALL my gigs, we are NEVER ever, fully prepared for any gig. No amount of preparation will get you 100% ready for any public performance.

BUT.

It's all in the SONG.

The song.

Yes boys, the song.

It's about knowing the song.

Me, Kazaaa, knows ALOT of songs. Yes? Agree? Good.

BUT. Does kazaaa know ALL the different parts to all the songs he knows? Chances are - no. I don't. Normally, it's the bridge that I won't know. But that's cool. See ah, for me, as long as I KNOW the song, I'll put EXTRA effort only in the bridge parts of the song.

Coz the rest of the song is repetitive. Normally lah. Serious.

And that's my point. Point is about practice. I think we're all very busy people, with very little time to practice, which is ok. We're not a pub band who performs every night for hundreds of people.

BUT.

We do have monthly objectives, yes? And we have practices that last really, really long. The thing about this is, there is only so much we can learn during practices, no matter how long we're willing to stay.

And that's exactly what happened for the last gig. We used the practice time to learn songs, and work out stuff. Which was really anybody's fault, coz I came out with the songs last minute. My fault la!

But we need to take a step back and ask ourselves - could we have done more? If I knew all the songs already, and I was waiting for the charts from Clifford, then would the practice have gone faster? Would we have covered MORE songs? Would we have sounded better?

Chances are, NO. The sound system was crappy. I blame that alone for making us sound terrible. But combine that with the fact that we weren't THERE as a band yet. Chords were off, rythyms were out at times, and singing was out of sync with the band at times. Then we'd have a really, really scary sounding band.

All I'm saying is, if we had done our homework, then we could deal with ANYTHING else that comes up, against us. You haev to expect that we'll be playing in really crappy places at times, with terrible acoustics, and bad microphones etc. Always prepare for the worst, it's what you have to expect when you gig, dudes.

But nonetheless, I think we did an ok job that day, except for those ladies who kept coming up to us and telling us to quieten down. You think we CD player ah? KNN.

I remember seeing people singing along, and smiles around as well know? And you know what? That made the gig good for me. I stood there the first time, with you guys, and I can proudly say that we're Leaven. Coz this is about entertainment. If just ONE person likes the song we're playing, while the rest ignore us, I'll focus on that one person. Coz that's what we're up there for.

So keep it up, people of Leaven.

Have a good choir session at St Stephen's on Sunday kay! I'm going to Phuket!

Clifford@5:13 PM | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Zach Lee

Lead Vocals

Our lead hearthrob