After coming up with a 4 chord progression on BandLab with my guitar, we decided to use this progression as the base for our assessment song (Ebmaj7, Emin7b5, Fmin7b5, Bb67). I believed that we should write all of the music for song before the lyrics, so I then came up with a second chord progression for a potential chorus. I also wanted to have a section that would lead us back into the verse, so I wrote out a descending chromatic line for the keys and bass to play which would then lead us back in.
Because I wanted the music to be written first, I gave Zara my drumsticks to play a simple backing beat for the time being. This recording can be heard below:
In our next rehearsal, we decided to throw out some of the chord progressions, specifically the “chorus” progression as it was proving tricky to work with, as well as the descending chromatic line. Instead, we opted for a stripped back version of the verse progression, with myself only playing block chords with the occasional embellishment. I thought this would work better for the chill/relaxed theme we were aiming for. Zara continued to play on drums and we began to consider the possibility of having her play drums and sing at the same time:
In the rehearsal after that, we were able to hear how the song sounded with lyrics, as Zara had been writing them in-between rehearsals. We also decided to have her play drums and sing at the same time, which is something she hadn’t previously tried before, so I suggested that she start with a simple kick-on-the-1 snare-on-the-3 pattern:
This seemed to work well with the rest of our instruments, and I also suggested that we place a mic next to the snare with a little reverb (which can be seen in the video above) in order to give the song a bit more body. Due to playing this song several times throughout our rehearsals, I was starting to worry about whether it had enough content, as I often do when writing instrumental music. However, when Zara was able to sing some lyrics, it helped to bring the song together, which helped to remind me that you don’t need to have a lot of musical elements going on in a song if there’s a singer on top of it (at least, in my opinion).
Our last rehearsal before the performance gave us the chance to practice and review the entire song with a complete set of lyrics. We also decided to incorporate a solo for the keys, in order to extend the length, and to also include some variety in the structure. I also positioned my other wooden drumstick on the snare in order to create a more woody sounding rimshot:
Overall, I am happy with the final result of our song. Although I was admittedly sceptical of the drum/vocal combo, Zara seemed to handle it well. Saffron was able to come up with her own bass line, with my suggestion to keep it fairly limited to root notes in order to keep the main focus on the vocals. Kara was also able to learn the guitar part I had written, which was impressive considering she had not looked at barre chords in detail before.
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