I'm Pumped!

We, as in the Magpies, decided that we are going to work on our song and bear down and truly practice.  Practicing is something we don't really do that much.    We get together a lot and we play a lot, but we really don't practice and  analyze our songs and how we play them.  When we do some really amazing things happen.  We find more interesting ways to present the song.   What it comes down to is that it is really about the song.  What's the best way to play it to be interesting to the listener and still be fun to play.  

We got together last night, made some song selections to work on so we will be ready for our upcoming audition for the Heart of the City Festival.   So, songs selected, we got together again tonight to really work out the songs.  How should the vocals be sung? Where do you put the emphasis?  What instruments?  What doesn't belong?  How do we start the song? How do we end it?  Do we need an instrumental break?  how long should it be and how should it be played?   Do we need backing vocals and where?   All of these things are important to give the best presentation of the song.   Again, it is really about the song.   

Well, what happened tonight is we worked out these things on four songs tonight.  We've played them enough before that we've evolved the song close to where we like them, but we were really fine tuning them.   I really enjoy that part of taking a song from the writing, to arrangement, to presentation.   To me it is and exciting process to live through the growth of our music.   Tonight our songs were not just sounding good, but sounding great.   That is what a little practice and hard work can do. 

I think in our case, it is one of the sweet pleasures in life where a song that whoever wrote the song, Don, Brian, Me becomes a "Magpies" song.  It becomes 'our' song and not 'my' song. 

Well, we have these four song worked out and now we just need to keep 'practising' until audition day.   Our goal is to impress the 'judges' enough that they give us a higher billing at the Festival than in past.   I think we are well on the way.  

So what songs did we pick.   One of the great things this year that is a big change from past years - we have a lot of our own songs to choose from.  It is getting to be a bigger challenge for us to choose songs for an audition or a festival performance, but that is a positive thing.    Oh, and the songs we did pick?    I'll keep that to myself until after the audition.

I'm pumped!