And that's a wrap! Our last chapel for this year is complete. Good work everyone! It was pretty fun playing on the altered stage. Thanks again to all of you and your parents for getting to the school early so we could set everything up and get a good sound check in. That really helps! It was unfortunate that we didn't have time to play our last song. Mr. D. said he would have gone ahead and played it anyway. I'll remember that for next time. :-)
I've really seen you all improve over the year. You all have gotten a much better understanding of how to arrange a song, when to play, when not to play, and different little 'tweaks' - things to put into an arrangement give the song umph, finesse, and make it easy to listen to. Below I don't use names for privacy reasons, but you know who you are:
Electric guitar - This year you've gone from playing rhythm guitar to solo guitar. The strides you made particularly in the last month with finding the little solo riffs on your own and putting them into songs in tasteful places was fantastic and great to see and hear!
Bass - I really enjoyed your input throughout the year - not just on bass progressions, but on song arrangements for the whole band. You really have a musical gift. Use it! Not just in school, but find other places to use it as well. It was fun to hear you add your personality to your playing and watch you help mentor other members of the band.
Drums - I got comments from several people about how you've improved over the year. You're experimenting with tasteful tweaks to beats which is great practice and it sounds great to. You also learned to restrain the beat when required and keep it very simple but driving - also very important. And I think you started to realize how key the drummer is to the arrangement of the entire song - a missed shot or outro can be a disaster, yet little things like a roll on a rim or a high-hat can be just the right thing.
Keyboards & Synth - I feel like we're just starting to tap the potential of what you two could offer. You learned about how different sound patches can really add flare and flavor to a song. And how the left hand is a 'no-no' 90% of the time :-) Knowing the sound patches and different things you can do with them on the keyboard is pretty key (no pun intended lol). With your playing, personal presence and examples, you both provided a musical polish that the band needed.
Acoustic Guitar - Great work with different strumming patterns and experimenting with the capo. The band also took advantage of your musical opinions, enthusiasm and talents.
Singers - I've been impressed all year with how our voices blended. One of the things we learned was to 'kiss the mike'. Right? :-) Also we are being watched and what we do is contagious.
As a band, I felt we started to learn to listen to each other and in playing songs in practice, actually enjoy them (instead of being stressed out about chords and words, etc.) We had some fun times and some good spontaneous worship/music sessions in practice. You were all very patient with me and flexible with song choices, changes, wrong turns (sometimes), power outages, and practice cancellations.
Today was a fantastic end to the year. The songs sounded great. Well done everyone. I hope to work with you next year on my worship team.
