Following my last post I have made some big decisions regarding my set. With my search for a keyboard player appearing fruitless I've decided to scrap 'Universal Mind', and have replaced it with a piece in a similar vain, 'The Dance of Eternity' by Dream Theater. I have a backing track for this piece, and also for 'Subdivisions', which takes a lot of pressure off the band. This mean I'll be performing half the set myself, and half with the band, and I'm thinking doing so in that order live would work best. The set, in the order I'm thinking, would be:


The Dance of Eternity
Subdivisions
Island Magic

Sound of Muzak
Schism
Selkies: The Endless Obsession

Although I would have liked to have most of the set performed live, I don't mind the idea of performing half of it myself, and it makes it much easier to work on tracks knowing the backing track I'm playing with will be the same as on the day. It also allows me to get on with things without having to worry about parts that may have to be changed depending on the band.

I'm already just about there with much of the set - Subdivisions, Island Magic, Sound of Muzak and Schism I know all the way through, and just need tightened up for the performance. The other two however are undoubtedly the toughest of the bunch and will require a fair bit of dedication from me to get down. As I mentioned before Selkies also requires my feet to be trained to play at the necessary speed which is something I'm also still working on, but am noticing steady improvement with. I have just under a couple of months so with the changes I've made everything should be fine.

Preparations for my songs are ranging from going very well to not at all. I've spent quite a lot of time with the backing track for Island Magic, and am pleased with my progress. I have it to a point where I can just about play through the track, so it's just a matter of tightening parts up and working on the sections that allow improvisation. I've also been doing exercises almost every day to develop my left foot and double bass drum technique and I'm feeling a difference. However, whether or not I'll quite get up to the standard required for 'Selkies: The Endless Obsession' remains to be seen. It may still require me to simplify parts of it, but I'm still in the process of learning the track and I'll decide nearer the time how I will fare with it.

We have only had one rehearsal since our sample performance due to me having family issues and having to be out of town, but we have our next scheduled for two days time. I am hoping to be able to play the full track of Schism all together - we only did half of it for our sample, and although Dechlan, my guitarist, and myself have played through it all, Dave still has some issues with parts of the second half of it. I'm hoping he'll have these ironed out so we can play through the whole song and go on to work on other things.

On the down side I've had serious problems with finding a keyboard player. I've asked everyone I know who might know someone, and the general consensus is I might be able to find someone to play 'Subdivisions', but 'Universal Mind' may be beyond hope. Even the guitarist I have lined up to play the latter with is having troubles with it, leading me to think I may have to drop the track in favour of something else. It's very disappointing for me as I saw it as being one of the main focal points of my set, and I've already taken the time to learn it and was looking forward to playing it. To make things easier on myself at this stage I may consider again finding a song with a backing track I can play to as I'm struggling to coordinate rehearsals and find people in time. My family issues came at a bad time and have set me back a bit, and generally living as far away and not being familiar with a people round the college has made it very hard for me. I also have a backing track for Subdivisions I may consider using as it is the only other songs that I require a keyboard player for, and so would eliminate the need for a keyboard player altogether. Of course playing with backing tracks takes a lot of the live music out of the performance which may marr it for some of the audience, but if it makes it possible for me to play a set I'm happy with that is what I'll go with.

Last Wednesday, the 6th March, we performed a small snippet of my set to a panel as an indicator of our progress and to give an idea of what the set will be like. We played 'Sound of Muzak' and half of 'Schism' and I felt it all went quite well. We were admittedly not as prepared as I would have liked to be, but other than a couple of small issues with the bass, it all went quite smoothly. I was generally happy with my playing, although I do much to make an impression on the track's, something Rich noticed and commented on, saying he would've liked to see more of my personality come through in my playing. This is something I was vaguely aware of - as we weren't totally prepared I didn't want to do too much with the tracks - and now I see it as an important step I must take with these tracks and, indeed, the others in my set. Nevertheless I'm happy for now with what we did, and the rest is all stuff I can work on.

Following lessons with Richard last week I've finally made a choice on the final piece for my set. He gave me a couple of books to look at and I've settled on a Dave Weckl piece called 'Island Magic' which I'm quite fond of. It's technically challenging in a different way to the others, as it is more Jazz/Latin influenced, and includes several different rhythms, hits and a lengthy drum solo as well odd time bars. This will allow me to showcase another side to my playing as all my other pieces are largely Rock influenced, and don't leave as much room for improvisation. There is the matter of how well it will fit into the set given this, but it is still a very active, up-tempo piece, and I think if I place it after 'Subdivisions' somewhere in the middle of the set it will flow nicely. I had wanted a piece that was a departure from the rest of what I did but felt that arranging instrumentation would hold me back, but as this track comes with a backing track it means I don't have to worry about this, which is good given I'm having enough of a challenge arranging rehearsals for my other pieces. The set list, in no order, stands thus:

Subdivisions - Rush
Selkies: The Endless Obsession - Between The Buried and Me
Universal Mind - Liquid Tension Experiment
Schism - Tool
The Sound of Muzak - Porcupine Tree
Island Magic - Dave Weckl

I have to demonstrate a sample of my set on Wednesday 6th March, and have arranged rehearsals to hopefully get the pieces we are playing up to scratch. I'll be the first to admit that we are behind with rehearsals at this stage, largely due to scheduling conflicts and failure of some of the band to turn up, so I'm a little apprehensive about it. The pieces we are aiming to do for this are Schism and The Sound of Muzak. I'm quite comfortable with my parts for these, and have continued working on my double bass drum pedal technique so I can incorporate it into Schism where I'd originally planned to re-orchestrate the parts. It will just be a matter of getting the tracks together with the rest of the band. I've also started working intensely on learning 'Island Magic' in the hope that if I couldn't get the other pieces together I'd be able to substitute that in but although I'm making good progress, it's not looking like I'll get there in time. I'll continue working on it in my spare time just in case, and even if I can't perform all of it, part of it would be better than nothing should the other tracks not come together.