Band Practice at Plug Norwich

I’d been feeling a bit rough and got away a bit late, so I had to hurry to get there for 4:45 as I planned. Met up with the boys and got set up in room 5 which is a bit smaller than the room we had played in before but fine for our purpose. The guitar amp was an Ibanez solid state but it was well voiced to cut through and gave a great sound with the Roland pedal set to Fender Twin. (I was using my more expensive original Godin on the ‘dark’ output which may have contributed to the sound). After warming up with “Hotel California” we sorted out some timing issues with “Love Potion”. Then we tried Greg out on hi harmony vocal on some Eagles pieces. He would need to be more familiar with the harmony lines but his voice certainly does have the potential for hi lines. Greg then had a go at lead vocal on “Under the Moon of Love” and “Walk of Life” and we agreed he should take those on and work on them for the next gig. Next we tried playing along to backing tracks for “Dance the Night Away, Wonderful Tonight and Walk of Life”. This worked better than I expected and we discussed how we might augment the band’s sound for selected numbers using this approach. The debate is really about the practicability of using recorded MP3 files with a click / cue track on a separate monitor channel or setting it all up in midi with a decent midi synth. We finished off running through “How Long” by the Eagles to test if I can swap to the lead line and fill out the hi line with the harmoniser. This went OK but I’d need to do it regularly for a while to get used to not singing the harmony! Got away about 8:20 on a warm evening and was home for 9:30 ish. Ms J is away on a quilting fair so all was quiet and I had a beer or two to while away the rest of the evening.