16 May, 2014: Penultimate Rehearsal

Unfortunately, though I brought my backing track via USB and uploaded it to my Google Drive account - which I can easily access whilst at college to download the track - my efforts were not matched by Elica, Serena and Tamara who simply downloaded their tracks to their phones. This was not any better than lining up multiple tabs on an internet browser (as we had done before) to play the tracks from YouTube. At least when we'd done that, the aux was plugged into the computer throughout and did not have to be switched around from phone to phone as we had to during this rehearsal.

The failure to do as I requested meant that it was pointless of me to bring in the CDs to burn the playlist to and an opportunity to run through the set list seamlessly before the show date was squandered as a result. This also means that this CD will now have to be created on the day of the show which was what I was absolutely trying to avoid considering how busy we'll be executing final rehearsals and organising other tasks which can only be done on the day; such as purchasing food, getting into the venue and setting the up the staging, PA equipment, chairs and finally soundchecking.

More positively, the addition of costumes set a great atmosphere which was more professional than previous rehearsals and thus the transitions were quicker and the general attitude of everyone was much more focused. Whilst running the set list, we did rehearse the group songs which the run through revealed required more attention; "Golden Brown" and "Kiss From a Rose". This added time and also meant that the run through was not a seamless one. Our half hour break seemed to rob of us some focus and when we returned at 1:00 p.m. we were somewhat tired. We then needed to vacate the room which was pre-brooked for a lesson an hour later, but were allowed to stay where we rehearsed until 4 p.m. with varying levels of focus.

As today was our penultimate rehearsal before the show date, I opted to record as much of the rehearsal as possible via one of the college's Apple Mac computers as blogging throughout the day would be too time consuming and I wished to focus solely on rehearsing and perfecting the performances. The audio quality of the Mac recordings is atrocious however and so below I've uploaded a video I recorded with my mobile phone of what was the most enjoyable performance of the day:

Serena and Kian rehearsing Jamiroquai's "Little L" with improvised accompaniment from Will (one of our tutors):