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Rock Cover Arrangement
"Somethings gotta hold on me" was released in 1962 and originally performed by Etta James and written by James, Leroy Kirkland and Pearl Wood.
11/8
We have started rehearsing! Our song is "Somethings gotta hold on me" by Etta James. Our piece is an excellent Jazz-Rock song with its traditionally jazz instruments being implemented into rock music!
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18/8
We have just been informed we can only have one singer in a band (Yay Covid-19!) but, because our song can't be good without backup vocals, we will be recording and creating a music video.
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2/9
Today we recorded! We were a little under rehearsed, but thanks to the art of recording we did each part individually until we got it right!
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It started with recording Ezra on the Cajon performing our click track, then we went onto Strahan for the walking bassline, Mia on electric guitar, Ally on violin, Aden on Saxophone, then everyone recorded back up vocals individually, I recorded lead vocals, we then did a recording of us clapping then to top it off, we then did some wacky percussion instruments (Cajon, tamborine, Vibraslap, Brushes, Djembe) for the introduction!
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It was really fun and a great learning experience. We also filmed a lot of the recording and funky little dancing videos and us just mucking around, which went into a brilliant video, which I have started editing but haven't finished.
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3/9
I finished editing the music video at 12am! I have sent it to our assignment group chat! Yay! I'm going to sleep now.
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4/9
Today we presented our video to the class! Everyone loved it and it was pretty cool. I have spent this music class doing as much theory work as I can. Oh joy!
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Our cover vs Ettas​
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The original version AND our cover of "Somethings got a hold on me" is a homophonic piece of music with harmonising backup vocals acting as a call and response. The melody is performed by a female mezzo (Etta James and I). The tempo of "Somethings got a hold on me" is 151 bpm and played in 4/4, the same in each piece of music because we used the original track as a click track. The instrumentation is probably the only thing we really changed. In our song we used a cajun (and various other small, percussion instruments) instead of a drum kit (all on rhythm), an electric guitar (chordal accompaniment), an electric bass (bass-line), violin (melodic accompaniment), saxophone (riff) and lead vocals (melody) with 5-part harmonies (melodic accompaniment). The original instrumentation of "Somethings got a hold on me" consists of two electric guitars, a trumpet, an electric bass, a saxophone, a piano, a drum-kit and a tambourine. Both pieces of music would be described as allegro, and there is a strong underlying pulse in each song. The song creates an overall thick texture with warm sounding instruments. The structure of the song was not modified with our cover and it went in the order of intro, chorus, verse 1, pre-chorus, chorus, verse 2, chorus, bridge, pre-chorus, chorus and outro. The lyrics used frequent repetition in the choruses, and a call and response melody line was put within that. Our cover used one brass instrument, which was a nice touch and added warmth and brightness to our piece. The electric guitar had a raw sound, and the bass was rounded and comforting. The lead vocal on our recording was rather piercing. "Somethings got a hold on me" is played in forte pretty much the whole way through. There is a big diminuendo at the end of the original version, but we ended at the end of a verse of scatting, then with our final solo of the backing vocals.
fin.
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