Battle of the Bands (creativity)

Battle of the Bands (Creativity)

Battle of the bands is a concert organized by Cleft pallet the CAS and it is a competition where 5 bands compete and which is something that "Still Thinking" has being practicing for the past few weeks. How the competition works is that every band gets 15 minutes, and the bands can fit any amount of songs in that 15 minutes. Then the bands have to perform in front of a panel chosen by the cleft pallet group and this panel is usually people who has being in the Sri Lankan music industry for a long time. They judge the bands in a criteria also provided by cleft pallet.

My first goal for the whole concert was to come up with a line up. I had already to talked to Bryce, he has being the drummer for still thinking for a long time and i still needed to find rhythm guitarist, a bassist and a vocalist, as the former band members left the band or were not in the country. So i asked around school to find a bassist and i heard Yo from the grade below was a bassist. So what i did was i told him to learn the songs that i was planning on doing for the concerts which was a Maldivian instrumental song called "your betrayal" by Fasy live and "Ecstacy of gold" by Metallica. Both of these songs are tricky songs but yo managed to get a hold of the two songs fairly easily so my next job was to find a rhythm guitarist and a vocalist. I asked the vocalist from my other band if he would be interested in playing with us, he said he will play with us if he can play the rhythm guitarist, and he managed to find a vocalist fairly easily and my first goal was achieved easily. So the line up was Me on lead guitar, yo on the bass, Prabodhya on rhythm guitar and Ray on vocals.

The main goal in our practice sessions were to practice the songs as much as we can, and to do this i had work collaboratively, with the rest of the band. I also had to show Commitment and perseverance which meant that even with all my school work i had to show up to practice on time and give my full focus onto practicing. From all these practices i managed to also Develop my skills in playing guitar as well as the bass because I learned the bass line that was for the Maldivian song as there are no Tabs online that we can follow so we had to learn the song the old school way by listening.

The Concert day came up and all of us were really excited to play and show what we have been practicing for the past few weeks. We got to play 3rd last. Before i went on stage, the goals that i set to accomplish was firstly to have fun and have a good time, secondly it was to win the competition and play with no mistakes
thirdly work collaboratively  and be as synchronized with the rest of the band as possible.

We played really well and we came of the stage with a big smile on our faces, the songs we played were Ecstasy of Gold to your betrayal and then seven nation army by white stripes. Although we didn't win we had a great time and in our hearts we won so that's all that counts, but i was happy to come second and i think the rest of the band was also happy.

I learned a lot from this experience, like i learned that having fun and having a good time is much more important than winning and i think that i accomplished thee two goals. I also learned to have a little faith in others when working collaboratively with others, because in the practices Yo did make a lot of mistakes when playing the songs but on that night his mistakes were to a minimum.