Moving on with ‘The Accidentals’

After our first gig we were invited to play at the opening of a local village town hall; the organisers wanted a half hour set from us. After the success of our first gig we were delighted be invited to another gig. We wanted more experience of playing in more gigs and more importantly we wanted some experience of what its really like to play at an outdoor venue and how this changes the sound of the band and how the band balances playing in what came to be a more acoustic set with limited technology.

We went into the gig feeling positive, knowing we have at least one song though knowing we need to improve this to fill our set. Back onto the internet we went and found a number of songs specifically arranged for wind instruments. Our biggest influencing arranger was Paul Murther. Although he wrote more for a bigger wind band we put our heads together and chopped it down. We read through the scores and found where instruments played together and thought where we could play in harmonies. This led us to a variety of different ideas. Since the wind instruments were monophonic instruments we looked towards the piano to give us depth in chords and fill out empty parts which through hard work we managed to work out. This gave us something to build on in terms of structure. Did we want to chop and change it so much that it became hard for us to prepare for and would it become too complicated for us let alone the listeners? We stuck with the main outline that was given to us in the end and this paid off because we could understand our parts. This was not for just this song but we could really identify where we were able to employ our new ideas and implement them into this song.

We did a medley of songs from the Blues Brothers. This was chosen because it was a chance to demonstrate our abilities. This music was something we thought could work well with the instruments that were available to us – in fact, on the day we could not find a guitar player, but that didn’t stop us. We wanted to continue growing as a band and experiment with new challenges – like not having a guitar player! Luckily, on that day, not having that part played did not have a massive impact on our overall sound.