I was scheduled to practice last Thursday at James Watt College as usual when my singer Jennifer McLardy had to cancel due to a last minute play rehearsal of which she was performing the following night. My other band members Adam, Scott and Nick informed me that they were running late due to special circumstances this week and it turned out pointless to travel down to Greenock to practice as we wouldn't have much time left so I decided to call it off and schedule a 6 hour practice for the following week.

I had a practice last night at Berkeley 2 studios in Glasgow. Unfortunately again my singer Jennifer McLardy cancelled due to her babysitter cancelling on her. I think from now on I am going to schedule in 2 singers each week because at least if one of them cancels the other one will still come in and we can move forward. My trumpet Lizy came to rehearsal tonight, however my trombone player Chris was unable to make it tonight.

We focused on the 3 brass songs tonight since Lizy was in which are "Total Hate", "Move On" and "Ache". I feel these 3 songs are the hardest to play because they have the most difficult structures and for the drums especially they are quite fast paced and with the drummer playing constant fast 8th and 16th notes it is tough on your right hand. It it definitely a test of endurance. There are a few No Doubt songs like this which involve your right hand playing consistent 16th notes.

We played the songs over and over and over and we felt they were definitely showing improvement the more we played them. "Total Hate" especially came on very well and is sounding brilliant now, just felt very empty because there was no vocals and no other brass in it. "Ache" was quite messy the first few times we tried it and you can see evidence of this in the video that was taken for this week. "Move On" was the most difficult to play last night for me because it is very fast and I kept messing up the intro of the song. I have been practising this a lot recently and it was fine when I was practising in my room. I will continue working on it and I am confident it will improve for next week's practice.

Nick my bass player has now more or less mastered the song "Ache". It is the toughest song for him as the bass line is really tough. He has shown a massive improvement with it this week and it was sounding excellent, I am really happy with his standard of playing. Scott my keyboard player was having a little trouble with a section in "Ache" where after the solo the piano plays 8th notes and the band play stabs on beats 1 and 2+. He was finding it difficult switching between his string sound and his piano sound. After a few attempts at the song he was showing improvement as at first he would just drop out and not play the piano part.

My trumpet player Lizy was brilliant. She is very good and very professional. Having studied at the RSAMD, her playing, listening and reading and writing of music is of a very high standard. She knew the songs well, having prepared her parts extremely well. The first run through of "Total Hate" she mastered it and I don't believe she made any mistakes. "Ache" and "Move On" were played well also and I am very confident in her playing and I believe if the trombone player Chris is as good and professional as her then I will not need to practice with the brass every week.

I feel I am still on form, I would have liked to have had all my singers in and brass players in by now. The hardest part of this is trying to manage so many different people. They all have busy schedules and different things going on and trying to get everyone in the same room at the same time is proving to be quite a difficult task which is why I'm glad I started really early as this would never be possible if I had left it close to the date of the gig. I still have a good few weeks left and nearer the time of the gig I will arrange more practices with everyone to ensure we are fully prepared to perform the show.