SingStrong!!!

Last night Love Note Sentiment just got back from SingStrong, hosted by Blue Jupiter! The trip took almost 7 hours each way, and although it was tough having 5 guys packed into a volvo, it was such an incredible trip. The trip itself created strong bonds within our young group and actually acted as a retreat for us. Plenty of inside jokes came into fruition over the weekend, which is exactly what we needed, on top of rehearsal time and singing.

We got there Friday night, registered at the desk and got into the auditorium within minutes of the first concert, Aca Idol, beginning. It was an incredible show that featured groups like Red States, Juxtaposition, Snow Day and Classic Sound (who won the event AND were the audience favorite). After the concert, we mingled with some of these groups, making a few connections, and joined everyone afterwards at a local restaurant.

Saturday we woke up and got ready for a day filled with workshops and we split up most of the time and managed to see almost every one. We took tons of notes that we are going to use to further advance our group. I learned that we still have so much to do to get Love Note Sentiment on the map, I will expound on these later in the post. Saturday Night was the Main Event concert. LNS of course, showed up as the classiest looking audience members. We saw the likes of Messai Electro (whom we rode on the shuttle bus with and struck up great conversation), Fii, Blue Jupiter, Ball in the House, Zulal, and NOTA!!!!

After the show, we made sure to get pictures with all these amazing groups and make connections with these people. We were given a few offers to actually go out to New York (where most of these groups are from) and perform with some. Then we joined everyone at another local restaurant for the afterglow. At the afterglow, they had an a cappella open mic, in which all the groups there offered a song or two to entertain the whole place. Since Blue Jupiter had supported us and sent us such personal and caring invitations to this event, we decided we needed to let them hear how we sound, even though we are not even two months old yet. We stepped outside and ran "Sherry" twice and went back in and signed up. We were placed to go on after Messai Electro, and yes, it was intimidating. We introduced ourselves, informed the world that this was our public debut, wesang, we moved, we smiled. They danced and clapped along. Almost like wolves, everyone in the place turned to watch this new group, seemingly as if they were to judge us, and the danced and grooved with us. We received a lot of compliments for our performance. Right after us, Fii and Nota teamed up to put on a rocking performance. Long story short, we opened for Nota.

Sunday morning we all got a professional coaching from Wes Carroll, originally from Five O'Clock Shadow. He gave us some pertinent feedback and tweaked our sound and totally improved our vocal performance. Thank you, Wes! We then went to a few more workshops, and then the final concert, which was closed by Classic Sound, who brought the house down with Jazz and Doo Wop!!!

Overall, the weekend was incredible and provided us with tons of connections, friends, information, new goals, and ideas. We are definitely going back next year and competing in Aca Idol.

The Vocal Biz!

One of the major things I realized was during a workshop hosted by David Brown. We need a website, business cards, a facebook page, and so much more. I will be spending the next two weeks working on these with Ryan.