“You get such adrenaline, at least me personally, I get pretty nervous every time and a little bit of almost hands shaking,…but when you are out there, it is high like no other. You’re just on top of the world playing music, you feel the music in a different way. It’s different from just playing at practice or by yourself,” Eli Silberman `23 said.
After spending their first semester in Salamanca, Spain through Colby’s Global Entry Semester, Silberman and the guitarist for a band called okay, fine had talked about their shared interest in music and once getting back to campus, met others who shared their same goal of starting a band. The band okay, fine was created in the spring of Silberman’s sophomore year. Since then, his band, as well as the Colby Music Incubator (CMI), has served as a community on campus for Silberman.
“You meet people after shows, you work together to build and make the production happen because it is not like we’re a band with people setting up for us. We are all working together and it’s definitely a good time. I think it’s fun for me, to have some of my friends meet people that way too, by showing up to concerts and stuff that they would not otherwise go to,” Silberman said.
The experience of being in a band has allowed Silberman to learn the communication that is necessary when performing in order to produce a coherent sound. Through both verbal and nonverbal communication, bassist Silberman works to keep tabs on all components of the performance.
“My role is bringing everybody together. I’m working as the rhythm section with the drums, but I am also doing all the harmonies and the chords for the guitar. I’m bringing sort of the cohesion together in a sort of subtle way that is not necessarily noticed,” Silberman said. “We have taken three years of playing together to get to where we are, and we still could always be tighter.”
Similar to Silberman, Annika Hogan `24, a keyboard player and vocalist for the band lady bits, enjoys the collaboration of playing with her bandmates.
“Playing with other people kind of brings it to life a bit more. When I play on my own, it is a very therapeutic experience where I can lose myself, but when I play with the band, you have to keep track of all these other parts, I keep telling myself I am not soloing up there and I’m going up there with all of [the band],” Hogan said. “It is less of figuring out the notes and playing those notes really well, but it is more of figuring out what sound sounds good and trying to find that and play that.”
lady bits started last spring and focuses mainly on classic rock, playing a lot of Fleetwood Mac. As the band has morphed into its current state, Hogan and her bandmates have learned to adapt and figure out what works best for them.
“We all have been working hard on our own, so that when we come together, we can be pretty well practiced in our parts. The music kind of ranges; it is hard to find songs that have places for all of the instruments,” she explained.
“Originally, we only played songs written or sung by women. This semester we have branched out more, which has allowed us to expand the materials that we can go through. [In] our pieces, our parts go off of each other. Being in sync with somebody else with that many people in a room is a somewhat euphoric feeling.”
For more information on upcoming events, follow @okayfinemusic and @ladybitstheband on Instagram, and check out CMI to find resources that support student musicians.
~ Annie Goldstein `26
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