PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic What are your reasons for making music?

A drummer is the final reason why we are a duo.

When I met Leilani we were playing in different bands. Both our bands broke up at the same time and we both joined a 5 piece band that was just forming.

We were gigging, and after a time we lost our bass player. I don't quite remember why, I think he had to move for family caretaking.

We were out of work a month while we auditioned and then worked in a new bass player. We didn't want to come out until we were tight - we had a good reputation we didn't want to spoil.

So for a month Leilani and I made zero dollars (this was back in the 1980s before I started this BiaB aftermarket hobby turned sideline).

A couple of months later, we lost a drummer do to personal health reasons. We auditioned and found a new drummer. She had a small kit, kept great time, enhanced the music with tasty licks but didn't overplay, and could even sing background vocals!

We had our first gig at the dining room of a big country club that we played many times before with the old drummer. The crowd was big, they brought out extra tables, and folded back the 'accordion wall' between the dining room and the lounge and asked us to set up there.

The drummer who we found out later was a 'Seventh Day Adventist' member said "God won't forgive me if I play in a bar."

I told her "God will have to forgive me for homicide if you don't play in the bar tonight." I added that none of us drink on the gig, and we are facing the dining room full of people who would be very disappointed if there was no band tonight. She played.

The next day I bought a 4 track Teac reel-to-reel tape recorder and started making backing tracks (I play bass, drums, sax, and at the time only rhythm guitar, and right handed keyboards). I mixed them to cassette tapes and bought a dual deck cassette player/recorder to play our tracks.

When a Yamaha keyboard with a sequencer built in came out I bought it to get rid of whatever tape hiss there was, and then an Atari/ST computer. I've gone through many stages of improvements over my sequence/playback gear until what I have today. http://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.html

Do I miss playing with a real band? Yes.

Will I ever go back? As long as Leilani and I are both alive, I think No.

Leilani and I have been doing it since 1985 now. We've never missed rehearsal, never missed a gig, never showed up late, never showed up drunk, never took a long break, never acted unprofessionally, never refused to learn an often requested song, and never treated an audience member rudely.

We always do our best, we love what we do and it shows, we love our audience and that shows too, and we're quite good at what we do.

We seldom make mistakes and almost always cover them up so the audience doesn't know (with backing tracks that can be a challenge), We have a rapport with the audience and when a regular customer requests a song, if appropriate to our skills we will learn it. Then we will play it for them without being asked. This makes them feel special, and it should, because they are special.

We have to charge money to pay the bills. To do what we do, it takes a lot of daytime hours. For example: To learn a new song I have to learn and be able to play the drum, bass, and all the comp parts that go into the backing track, choose the right sound for each part out of thousands in our hardware synth modules, find the right key, balance, optimize for live performance, record as a high quality mp3 file, then learn the parts we are going to play live (the most fun parts). Then we rehearse until it's right. If we had 40 hour day gigs, we couldn't approach the kind of quality we offer.

I know other bands who buy karaoke tracks or other backing solutions and do an adequate job, and it works for them. But for me, adequate isn't good enough. It has to be a good as I can make it or I won't be happy with it.

We're still friends with that drummer, and she ended up eventually playing in bars -- we never asked about the religion thing.

There is more than one right way to make music, and this is the way we choose.

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