PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic What constitutes live performance?

You sir are right on about the bluegrass thing. What fans come to the festivals for is to see each picker take a lead on a song. Gotta have your chops.

I wasn't going to weigh in on this post, but now I've had 4 beers I will.
If one of "us" went to a venue where another one of "üs" was performing, I'm sure we would appreciate the amount of time & effort that was put into the BIAB arrangement of the music. Similarly, I think that another non-BIAB musician would appreciate it also.

However, would Joe Patron at the venue appreciate it?
I think not.

I liken it to a great painting.... when you look at the Mona Lisa, you don't think of the amount of thought, planning & effort that Da Vinci put into it prior to completion, you just admire the finished project.The same with wonderful architecture, a good book, or a great movie.

Similarly, when we turn on our computers and fire up BIAB, we don't always think of the effort, imagination, blood sweat & tears that Peter & his team put in to develop this wonderful product.
People just see (or hear) the end product.

I think in this case the end justifies the means.
(Rant over.... time for another beer)

Notes - You're absolutely right about TV. When people have paid the cable bill they feel they ought to stay in and watch it.

That and the cheap lager from Tesco (US translation- cheap lite beer from Walmart).

Back in the 70s we we gigging five nights a week and the venues were full. Don't ever see it coming back.

Quel dommage.

ROG.

The thing about the "solo guy with guitar" thing is that there is a finite amount of what he can do. With backing tracks there is not. Plus, the 4 beer fueled post above made a great point, that is another "I play with canned tracks" guy sits down to someone using canned tracks, we know what went into those tracks. Remember, the average listener thinks all we do is play those 2 or 3 one hour sets. No practice, no prep....

A couple of points:

Notes, if I had a talented and beautiful wife like you do, I'd prefer playing duos with her as well. Beats the hell out of 4 sweaty old dudes EVERY day of the year!

And added to all the reasons for the decline in live music, factor in the drinking age change in the mid 80s. When it went from 18 to 21 in Ohio, clubs started closing the instant the gavel hit the desk because they lost the college kids. This area went from too many clubs and not enough bands to a handful of clubs that bands were fighting over. Tha led to bands playing for what we now consider insulting money just so they could play. I hung on until about 1994 but realized I needed a big boy job and retired from music.

Then there is the added scrutiny from police DUI enforcement teams. These days we are closer to a police state than I care to be, where poklice can invent "probable cause" to just pull over random cars and make them walk the line. With what DUI fine does to your insurance rates, everybody is afraid of being that random car.

It's all interrelated, and honestly I think the size of the band doesn't matter as much as threads like this make it out to be. When you play in restaurants where the stage is a 4x8 sheet of plywood, you can't bring a real band in, so you use Real Band....

Eddie has band size envy!

Eddie, I'm a lucky guy. She is beautiful AND talented AND fun to be with AND fun to play music with AND she has great work ethics AND playing music together is our second favorite thing to do (can't say what's first on a public forum).

When I started playing music the drinking age was 21 and the clubs were still full. But that was still the Pre-Cable TV age of 3 channels, narrow bandwidth audio, and tinny speakers on the TV set. We played 6 nights a week and there was always a club nearby so close that we could check out the competition on our breaks and make it back in time to start the next set.

And Pat, I agree about the boomers.

I play yacht clubs, country clubs and 55+ (retirement) developments, and living in Southeast Florida, there are a lot of retirement developments (it's God's waiting room <grin>)

I've been playing these gigs for years because they pay well and have shorter hours (3 maybe 4 - max). Plus the audiences is generally very happy to see you so the entertaining is fun. The downside is moving the equipment every day, but I just think of that as weight-bearing exercise (I keep telling myself it's good for me).

When we started playing those gigs in the 80s, the music was predominantly swing era music, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Frank Sinatra, and so on. I remember when the baby boomers started retiring pulling out an early Elvis Presley song and having a couple of people dislike it. But as more and more boomers entered the 55+ communities, we started playing more and more boomer music. Not too long ago someone came up and asked us to crank it up adding that "Harry James is Dead."

For the past year or two we have hardly played any standards on the gig. In The Mood still works sometimes, while Satin Doll has definitely fallen out of favor. And when the boomers throw a party, more often than not, they want a band, not a DJ because when we grew up having a 'record party' was deemed cheap and inferior to live music.

Most of the audience either doesn't notice or care that our background tracks are pre-recorded. Although many of them are BiaB assisted, none of them are 100% BiaB. I add song-specific licks, and tweak the parts until they satisfy my ears (see http://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.html for details). I take the very good output of BiaB and do my best to turn it into something even better.

I make them good enough for the audience, and then continue working on them until they are good enough for me (within the limits of my capabilities). When I learn a new song, hopefully I will be lucky enough to play it hundreds or thousands of times. So I want the parts to be just right, the groove to be just right, and I want it to inspire me to do my best with my vocals or instruments that I happen to be playing on top of the track. Perhaps I obsess too much, but if I hear something I could have done better as I'm playing along, it would bug me. In fact, as my skills have improved I wish I had the time to go back and re-do some of the songs I've done years ago, but if I'm going to spend that much time on them, I'd rather learn a new song - so that's what I do.

Every once in a while someone will come up and ask, and I simply tell them that I record all the parts that we aren't playing live at home. Then I ask if they are musicians, and if they are, I tell them more and usually put in a plug for Band-in-a-Box. I've actually sold a few copies of BiaB this way (referred them to PG Music).

I know an entertainer who has a subscription to Rhapsody and has a collection of an uncountable number of karaoke tunes. He sings and plays piano, but generally just sings to the karaoke tracks. If he doesn't know a song, he DJs it through Rhapsody, and tells me the customers don't know and don't care, it allows him to play a much greater amount of songs, and it's a lot less work. I'm not ready to go that route myself, but I can see his point -- and he get a lot of work.

We musicians care about a lot of things the audience doesn't care about. And I suppose we should, after all we are in the business and that caring is what makes our "product" valuable. But sometimes I think we care too much about some things (myself included). And I think the percentage of our music that is live or pre-recorded is one of those cases -- at least in most venues. We need to know how to prioritize what is most and least important for our gigs and we have to consider the audience's point of view when we do. After all, that is who we are playing for.

So my new answer to "What constitutes live performance?" is "Who cares as long as the audience is entertained." While I'd like to answer the question more directly, I don't think I can.

Insights and incites by Notes

Pat - I do hope you're right. You give me a new optimism.

ROG.

The DJ thing has been going on awhile.

Back in 1985 I was in the vocalist in start-up 5-piece. The college crowd (which I was part of) really enjoyed our sets of mostly metal and hard rock covers but we were not getting paid. Back then it was already very difficult to get a paid gig - it's not new.

When we finally managed to get a money gig at a bowling club, I brought home $30 for two 45 min sets.

While we were knocking looking for gigs, one of the club owners found out I was a DJ on the local college station. Much to the anger of the band-mates, I was offered $150 to spin dance tunes for an evening. I called the owner back as soon as I was alone and took the offer.

Soon after I had a regular Saturday night gig spinning tunes at the joint. This got my name out there and soon I was playing weddings and corporate parties for $200 - $250 a night!

I know there are band-members right now that are shaking their fists at the screen but I needed the money. My band was most unhappy and didn't last for long after -- but there were also "personnel" problems.

Another thing that is not new is inviting guest DJs. I wasn't much of a "scratcher" so I invited (and paid) other DJs to "play" with me. Remember this is back in 1985.

On the other hand, someone who is good at guitar, vocals, and audience skills can be a very entertaining act, similar to a good piano bar player but with an entirely different repertoire.

No matter what the gig, guitarist, piano bar player, track act, or full band, there are good ones and there are bad ones. And I've heard both ends of the spectrum.

But I don't go out to places like that too much anymore. I'm usually gigging on the same days that other people are. Fortunately they usually have symphonies on Monday or Tuesday nights, so I can support musicians by going to the symphony.

Talking about DJ's 7 or 8 years ago a good friend booked a New Years gig at a small place as a duo with a sax player. He's a good singer and uses midi files. He got sick and called me to sub for him and I don't sing. He said he's really stuck, everybody's booked, it's New Years so what could I do, with a lot of trepidation I took it. He gave me his disc's with the midi's on them along with an ancient Yamaha file player he uses. At that time I had never used midi's on stage before. The sax player is just a good player he has less stage presence than I do. As we're doing the gig with no vocals I'm playing some keyboard parts with the midi files and the show was definitely missing something so I decided the heck with this and grabbed a mic and started DJing the thing. I stepped in front of my keyboard then got back for a solo, then back out front again. I had no clue what I was doing just going with the flow with stuff like Play That Funky Music, that Conga song by Miami Sound Machine and a bunch of other disco type dance tunes. I started getting into it because the crowd was digging it. All I did was stuff I heard other DJ's do both live and on the radio, making comments about someone's foxy wife,"better not leave her alone, I've got a van outside" with a big laugh, that kind of thing and I talked some of the words to some songs but certainly didn't try to actually sing anything. In all honesty it went over great and everybody had fun including me and the sax player. I've never done anything like that since probably because I didn't have to but it's kinda cool to know I pulled it off. I see the appeal of a DJ, all people need is to see someone leading the party. They could care less about vocals.

This was New Years, everybody's primed for the biggest party of the year, I would never try that in a regular Friday night club or a restaurant dinner setting.

Bob

I'm disppointed you weren't alreay booked for New Years (if you are playing out regularly still).. but happy it all turned out well. Sounds like fun, and those are the best kind of gigs. Especially if they pay well.

The facts are that most venues are not going to hire 4-6 piece bands anymore, and they have not been for quite some time now. If you do a little research you will find that this is one of the main reasons for the timing and success of the DJ. As before BIAB and some of the other backing tracks all a single act musician had was his instrument and maybe a drum machine, while the DJ had every song ever recorded. Therefore the odds were stacked in their favor.

The music business is like any other business you have to be able to adapt to the times and what the market is asking for, the great news for us is that BIAB has handed musicians, especially older guys like me, the tools to go head to head with DJs.

Yes I would love to have a group of live musicians to gig with but it ain't going to happen for too many reasons to list here. One of the main reasons being the gig would pay the same for three as I get for one, therefore no will work for these low fees. With this said I price myself competitively with djs in my area and my selling point is that I do play and sing live for the entire show giving them a full sound (yes they want backing tracks) while most DJ just play tunes and do their best to get the club patrons involved. Plus I know very well that some gigs I not only could not handle but I just don't want, your mileage may vary.

Bottom-line is that other bands (as in the old days) are not our competition anymore, it is the DJ . . . and with BIAB any musician worth his salt has enough tools in his box to be competitive.

Just my 25 cents worth, adjusted for inflation.

Later,

What is a singer, if not a musician? And what does a good singer do but sing? So, starting on that premise (which is where I start), what does a solo singer without a band do? What constitutes live performance in THIS context?

I have a good female friend here in Vienna, with international singing experience as a backing vocalist and lead performer, who only sings - sometimes fronting a band or a small 'orchestra', sometimes in a small gospel group with one simple guitar (mind you, the focus there is on vocal harmonies in any case) and sometimes she sings in clubs with a DJ (these songs are originals, not covers or standards). I love her voice and her performances but when she works solo, I can't help but wonder why it doesn't come across as karaoke (which, to all intents and purposes, it is, as there are no instruments being physically played).

On the forum here is a Dutchman called Mike Wever ('Mike Sings') and I have been lucky enough to meet up with him in Holland and go to one of his gigs with him. He had a friend with him acting as DJ and he sang covers with backing tracks. To me, that is karaoke but he gets away with it and everybody really enjoyed his performance. Mind you, it was really high energy and he really did work hard with it. I thoroughly enjoyed it but it was still karaoke, to my mind.

Recorded backing tracks haven't been around for that long in the grand scheme of things, so where would the following artists have got to if they had not managed to find bands to front: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Elvis, Cliff Richard, Davy Jones, Mick Jagger, Tom Jones, Tina Turner, June Carter Cash, Patsy Cline, Diana Ross, etc, etc, etc? They certainly didn't play instruments, at least not in public. Would they have just ended up singing a capella like Janis Joplin did on 'Mercedes Benz'? Where would the music industry be today without these singers?

Me? I'm a singer. I play adequate guitar and have been known to play some nice leads, I can also play bass, but mainly I am a rhythm guitarist. I have 3 guitars - a strat, an acoustic and an Epiphone Sheraton. Although I do sing Folk from time to time, My preferred type of music to sing is Country and Country Rock - this needs a band. I need a band to front. I don't have one.

BUT... (and it is a very BIG but)

I am just one man. I have my own PA, a dedicated music laptop, my own mics and leads and sound cards and so on. I have over 10,000 professional karaoke backing tracks and over 30,000 music tracks by artists from ABBA to ZZ Top in Blues, Country, Rock, Jazz, etc. all on a USB hard drive. Unfortunately, I just can't seem to find the musicians I need or an already existing band to front. So what can I do?

To sing and play guitar solo is not really my scene. Though I can and have done it, I just don't like doing it and it seems too much like busking to me. Plus, I am a rhythm guitarist and I don't play fingerstyle or pick as my hands are (a) too big (b) losing power and grip due to neurological problems with trapped nerves in my spine. To sing to backing tracks seems too much like karaoke to me for solo public performance as an act so I just do not have the balls to try and pull that one off. So, does anybody have any realistic ideas as to how I can get round this situation?

For what its worth, I think karaoke is great fun, especially when done in the right environment with good singers (I don't mean the drunken wannabes who can't sing to save their lives and don't know when to shut up and stop hurting everybody's ears). I actually sing karaoke pretty regularly, with Austria's #1 Karaoke Club, and it is great for keeping 'the ear in' and keeping up public performance. In fact I am organising and will be running some karaoke sessions for free at local venues for those who are not in the normal way of things - alcoholics in rehab, prisoners, hospitals, etc. As far as work goes, I KJ (karaoke) and DJ when I can get a booking and it does pay better than performing solo, sorry to say.

My aversion generally speaking to solo singer/songwriter/guitarists is that, generally speaking, they are not particularly good at any of the 3 parts - singing, song writing or playing guitar - and I do empathise with those who are ready for the next act as soon as they are two chords in on the second three chord song. Not everybody is Bob Dylan or Joan Baez and so these people come across as buskers who have managed to come in off the street for once. They are not much better than the karaoke wannabes, with the exception that they actually do play an instrument on stage and as such can legitimately be labelled musicians, professional or not. I can honestly state this opinion as I am Chairman of the Vienna Folk Club (which I helped to set up) and we have an Open Mic night at least once a month. That said, I have actually met and heard several excellent singer/songwriter/guitarists throughout Western Europe who are the exceptions that prove the rule - many of them are now friends of mine.

So, lads and lasses, what's a poor boy to do? Primarily, I am a ballad singer and my own music is along the Country / Country Rock genre - this is not at its best when 'busking'... If you were in this situation, what would YOU do?

(PS - Sorry if this post comes across as a bit egotistical but I do think the subject is particularly relevant to my situation. Thanks for the understanding)