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

...and perhaps you weren't one of the two I was referring to

That being said, just trying to get it back on subject. The answers to the posed question I found to be pretty awesome. I now get it is very common to have a conversation go on within a conversation. It's also common to try to steer it back on course, as several have attempted

Me? I thought agreeing to disagree about it was a civilized way to end it.

If everybody agreed about everything, what a dull world we would live in.

Back on topic.

Sunday we played at a country club we've played a couple of times per year for probably close to 20 years. The last time we played there was for their New Years Eve party.

They hit the dance floor as soon as dinner was over, and the dance floor was full right up to the last song. They applauded, showed their enthusiasm, and at the end of the night quite a few people thanked us, told us that they loved us, and even got big hugs from many of the members.

Next gig is a marina we've played once a week during 'the season' for 9 years running. No dance floor, it's outdoors, in a marina, on a lagoon. We get to play anything and everything, have running jokes with the audience, and they feel like extended family to us. Lots of applause, even more hugs, and we know a lot of personal information about the regulars, we share their joys, and sympathize with their sorrows.

After that a couple of nights in a club we've played off and on since the early 1990s.

We have a lot of fun doing this, we have warm relations with many of the customers, and we feel love, affection and appreciation coming from the audience.

This is one beautiful reason why we play music. It's not only the music, it's also the dialog with the audience.

In fact, if we go to a club or a party, I'd rather play music than be in the audience listening to it.

Insights and incites by Notes

Agreed! Well said and mark me impressed.



This is what I miss about playing in a studio. When you play out live there is instant feedback. The reactions with the musicians and audience become there own type of free form art. Thanks for the share of this! It stirs something in me for sure!

If we want to talk about musicians loosing gigs forget talking about single, duo or trios using backing tracks. Lets talk about DJs.

Our wedding band used to have bookings every Friday and Saturday with an occasional Sunday doing weddings. During the off season we played at VFWs, Elks clubs etc, i.e. no bars. Then DJs started taking over. Ours and all other wedding bands started loosing gigs to DJs. Soon the VFWs and such started using DJs. Most bars around here are now using DJs or Karaoke. None of these use musicians!

Sorry for going off subject but the talk about musicians loosing jobs to backing tracks just had to make me post this. Well that and the devil!

And part of the problem is the quality of the live bands. None of them rehearse because they don't get paid to rehearse. As a result they know the 45 simplest cliche songs around, and all the bands play the same stuff. You see a lot of bands thrown together just to play for their $250. I have been at places where a band was setting up and players had to be introduced to each other DURING SETUP!!! Give me odds on THAT "band" being tight?

Part of why I don't bother anymore. If music doesn't mean enough to you to rehearse and do it right, don't do it at all.

I believe open mics have an important place in the local music scene. I try to attend the weekly one that is close to where I live and the hours aren't late (wed 6:30-8:30). The place isn't that crowded then and this venue has a lot of music on other nights where the players are getting paid.

I think the host of the open mic gets paid for his time and I enjoy doing my few songs and listening to others that could be pure hobbyists sprinkled in with some music pros who come by to support the host.

Fun is had by all. Probably wish it was more of a "listening room" environment, but it is what it is.

That 45 song list would definitely be worth knowing, probably differs from one part of the country to the other.

Musiclover

Yeah... I agree with that statement mostly. I'd probably bet that the band would be loose as a goose.

I went to a jam some time back at the invite and arm twisting of a bass playing buddy. A local working band with a long history was looking for a guitarist to replace their guitar player who was retiring due to medical issues. These guys were around my age.... late 50's to early 60's.... and had been together since they were in school.... with some time off here and there then reforming and played a few gigs a month for fun.

I was appalled at how loose the music was. They didn't have things nearly as tight as it could have, or should have been given how long they had been playing together. I jammed and had fun but declined the job offer.



On the other hand.... I went to see Paulette Carlson (lead singer from Highway 101) in Myrtle Beach many, many years back. Her band was amazing and so pleasantly tight. So after the show, I had a chance to talk with one of the guys in the band. I asked the guitar player about his rig because his tone was spot on. I asked how long the band had been together, and he said... "Oh, about 24 hours now". They were all studio cats from Nashville and played the show with one rehearsal with Paulette and used charts she provided, for the music. It all depends on the quality of the musicians if they can jump on stage together and play tight or not. Her hits with Highway 101 sounded "just like the record" so I had figured it was "her" touring band. Apparently not.

This was one of the songs she sang that evening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gb4m3eGRTY

She's got a voice that just kills me... in a good way. Husky, smokey, powerful,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uAcP_Pwi6U (check out the bass at 1:22... ooops) this was one of here big Hwy 101 hits.

My brother-in-law is a trumpet player who does 'club date' gigs. Although he often works with the same musicians, not only do they rotate among the pool of musicians, but they often play with other club date musicians for the first time.

This is not the 45 rock set, but more the light to moderate jazz / standards gig.

They all seem to know the same songs, in the standard keys, and if a singer comes along, the leader puts up or down fingers according to how many sharps or flats the singer wants to sing in.

You would think this is a recipe for a train wreck, or a sloppy, loose gig, but they sound tight and even to this musician's ears, they sound like they have rehearsed.

Of course, this is what they do for a living, so they know all the standard cues for 'arrangements while you play' and have a good knowledge of the material they are playing.

I've hired my brother-in-law to sit in with us when we need another body, and he is on top of everything as we play and rarely makes a minor mistake, and when he does, he recovers almost instantly (with zero rehearsals).

I've never done the 'club date' end of the business, and have no desire to start, but my brother-in-law thrives there.

And he plays music for the same reasons that I do, for the enjoyment of it. The money is necessary to pay the bills, but the playing is bliss.

Insights and incites by Notes

I've done both recording and live performances, and by far, I prefer live.

In the 'old days' when the band recorded all the parts together it wasn't as much fun as playing life, but much more fun than today. Nowadays I get called in to lay a sax part on a rhythm track that has already been finished and a scratch vocal track. I miss the interactions with the other musicians (including the singer).

The bliss of performing to me is playing live and having that party with the audience.

I tell the people who hire us, "We work for free, and charge you money to schlep the gear around and to pay for the
instruments."

Insights and incites by Notes.

Great way of looking at it. I really like it when you do what you love doing, and then at the end of the night they write you a check.

In the town where I grew up, in a musical sense, there were a few "band leaders" if you wish to use that term. These guys were the so called star of the gig... they ran the band, booked the gigs, it was their name on the marquee, and they walked away with the lion's share of the money as a result.

One guy in particular was an outstanding musician who loved jazz and getting a call from him to gig was reserved for the best players since he didn't rehearse the band very often, he expected you to be able to play what he called and make very few mistakes and when you did, to recover quickly and invisibly. He'd call the name of the song and the key if he thought you needed it. Otherwise, he'd just start.... he played piano. He also expected you to know more than the basic chords like a country band would use.

He hired players mostly on a short term basis. His bands had high turnover, due to the factors I mentioned. Working with him was a real PITA. If he couldn't get a guitarist for the weekend, he'd play without one or take one for one night if that's all he could get.

I knew him in passing, and knew of his reputation. I also watched a buddy of mine, who played with him on a fairly regular basis, do a rehearsal in a top 40 club for the gig that night. I asked my friend later how he could take the mess.... and he replied, he pays well.

I gigged for a short time with one of the other "band leaders" in that town. Both of the guys mentioned were outstanding piano players, sang well, and knew more songs without needing a cheat sheet than you could shake a stick at. The guy I played with was a more mellow fellow than the first, and didn't have a drinking problem, but being wrapped tightly like he was, often presented other problems for the musicians in his band.

I consider that an interesting era of my musical education.

I was fortunate in a couple of ways. First was that when I started, the drinking age here in Ohio was 18. That college market meant that there were a lot of bars, to the point where there were more live music venues than quality bands to play them. Then in 1984 the laws changed the minimum age to 21, with the exception that those already 18 were grandfathered. However, when that gap closed as those kids turned 21, that shut down a lot of clubs as the business was just suddenly gone. Then it became a club owner's world where there were more bands than clubs, WAY more bands than clubs, and the bands started cutting each other off at the knees by playing for almost nothing JUST to play. That has continued all the way to now, where there are not that many established bands due to the fact that musicians can't play 5-6 nights a week and everybody is a hobby player. That is what brought us to the "replacement band" era, where everybody is in 5 bands, none of which rehearse. In my immediate area there is a group of about 18-20 guys who shuffle lineups and play in different configurations. In order to do that, with no rehearsal, they either play "the list" or they play 6 ridiculously stretched songs per hour and fill them with long solos, doing bush league stuff like pointing to each other to say who should solo next. (That stuff is supposed to be worked out in rehearsal before you get there, isn't it?) I mean, really? If I want to hear you play scales I can come to your house. I want to hear a BAND. Get down to the bedrock of that word, band. Band is also a verb, meaning "to unite. to come together." And that's what I want to see when I see a band, some players who have banded together, not this guy plays then that guy plays then the other guy plays and then the bass player solos so everybody has a chance to use the bathroom (nobody wants to hear THAT!). It has reached a point in my area where your choices are a trio of musicians with a front singer using recorded tracks for keyboards, horns and BGV (all in an effort to make MO MONEY!!! - music comes last, make MO MONEY!!!) or a group who calls themselves a band but isn't really a band so it is a glorified jam night. I can't tell you how many times I get emails from people asking me to come out and hear them because "Tonight we have so and so as our guest drummer." Drummer? That guy who starts and stops the songs, keeps you playing at the correct tempo where the singer can get the words out between breaths and the guitar player can play all the notes of his solo? The guy who keeps the band tight? THAT GUY you replace with whoever you can find that wants to make $75 because your real drummer got a gig that pays $100 that night?" What chance does that band have of being tight? If there is ONE guy in a band that has to be GREAT, it's the drummer. You can hide almost anything else, but if the drummer stops and the rest of the band keeps going, or the reverse, you sound horrible no matter what happened before.

As you can tell, I am not easy to impress. I had the fortune of playing in 3 really good bands back to back, covering about 12 years. The last 2 years I played with guys who mailed it in. We would play weddings where the couple often had a "request" song. I remember the night the request song was "Unforgettable". That song takes some chordal twists and turns, and you just CAN'T play that song unless you meet, chart it, and rehearse it. This band tried to work it out on napkins while we ate dinner. I refused to join them when they did it, and I was SO embarrassed for both the band AND the couple when they botched it badly. At the end of the night when it was pay time, the father of the bride docked the band $300 for that gaffe. The leader pulled out a contract and started arguing with the guy. The guy simply said "You had ONE song requested, and you didn't think it was important enough to learn how to play it correctly. This $300 iS your fine for doing that to my daughter." When we left that room I looked at the leader and said "If this was my wedding, I wouldn't have paid you at all for doing that. How many times do I have to tell you that you MUST rehearse? You guys are nowhere near good enough to wing it. You should probably find a replacement for me because being in this band is embarrassing."

And there is yet another story of why I DON'T play music anymore. In fact I am getting to a place now where I am going to start selling off my gear. I want to be in control of where it goes, so it goes to people who will use it rather than wait for my estate to sell it at a yard sale for chump change.

To paraphrase Bobby Womack, "I used to love her, but it's all over now."

I still enjoy writing, but playing I can easily live without.

Bob,
What's a "Club date gig"?

Eddie, don't get me started on drummers.

Yes, a drummer is the single most important element for a tight band with the bass player coming in a very close second. When the two of them are working together it's a freaking awesome thing to be a part of.

On more than one occasion, I have had the occasion to be in a band that was auditioning drummers when one left or got fired. One guy showed up with a huge kit.... cymbals and toms and this and that.... heck it took up nearly half the rehearsal room's floor space. The kid was really proud of his kit and told us so several times that night. Problem was, he thought he was Neil Peart which is fine if you're playing with Rush, but we were playing Walyon and Willie. Keep a freaking beat. He didn't work out.

One of the other guys that showed up had a small kick, a high hat, a snare and one floor tom. That was almost hilarious until he started to play..... nothing fancy but a more solid beat I hadn't seen in a long while. The band was instantly tighter with him playing.

Then there was the drummer I played with at church.... two of them to be precise. Drummer one led from behind. What a whimpy sounding beat. The other one.... every time you came out of the chorus back to a verse, he'd drop a beat and instantly speed up the tempo. He was the one they wrote the old joke about..... How do you know when there's a drummer at the door? The knocking gets faster.

Despite those drummers who give others a bad name.... I have been blessed to have been in several bands with really good, solid, drummers.

Great drummer stories, Herb!!

Last year I was working with some guys who wanted to be a blues band. The drummer, who thought it was his project though I was musical director, was just awful. He played everything too fast and sped up from being too fast! He would crow about "all my experience" every rehearsal. Then I did some research. He had played in exactly 2 bands in his "experience", and neither of them lasted more than a few months.

We were rehearsing one day, and it was what I dubbed a "maintenance rehearsal". I told them "This week we are going to go over those first 20 songs and fix lyrics you are singing wrong, accents to your lyrics, like where the emphasis is supposed to be, and clean up some transitions from verse to chorus to solo to bridge and so forth." So we started that rehearsal and fixed a few things. Then we got to a song where there were drum breaks and coming out of them he lost tempo completely. I then said something every drummer hates. I told them "I have run every one of these songs through a BPM analyzer. I want to run "Walkin' By Myself" with the drum machine." So I set the click track up, piped it through the PA, and off we went. IMMEDIATELY the band was tighter. So the next thing I did was say "Okay, Let's run it again with the click but this time play your live drums with it." We started, and in 4 measures he was off the click. We tried it again, and again, by the 5th measure he was off. We tried it a third time, again, by 4 measures he was off. And then he got defensive and started telling me that even if you listen to the originals the tempos drift, to which I replied "I don't care. Here we are going to play in PERFECT time."

I then asked him not how MUCH he practices, but HOW he practices. He told me that he made a CD of our stuff (all blues covers) and every night he goes downstairs and plays along with the CD and runs each song twice. I told him "That is exactly what I thought, and that is exactly wrong. IF it is true that the original songs drift, why would you want to play along with something that drifts? Here's what you do." And I set the click track again and said "Play just your high hat." Which he did. After 8 measures I sad "Now add snare." And 8 measures was okay. Then I said "Now bring in the kick." and as soon as the kick came in his meter went out the window. And I then said "THIS is what you need to do when you practice. Learn to play DRUMS, not songs.

And that was the end of that band. LOL!!!

Great advice for starting drummers, though! Hope he ended up listening

What my bro-in-law and the others around here call it is one person gets the gig, and then calls other musicians he knows to fill the rest of the band slots.

They work from a decent sized pool of musicians that all know the same thousand or so songs and they are mostly jazz standards and 'society music' songs (whatever that is).

When my BIL is leader (gets the gig) he chooses the musicians for the kind of music the contractor wants, and who he knows will do well.

I don't have any idea why they call it 'club date'.

I do know that they all do it well, probably not enough to fool other musicians, but enough for the audience.

Notes

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.

Insights and incites by Notes

amazing and inspiring story