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

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