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

He did not.

Notes, when you play out, do you play MP3s you have made or actually use BIAB?

Bob!

Thanks for sharing.

Amen!

Notes said, after talking about drummers...

"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."

You must have had some pretty suck-e drummers in your world if that is the way you pigeon hole all of them! And if you are talking about other musicians also, then I apologize & bow to yours & Ed's perfection.

I hate to say it, but once again a few folks have to have a pi$$ing match on how great / pro / expert / what they would put up with / in someone else thread....it really brings down the level of the forum to where it is even below us poor, commoner's level of experience.....

But it gets old, and we have all heard it way too many times...so please do us a favor and start your own thread so you folks can go back & forth blowing smoke, and the rest of us poor, amateur, un-educated, no discipline blokes can get back to enjoying the trading of fun & worthwhile info!

Now I will insert the usual no offense meant, and it is not....really & truly.

Thank You.

I don't use BiaB live on the gig, here's what I do:

1. If there is an appropriate MIDI style for the song I'm learning I'll start with BiaB and when done, export the MIDI file
2. I do most of the work in Master Tracks Pro (discontinued but has the best groove/change filter I've found) - adding song specific and other parts, adjusting the groove, choosing the right sound for each instrument using my array of hardware synths with thousands of sounds, and so on.
3. When everything is right and as good as I can get it, I'll record it using Power Tracks Pro Audio to make a WAV file.
4. Next I'll use CDex to make a high bitrate, high quality mp3 file.
5. I bring the mp3 files to work

Why not BiaB live? I find BiaB's output very good, but since auto-accompaniment parts tend to be generic, I find that with some work in a sequencer I can turn very good into excellent by adding things that BiaB or any other auto-accompaniment device can do.

At one time I played my MIDI files directly through the synth modules, but

• I got tired for schlepping a 10 space road rack full of nothing but sound modules to the gig (I do one-nighters)
• In the unlikely event a sound module should fail, I can't bring a duplicate of every one of them to every gig

By going with mp3s not only is my setup time quicker and easier, but I bring a spare computer booted up at all times on stage. In case of a problem, I simply move the USB end of the USB/Audio interface to the next computer. I use a USB/Audio interface because it gives me higher fidelity than the headphone jack and there are no pops or crackles if I accidentally jar the cable.

Why MIDI and not real tracks? The RTs are great, but the editing capability is almost nil. For example; I have over 24 clean guitar sounds ranging from the generic to specific sounds like Tele Rear Pickup, Tele front pickup and various Les Pauls, 335s, and so on. I'm not restricted to the RT instruments. Plus I can change notes to get the chord inversion I want, change parts/licks to more song specific ones, exaggerate the groove by changing the timing, balance individual drum instruments, and do millions of things not available with audio files. This is not to dis the RTs, I think they are genius, but they aren't my tool of choice. One nice thing about BiaB is that there are different tools for different situations and different ways of working with music - and there is definitely more than one right way to make music.

When playing the mp3s, I have a system down where I can make the decision of what to play next in the last few bars of the song I'm playing (if need be) and start the next one immediately.

This might be TMI. More complete details on how I make the backing tracks and use them on stage are explained on this page http://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.html

Insights and incites by Notes

I think we have a misunderstanding here. Perhaps I didn't express myself clearly enough.

I didn't mean to pick on drummers, it just so happens that a drummer was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back that finalized the decision to go duo.

BTW, my first instrument was drums, so I'm a drummer too.

I've been in bands since the 1960s and I've had problems with guitarists, bass players, keyboard players drummers and I have probably been a problem myself.

I've seen band members show up drunk or drugged, miss rehearsals, show up late for the gig, take long breaks, spend more time chasing a member of the opposite sex then doing their job on the gig, not learning their part before rehearsal, antagonizing management or audience members, and so on.

Not everybody in any profession takes their jobs as seriously as others do. Leilani and I take our job very seriously and have very strong work ethics.

I have been in good bands where we all took our jobs seriously, but that seems to be a rarity.

The only problem Leilani and I have is that neither one of us likes to be the 'band salesman'. Fortunately we have mostly repeat business and a few agents that throw work our way from time to time.

Insights and incites by Notes

A few points or comments.

I don't play live but if I did I would use either high quality MP3 files or waves as Notes does. I'm a firm believer in keeping it easy and simple. I saw a band in Myrtle Beach many decades ago when Cakewalk was a midi sequencer. It was 2 guys...one on bass and one on guitar. They called themselves The Kick Brothers. Everything was midi or midi controlled and everything sounded amazing since they programmed all of the parts by hand. They had drum modules, piano modules, string pad modules, and even used midi for vocal FX and lights. The entire show was running on a 286 computer. They had as much gear as a normal band. Yeah, they sounded good but one module breaking down or crashing would stop the show.

Keep it simple and easy to do.


Drummers, click tracks, church and religion. Where do I start with this one? Church.... years ago I was in the church orchestra as a guitarist.... ( I have tons of stories I could tell about that experience but I will limit it to this short one ) I would come in and tune up using my tuner. I had referenced it to the piano since the piano wasn't easily adjusted. The piano was not on A-440 and I brought that to the attention of the music minister (MM) who eventually got the piano tuned professionally since it was slightly out of tune with itself as well as flat overall. Once that issue was resolved, I would tune up and play and my guitar sounded like it was out of tune but it wasn't. The rest of the orchestra was out of tune because the MM would tune them all by ear.... his ear, before the service. I used to have my tuner on watching the fiasco unfold. The bass player, who also used my tuner and agreed with my assessment, finally bought a nice tuner and donated it to the MM to use. The MM refused to use it during the tuning time before the service. He instead, totally eliminated any tuning during the sound check run through, and told the orchestra members the tuner would be laying on the piano in the choir room and they should tune up before the service. Of course, that never happened and the music continued to sound out of tune.

Here it is many years later, I'm no longer with the church, nor is the bass player, and the current drummer is a friend on Facebook. He just mentioned that the church has recently switched to a click track for precise tempo control rather than trusting someone to start the songs at the wrong tempo which did occur quite often.

Talk about politics and drama in the band.... you should play with a church group.

Excuse the saying, but Amen to that! I played in 3 over a 4 year span and tho I was paid well (because they could not keep musicians all 3 had to outsource) it was worse than ANY country, rock, or pick-up band I ever played in!

In the end it soured me to a lot of things......

Maybe this should have been in the other thread about worst gigs, interesting things that happened, and musical catastrophes thread.... but I'll share it here since it is church related.

The church shall remain nameless for this account and same thing with the players. I was not playing actively with the band at the time. I don't recall the reasons.

However, the bass player was involved in an auto accident and was in very serious condition with shattered bones in his neck. I offered to fill the bass position until he was able to return. It would likely be months because he couldn't stand or speak and had a head brace they screw into your skull to keep your neck from moving.

Things went well for the first few weeks. But shortly lead singer girl didn't want me to have a mic. I was singing harmony in the appropriate places with the other singers and dared to ask for a bit of my voice in the monitors. She said it was "too much"....Then she told me not to sing on stage even without a mic because I looked "unprofessional" lip syncing. Ooooooh kay......that's when I first realized this was going to be "fun". I kept singing along to the music.

moving along....Let me describe the rig for the bass. The bass was plugged into a DI with a split output for the FOH and to a hot spot monitor with a 4" speaker for the player on stage. I could barely hear that 4" speaker so since the hot spot had an amp in it, I found an unused 10" floor wedge and placed it back by me on the floor so I could maybe hear what I was playing. The stage was not excessively loud but it was in the days before the "quiet stage" phenomenon swept the churches.

As a point of reference, I had it just loud enough for me to hear. Well below the level I would normally play it at. After the second week playing with that speaker, lead singer girl confronted me and said "Turn that thing down because it's blowing me away up here. She was 15 feet away at the front of the stage and the speaker was pointing away from her. This was BEFORE the service.... So during the praise & worship part of the service, I did the unthinkable..... I walked up behind her to hear what she was hearing..... and I could NOT hear my bass at all........ not from the monitor speaker I was using, and not from the FOH. She glared at me, I smiled back, and after the service, confronted me about that too....

So... I let it go like water off a duck's back.... and go to the church on Wed nite for the normal P&W band rehearsal. I get there and there's the bass, plugged into the DI, but no hot spot and no floor speaker. I ask.... no one seems to know. Apparently, it just up and vanished on it's own. Glances averted, mumbling about you need to talk to so and so who isn't there.... I talked with the guitarist for a while. He says, "man, I got nothing to do with this crap". his exact words. They start to get ready for the first song, so I get up and go to the spare equipment room and look into the loft.... waaa laaa... there's the gear. I pulled the speaker out and put it on the front of the stage by the girl singer's feet.... after she told me she didn't know where the speaker was or why it was missing....the look on her face was beyond words.... then I turned and walked out without saying a word and never went back.

I might have told this one before but I don't recall..... a different church several years later. This was an orchestra and anyone who could halfway play was welcome. everyone volunteered their time and talents. A new Music Minister (MM) took over and actively attempted to build the orchestra. A drummer joined and a bass player came in and we had a pretty good rhythm section for the orchestra. We laid a solid, tight, groove. And we played some pretty complicated stuff. Lots of songs in Eb and Bb and even Ab now and then. It was a great learning experience and I became quite proficient at playing the chords required in those songs. Heck It was fun.

The MM would come up with various musical projects to present to the church from time to time. Some were good, some were not. At least from a guitar player's POV. In other words, some didn't need a guitar in them at all and this project was one of those.

We were only about a month and a half away from the time this was to be presented and had not yet hit any of the music in our Wed nite rehearsals. So with about 5 to 10 minutes left in the rehearsal, MM says pull out song #3, hits the CD player and plays the first 20 seconds of the song.... then says go to measure 35 and counts it off. Train wreck... says go to measure 65 and counts it off...another train wreck.... says OK... and repeats this with a different song and gets the same results. I didn't play a note... I simply listened since I'm an ear player trying to get a feel for the melody line. Next week, he does the very same thing. And the results were exactly the same.... at this point in time the event was a mere 2 or 3 weeks away. I'm thinking, he really needs to practice on THIS if it's going to sound halfway decent.

So the following week, same thing.... last 10 minutes of rehearsal, he says pull out the special music. Hits the CD player.... so I very quietly put my guitar in it's case, shut off the amp, and leave the stage and head up the center aisle to the exit doors. The music stops, and I hear the MM say, over his mic... "Herb, you think you're too good to play this music don't you?" There was about 15 people on stage and about 25 church members in the auditorium getting ready for the next class in there, and he says that.

I turned around and said... "Call me tomorrow and we'll talk".... at which point he actually repeated it again. I kid you not. I simply said "Call me tomorrow" and walked out the door.

Next day, no call but an email telling me NOT to come to play on Sunday until "we can talk". A meeting was set up and I was surprised to find out that it was in the senior pastor's office. He had been the MM when I first started playing as the only guitarist. Long story short.... the MM slides a piece of paper across the table and says these are the conditions you must agree to in order to remain with the music program. He had them numbered. There were about a dozen conditions. I read them , placed the paper back on the table and asked him one question. I asked, Have you given these requirements and conditions to everyone else in the music program as well? Deer in the headlights look from both of them. MM finally says, uhhh, no I haven't. I replied as I slid the paper back across the table to him, "If you haven't given these to the other members with the understanding that they are also to follow these condition, why do you expect me to follow these conditions? That is blatantly unfair, is it not?" The senior pastor said, he has a point.

I pointed out that all the musicians and singers were 100% volunteers. We would play and sing when we could. I would be willing to play as I had been doing. Was there any problems with my performance levels? no... then what seemed to be the problem with me continuing to do as I had been doing? no answer.

Needless to say, the meeting didn't end well since the MM refused to back off of the conditions. Funny things was I was at all the rehearsals ...98% of the time. The same thing could not be said of the drummer or the bass player.... so they had no clue about what happened until others told them why I wasn't there on Sunday.

And so ended my time with that church orchestra.