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.

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.