| Author |
Message |
Johns (Johns)
| | Posted on Monday, March 24, 2003 - 11:49 pm: | |
Well, I graduated to a new level of playing out this last weekend. I played with 4 others and we had a vocalist sit in, too. The gig was a party for 150+ friends at a local community center/poolhouse/rec hall.
The lineup consisted of 2 guitars: I played my AS200 and also my NW340 acoustic, my buddy Mario played his Yamaha SG2000 with a synth; a bass player with a 5 string and a 4 string fretless; a drummer with full kit; a sax/bongo player and our vocalist/percussionist.
We played 5 songs split into 2 sets. We started with a blues vamp in C. The vocalist introduced each member, who then took a solo. The next song was a theme to a Japanese TV show called Howling at the Sun. It's a pretty fast paced number. Not only did we stretched it out but also added a slow ballad-like section.
The second set started with a jazzy blues in E that we had played for 5-10 minutes at our last practice. It worked out good and provided me with plenty of time to work up my best solo of the evening. Then we went into a fun number called Low Rider. This was our vocalist's big shot. He did great and the crowd loved it. We finished with a rendition of Hotel California. We blended the acoustic beginning from the unplugged version with the original. I learned the acoustic stuff up front and Mario nailed all the electric leads. The crowd loved it.
Ahhh, my shot at stardom.  The only problem was it was much more nerve racking than fun. Playing music for others is harder work than I ever thought. Besides that fact that I went completely brain dead right before the second set and couldn't remember the solo parts, there was the everything else that lead up to that fateful moment. Like:
Hours of practice to prepare...but we never had all six of us together for more than a couple hours at the last practice. Arrangements were barely decided on at the last practice and even the set list was amended right at the gig.
The acoustics (outrageous echo) in building were so bad all of us had to change our settings tremendously. Thank goodness the drummer is also a very good sound engineer and he helped everyone balance their sound from out in the audience area.
Then tragedy struck. My RP7 was sounding like total garbage and I couldn't reprogram the patches to eliminate some of the offending frequencies. So I had to rip the RP out of the rig and go straight into my Peavey Classic Chorus using only my TS9 and Crybaby wah. I haven't turn the knobs on this amp for nearly 2 years!
Because I had lost the RP7, which I had programmed to give me a psuedo-12 string effect for my acoustic, I had to scramble with the chorus settings on the amp. The sound check ended as guests were arriving. (the little kids were fascinated.) Although my electric sound was pretty good (thanks to the AS200's versatile Super 58s), the lack of experience with the chorus settings caused me to dial in a more distorted sound on the acoustic than I had hoped for. I had worked real hard on getting Hotel Cali down perfect, so that was a disappointment. However, no one but me seemed to notice.
I learned a lot of lessons that night:
1. Don't count on anything going as you expect.
2. Less is more. Especially for the rhythym guitar player.
3. Getting brain freeze doesn't really mean that your fingers have forgotten the songs.
4. I understand why PAs and monitors are needed.
5. Hire a roady to lift my blasted amp.
6. That working musicians who can remember more than 5 songs and all the words/parts are more talented than I had given them credit.
7. Simpler songs are more fun.
8. Look up and enjoy the crowd...and you'll get to see the other band members screw up, too. That's a great morale lifter.
9. Regardless of how it goes, the experience is necessary to improve.
I'm pretty sure I'll be in a much better state of mind the next time I get the chance to play out.
Anybody else want to share the lessons they've learned from live gigs? |
Mr_Roadstar (Mr_Roadstar)
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2003 - 4:08 pm: | |
Great post, John. I'll have to add my $.02 later as I have a meeting in 5 minutes.
Cheers
Steve |
Sixvsix (Sixvsix)
| | Posted on Saturday, March 29, 2003 - 5:56 pm: | |
A tasty bird (hot chic) in the audience really puts me off my playing. I just can’t seem to concentrate. The tune may be in F# but I’m in heaven! |
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