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Change for Change Sake or Art for Arts Sake?


steve mac

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I guess that if you gave me a guitar I could immediately, without any rehearsal or aid perform about 50 songs well enough to get away with at a gig. If you let me run through the songs once with the aid of Onsong (the lyrics are my downfall), I could add maybe another 100 plus then if you let me have a day to go through songs I haven't performed for a long time, I could add maybe another hundred plus. So after a few run throughs, I have approx 350ish tunes in my locker. In other words plenty to gig with for the rest of my life without adding any more.

But, every week I try to add more, when I could really revise and improve the tried and tested songs I already do. I guess I am not alone in this. So my question is why do we do it? We all know enough timeless songs to get by with, I for one am certainly not trying or expecting to get a different crowd.

I was thinking about it the other day and I suspect it's for my benefit, in that it stops me getting bored whilst performing. As I play to a holiday crowd I seldom have the same folk at a successive gigs except the bar staff, so maybe I add songs for their benefit. Maybe I am just always looking for "the" song that will work with the way I perform. Or maybe it is just change for change sake?

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Complacency is the enemy of growth.

There, I said it, and I meant it, too!

I complain about this to some of my band mates in our now 17 year old 'corporate' band...they just are not committed to learning new material. So I've brought the rest of the band into my new band where we are leaning on a lot of jazz [OMG, y'know...I'm really not a 'jazz' player] and classic R&B to feed our horn section, which means we are learning a lot of new tunes every month. Where the corporate band basically had a 'dinner set' of instrumentals, we are working up mainly jazz instrumentals.

Then I am still going back and polishing my solo material just to keep it fresh in my mind and keep my voice in shape.

So the answer to the question is yes, and yes...:wave:

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I have something under a hundred songs I can do off book, but they are no longer the songs I do. I'm focussed now on old pop (standards and some non-standards) and I've never found it easy to memorise that stuff. For those, I have two books: a source book and a working book. The source book starts with all the old pop songs I've transcribed in the past couple of decades, about 250. I pulled out some favourites and put those into a working book of maybe 80 songs. That's what I practise and what I take to gigs. Every month or so, I go through the working book and remove anything that's stale or that I've been skipping and put it back in the source book; then I replace those with "new" selections from the source book. Works for me. When I add a song to my repertory, it goes straight into the working book. I most recently added "Dream a Little Dream of Me," "Harlem Nocturne" and "Close Your Eyes." I won't play them in public yet, but they're there in my face for practising.

 

I think of all this as repertory management -- keeping the working pool big enough to be interesting and small enough to be on top of it. And something new when something worthwhile new comes by.

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We currently have close to 550 songs. Before that we had an additional 300 that we lost because it was before Standard MIDI files and when the sequencer died, there was no file conversion.

 

There are some older ones that I'd like to revise. I make my own backing tracks, and I'm better at it now than I was years ago. Perhaps changing for "art's sake" or just to make them a better cover. But I rarely do. Why? I'd rather learn a new one.

 

Yes we are always going to play the tried and true winners with the audience. It's our bread and butter and part of the Stock-in-Trade. But we are going to sprinkle in new ones, perhaps popular, perhaps obscure, perhaps a cover, perhaps our own interpretation. Why? New songs are fun.

 

Songs go through phases for us:

 

Phase 1) We don't over-rehearse it at home. We do it good enough for public performance and then take it out. We're careful where and when to play it at this point. But it's an adventure of discovery: this worked, this didn't, this inspired the other band member, this got the attention of an audience, and the occasional "Wow, where did that come from!!! I didn't know I could play that well"

 

Phase 2) We get comfortable with the song, and can perform it in the zone, without any conscious thought. We're subconsciously using all the things that worked during the adventure period, but without having to think about it. The song is at its peak, and is a real joy to play.

 

Phase 3) We play it, still have a great time, but there is nothing new to find in the song. If it works with the audience, we still play it regularly and have a lot of fun doing it. It's comfortable, it's fun, but it's like making love to someone you have been with for years. The sex is still great fun, but not quite as exciting as it was in the beginning.

 

Phase 4) If the song wasn't an automatic play, we put it aside for a few months. Then when we call it, it's like revisiting an old friend you haven't seen in a long time and there is a lot to catch up on. It's comfortable, it's fun, and because we may have forgotten some of the things we did every time, we discover new things to play.

 

We like to have a lot of songs, and always with songs in phase 1 or 2.

 

And with hundreds of songs, I can't memorize them all -- especially the newer ones. So I put up either lyrics with chords or a sheet music chart on one of the computers. As the song gets played over and over again, I slowly memorize the song, but I still bring it up before playing it, simply because if something distracts me (like a request) I'll have something to get me back. The backing track waits for no one.

 

So I guess with me it's a little of both. But I never think of that way, the words I use are fun, bliss, excitement, passion -- and leave the definition of art to others.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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I've currently got 245 songs in my rotation although about 40 of those are dance songs I usually don't play in lounges, and maybe 40 are instrumentals.. Then I've got another 20 or so Christmas songs. Probably another forty or fifty midi files I still haven't converted - I'm I really going to do What is Love thirty years later? Finally I've got another forty or fifty tunes I ony play with bands or by request - Cocaine, Hey Good Looking, Hold On I'm Coming and so on. So I've got plenty of songs, but I'm still adding. I've got most of the lyrics down except for the ones I only play every two or three years - New York New York, Just the Way You are... but I can fake enough to pull them off

 

I add tunes for myself and for the bar staff. If I'm lucky, I do fifteen to twenty solo gigs a month, but I only play five or six places. some of those places I'm at seven or eight days a month. I have found the staff notices what I play. I get comments like "I really liked the Michael Jackson" or "didn't know you played Steve Miller".

 

I play at one place where the management had cancelled the music. The staff noticed that without music they weren't making as much money so they pestered management until they brought it back. Of course management didn't do that for the staff, it just follows that if the servers are selling more, the bar is making more money. At that place I make a real effort to update my material. In fact, I just spent hours on Betcha By Golly Wow - goes over like a lead balloon, but that's okay 'cause the other tune I spent too much time on, Peg, went over well with the staff.

 

I guess in the final analysis though, I learn tunes for myself. Idle hands and all that.

 

 

 

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I could never figure what will go over and what will not with great accuracy. Sure, some are easy, but other similar and also popular ones just fall off the stage and dribble into a little puddle.

 

So we play the ones that are crowd pleasers more often, the others less, or sometimes drop them.

 

But we learn new ones all the time. I admit it, it's an addiction.

 

Notes

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I guess that if you gave me a guitar I could immediately, without any rehearsal or aid perform about 50 songs well enough to get away with at a gig. If you let me run through the songs once with the aid of Onsong (the lyrics are my downfall), I could add maybe another 100 plus then if you let me have a day to go through songs I haven't performed for a long time, I could add maybe another hundred plus. So after a few run throughs, I have approx 350ish tunes in my locker. In other words plenty to gig with for the rest of my life without adding any more.

But, every week I try to add more, when I could really revise and improve the tried and tested songs I already do. I guess I am not alone in this. So my question is why do we do it? We all know enough timeless songs to get by with, I for one am certainly not trying or expecting to get a different crowd.

I was thinking about it the other day and I suspect it's for my benefit, in that it stops me getting bored whilst performing. As I play to a holiday crowd I seldom have the same folk at a successive gigs except the bar staff, so maybe I add songs for their benefit. Maybe I am just always looking for "the" song that will work with the way I perform. Or maybe it is just change for change sake?

 

I have other things going on in my company and we do have a lot of other tunes to learn that I do not perform solo. As far as my solo acoustic thing it's a means to an end for me and it's the FIRST thing I'm retiring from ASAP. As soon as humanly possible when the other income replaces the solo income I'm DONE and good rides. Now, I have at least a 1000 song rep but I'd say I play a couple hundred pretty regularly and many have not been played in a long time so they would need to be gone over. I play for tourists almost exclusively and I still know 80% of requests and very rarely do I get a request for anything new other than some newer country which is so horrendous, I can't bring myself to learn any. It's way more work to work tunes up solo than to just do you part in a band and I have to like the song these days.

 

That said, I learned probably 10-12 covers in the last 2 years when I first moved to FL to get some fresh tunes on the list. Most of them never really went over to well and I gradually reverted back to the favorites and i'm fine with that. I don't see myself ever learning another cover song again for solo. It's not really needed.

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I have other things going on in my company and we do have a lot of other tunes to learn that I do not perform solo. As far as my solo acoustic thing it's a means to an end for me and it's the FIRST thing I'm retiring from ASAP. As soon as humanly possible when the other income replaces the solo income I'm DONE and good rides. Now, I have at least a 1000 song rep but I'd say I play a couple hundred pretty regularly and many have not been played in a long time so they would need to be gone over. I play for tourists almost exclusively and I still know 80% of requests and very rarely do I get a request for anything new other than some newer country which is so horrendous, I can't bring myself to learn any. It's way more work to work tunes up solo than to just do you part in a band and I have to like the song these days.

 

That said, I learned probably 10-12 covers in the last 2 years when I first moved to FL to get some fresh tunes on the list. Most of them never really went over to well and I gradually reverted back to the favorites and i'm fine with that. I don't see myself ever learning another cover song again for solo. It's not really needed.

 

I'm just the opposite, I guess. I prefer playing solo, as I've only been doing it for about 8 years now compared to 42 years of bands. There is no drama, no arguing, no personality quirks of others to deal with, no compromises to make. I play on;y the songs I want, when I want, if I want, the way I want, in the key I want. I'm set up in ten minutes and tore down and loaded up in the same amount of time. And I usually work 6-9 or 7-10 and I'm back home. I can learn new songs in 15 or 20 minutes and put them on stage that night. I try to learn three new songs a month minumum just to keep it fresh for me.

 

And then there's the pay. I can almost make as much in one night solo as the whole band does, because this area is so hideously depressing for bands to play in. The few venues left pay $300-400 a night, take it or leave it. Some band venues hire solos too, and they will pay a solo 200 bucks and an entire band 300. .There is one corporate/private party band here that gets maybe 1000 to 1500 a gig if they're lucky, but they have 6 mouths to feed and they work maybe once a month and have the corner on the market of the few corporate gigs that exist here. . Sometimes they play a local casino for 500 a night minus booking commission.

 

I love the bandI I play with, but none of us are under the illusion that we are going to make money at it.

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Some band venues hire solos too, and they will pay a solo 200 bucks .

 

Am I the only one who did a double take? I was paid $100 and found that $75-80 for other rooms was not uncommon. I would love to promote a weekly schedule at a room that would draw enough patrons to make $200 possible, but for a variety of reasons, I don't see that happening.

 

Apart from that, I agree with all your points about the benefits of solo gigs. If I could find just one weekly solo gig, I'd do it.

 

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I'm just the opposite, I guess. I prefer playing solo, as I've only been doing it for about 8 years now compared to 42 years of bands. There is no drama, no arguing, no personality quirks of others to deal with, no compromises to make. I play on;y the songs I want, when I want, if I want, the way I want, in the key I want. I'm set up in ten minutes and tore down and loaded up in the same amount of time. And I usually work 6-9 or 7-10 and I'm back home. I can learn new songs in 15 or 20 minutes and put them on stage that night. I try to learn three new songs a month minumum just to keep it fresh for me.

 

And then there's the pay. I can almost make as much in one night solo as the whole band does, because this area is so hideously depressing for bands to play in. The few venues left pay $300-400 a night, take it or leave it. Some band venues hire solos too, and they will pay a solo 200 bucks and an entire band 300. .There is one corporate/private party band here that gets maybe 1000 to 1500 a gig if they're lucky, but they have 6 mouths to feed and they work maybe once a month and have the corner on the market of the few corporate gigs that exist here. . Sometimes they play a local casino for 500 a night minus booking commission.

 

I love the bandI I play with, but none of us are under the illusion that we are going to make money at it.

 

I'm just neutral on playing in general. Been playing solo for about 25 years now. $200 is the min. I get and the band is $400 for my trio and $700-$1000 for the band. It's going to take a few years for the bands to build but we'll have Variety, 90's, 80's, acoustic trio, dance Top40, Commercial country, wedding, tributes and a dueling piano property so I really won't need to play in any.

 

It's all corporate/private events/resort stuff for me. No bars

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Am I the only one who did a double take? I was paid $100 and found that $75-80 for other rooms was not uncommon. I would love to promote a weekly schedule at a room that would draw enough patrons to make $200 possible, but for a variety of reasons, I don't see that happening.

 

Apart from that, I agree with all your points about the benefits of solo gigs. If I could find just one weekly solo gig, I'd do it.

 

 

 

Yeah, $100 is average here for 3 hours, plus meals and tips. Lots of places pay 125, a couple pay 150, some pay 200. One country club pays 250+ tips for two hours.The Farmer's Market pays 150 plus tips, which usually run about another 125 or so. It's not uncommon at the Farmer's Market to come home with 280-290 dollars. If i do a gig that night for another 125 + tips, that's a pretty good payday. I won't leave the house as a solo for less than 100. None of my solo gigs are bars- they are all restaurants or private events.

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Re: pay. In a pub, club or legion, band pay here is $100 to $125 per person. Casuals normally pay double that. It's been that way for 30 years.

 

I mostly play solo in hotels and the pay is $50 an hour, two hour minimum and normally a four hour maximum. Considering how much hotels charge for drinks, $50 an hour is cheap.

 

I never invite anyone to my hotel gigs because they couldn't afford it, or at least wouldn't want to pay that much. The other day, I really felt like having a couple of beers after work. The bill was $25 (with tip) for two beers. Back to soda water unless I get half price.

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again, from a different universe...

i played a benefit for a friend, sunday. part of her dream is returning an old theater to the community and promoting local artists. ive played there before the audience will range from all walks but sunday is geared at helping some of us that have fallen through the cracks of the system... anyhow, a benefit... thats the setting and speaking of sets, set lists, song lists, to do lists, requests and old standards we swear we'll ne'er play again... ( cough ). i used to have backup lists for backups... rehearsed dialogue, choreographed physical interactions... and thats cool and all but now i dont even think about what instruments to set up until arriving. if, at some time during a performance i am reminded of a mantra, i may chant or sing it, if i also hear a melody. but thats about as close to a " song " as youre apt to experience. i sometimes play rim blown flutes or native american flutes but that would be a rare evening. every performance is different, every performance is entirely in the moment. i would say unrehearsed but that would be a lie. ive performed since the age of three, publicly and continue to be a student of things musical so at least im a semi educated hack if labels must be applied.

as to payment? sunday was a benefit, a freebie... a crowd of about 30... beach hippies, homeless, businessmen, teachers, and local working folk all appeared while the gongs played. someone left me a basket with close to a hundred dollars in. someone else gifted me a couple three foot tall indian temple style brass candlesticks that fit seamlessly with my presentation style... when no one was looking, i dropped a bill in the theater fund box and headed for my car when one of the helpers, a guy a little older than me walks up and asks if he could speak to me over dinner monday evening, about playing at the Zen Awakening festival, in orlando this month.. they took me and my wife to one of my favorite restaurants and deftly picked up the tab... (im pretty adept at picking up the tab at dinner without anyone catching it and this guy is good...) and i think all i should say right now is that things look interesting...

so short take

change is the only constant...

shanti om!

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I've got a lot of songs that I haven't played in a looong time. Since I've shifted from the restaurant/bar scene to retirement homes song choices have changed. Although I do some of the songs I did back in the '90s, because I played for the older generation back then. Many songs I've learned specifically for retirement homes couldn't ever be played at a restaurant gig.

 

So, I learn songs that I like and/or songs that I feel will go over well. Some don't go over as well as I expected - oh well.

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It is always been hit and miss...I discovered a long time ago that some novelty tunes from the 30s-50s do very well in the 'old folks' homes'... like Mairzy Dotes, Hutset Ralston, Three Widdow Fishies...because they remember those songs. I know in another five to ten years those songs won't work, but they do now.

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When playing in Top40 bands, it's easy, but the songs last a month or so before they are passe.

 

But for non Top40 crowds, it's always hit or miss. You learn a song that works phenomenally, and decide to learn another popular song that has what you think has all the same qualities as the one that works, tempo, feel, melody, era, and words and when you play it, it drools off the stage and collects in slimy little puddle right there. Who knows why?

 

Then you learn an obscure song that you figure won't work but you like it anyway, and it kills.

 

I can hit things more than I miss them, but I still can't figure out why the misses don't work.

 

So I just go on and learn another.

 

And I don't play retirement homes much, but when I do, Elvis Presley is about as old as we get. Even "In The Mood" doesn't go over with that age group like it used to.

 

I remember when I first started playing the over 50 crowd, Glenn Miller, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Artie Shaw and others from the era were the stock and trade.

 

Then little by little the big band people died off and were replaced by early rock and rollers. Then when they started wanting The Beatles and Lou Rawls, I was thinking, "What are these OLD people doing listening to OUR music?" Which lasts about 10 seconds until reality sets in.

 

Played a pool party today, nice gig, and the weather was great.

 

Notes

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