Members SpaceNorman Posted June 16, 2012 Members Share Posted June 16, 2012 We all know what we need to do and are good at doing it when we're "on". The trick is to work on being "on" all the time. This pretty much sums up where I'm at. My musicianship "is what it is" - and while I continuously work to grow and improve as a musician - I consider it unlikely that I'm going to make any quantum leaps in terms of my playing ability and wake up a virtuoso some morning. This same concept of "slow, steady improvement" applies to pretty much everything - playlists, presentation, etc. I ("we") will make opportunistic improvements whenever they present themselves - but again, I don't foresee any quantum leaps on the horizon. More consistent performances would however immediately move any/all of my projects a rung or two up the ladder. If I (and the folks that I play with) delivered what we've already proven we're capable of on our best night - every night - we'd be a much better band. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted June 16, 2012 Members Share Posted June 16, 2012 This pretty much sums up where I'm at. My musicianship "is what it is" - and while I continuously work to grow and improve as a musician - I consider it unlikely that I'm going to make any quantum leaps in terms of my playing ability and wake up a virtuoso some morning. This same concept of "slow, steady improvement" applies to pretty much everything - playlists, presentation, etc. I ("we") will make opportunistic improvements whenever they present themselves - but again, I don't foresee any quantum leaps on the horizon. More consistent performances would however immediately move any/all of my projects a rung or two up the ladder. If I (and the folks that I play with) delivered what we've already proven we're capable of on our best night - every night - we'd be a much better band. Yep. Especially at this age, we all are what we are. Short of making membership changes, we're not going to suddenly be a different/much improved band. All we can do is strive for a high level of consistancy. We've all talked before around here about having all killer/no filler setlists. And all bands should strive for that. And that should go equally as much for every other aspect of the show. LOOK great on every song. SOUND great on every song. Have every song be killer. My goal is to have a 3 hour show where every minute means SOMETHING and is played to its fullest potential. That's a pretty tall order and one which probably isn't likely to ever be fully achieved, but you gotta have goals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Potts Posted June 16, 2012 Members Share Posted June 16, 2012 I hate rehearsing the same old stuff over and over again. Do you actually sit down and rehearse tunes that you do live after you've learned them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Potts Posted June 16, 2012 Members Share Posted June 16, 2012 What a great topic- pretty humbling too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lee Flier Posted June 17, 2012 Author Members Share Posted June 17, 2012 What a great topic- pretty humbling too! And not getting a whole lot of participation so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TIMKEYS Posted June 17, 2012 Members Share Posted June 17, 2012 I feel like our biggest weakness as a band is intros. There's too much tie in between songs and a lot of blown intros. To combat that, I've developed an excercise we're going to try at rehearsal Tuesday. I'm writing our master list on flash cards, shuffling them, and putting them in a pile. Pick on, drummer counts, and we go IMMEDIATELY. 30 minutes of nothing but intro practice. We'll see how it helps.Personally, I need to work on better stage presense as a front person. I'm working on this by taping and watching every show we do. One thing I'm amazed at is how exagerated my motions need to be to get the desired effect. Garth Brooks used to talk about how he wanted to make sure he was reaching out to the fartherest seat, and I kind of now understand what he was talking about. We kinda suck at intros due to the fact that we operate a bit like a jam band. NO set list, 550 songs in rotation, and a front man that fires off all every song with a single acoustic guitar, and the rest just jump in. Its a two edged sword really. Much of our appeal is being very spontanious and a reputation of a fearless clover band that not only takes requests but we take dares too. I dont see that changing a whole lot. I guess it worked for the dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MusicalSchizo Posted June 17, 2012 Members Share Posted June 17, 2012 Things my band could do to suck less:1. Rehearse the material more on our own time.2. Rehearse the material more together.3. Have some vocal practices to really nail down all the harmonies/backing vocals in songs (drummer tends to sing more than the songs need and that's a MAJOR pet peeve of mine because I don't think it adds to it - it usually just throws me off).4. Have a singer who is better at remembering words (ties into #1 sort of, but I am prone to brain farts).5. Find some more good party songs that will work and learn them to keep things fresh. Sadly, we really invest the minimum amount of time in the band, because we all have other stuff going on and so far it hasn't really hurt us with bookings (if they book us or work with us, generally speaking, people LOVE us). We definitely have not had the motivation to actually make tangible improvements in any of these areas, and I think it comes down to one of us finally saying, "okay, here's what's happening". So far none of us has done that. But I think this summer we'll change that and start working on our show more. We already have killed the dead air between songs, which was easy to do (make a good setlist, follow it), and it has been great for the show. We had a fantastic show last night that hopefully is our step in the right direction. (I will have video proof of that soon, hopefully, because the guitarist's lovely girlfriend got some great footage of us playing to a very active dancing crowd at a very notable venue for cover bands here in town). We definitely want to take the band to the next level and play some good shows here in town and really kick up our private party schedule (because we like money). Good luck to everyone!Brian V. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members backtoblue Posted June 18, 2012 Members Share Posted June 18, 2012 We kinda suck at intros due to the fact that we operate a bit like a jam band. NO set list, 550 songs in rotation, and a front man that fires off all every song with a single acoustic guitar, and the rest just jump in. Its a two edged sword really. Much of our appeal is being very spontanious and a reputation of a fearless clover band that not only takes requests but we take dares too. I dont see that changing a whole lot. I guess it worked for the dead. Man, this is my biggest gripe. We don't use setlists either usually and the lead singer starts all the songs. I've been trying to get him to call out more audibles so I can do things like change guitars or switch patches, or to have a bass line or lead guitar kick off a song. It just kind of makes the rest of us out to be puppets or something, and it doesn't give an impression of being a well-rehearsed act, even though we all have our parts down cold. I'm sure the audience could care less but it would make me feel a little better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Leftcoast123 Posted June 18, 2012 Members Share Posted June 18, 2012 We kinda suck at intros due to the fact that we operate a bit like a jam band. NO set list, 550 songs in rotation, and a front man that fires off all every song with a single acoustic guitar, and the rest just jump in. Its a two edged sword really. Much of our appeal is being very spontanious and a reputation of a fearless clover band that not only takes requests but we take dares too. I dont see that changing a whole lot. I guess it worked for the dead. 550 songs? That's crazy cool. It's like musical Russian roulette. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Chicken Monkey Posted June 18, 2012 Members Share Posted June 18, 2012 1) We added a third singer, and are putting 3 part in where it makes sense. We're also starting to add what I think of as "background vocals", as opposed to "harmony vocals", where two guys are singing different words/rhythms/sounds than the lead singer. 2) I've got a list of songs we should know (as in, there's a high likelihood of them getting requested). We're completely democratic with song choices, so I don't want to use one of my "turns" to bring in the Dukes of Hazzard theme, but I'd like to have it down cold in case someone requests it (again). 3) I'm going to be more conscious of what I'm doing in lead breaks. The singer we added plays mandolin, and almost all of his lead breaks start with some variation on the melody, then intensify, and end strong. I'm a little more "jazzy" at the moment and would like to improve. 4) We're looking at rebranding ourselves, as a lot of the venues we'd fit really well in are scared off by us being a "country" band, and a lot of the country venues balk when they find out we don't do three line dance songs in a row. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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