TimR

I'm still in. Considered a DMX lighting controller pedal following a thread the other week, but luckily someone posted in this thread and I remembered I don't need one.

All the pro musicians I know, teach. Even the ones in touring orchestras, teach when they're not touring or doing afternoon and evening performances in London. There are a few with West End show residencies.

My plumber came round last week to service the boiler. I had to take a day off work. Made him 2 cups of tea. He spent an hour servicing the boiler which would have taken about 30minutes if he hadn't told me his life story. No issues with the boiler. It cost me £76. The thing is, if a plumber does his job wrong, you could die of carbon monoxide poisoning, a massive gas explosion or your house could be flooded. The worst most likely problem you'd get with a band is a punter trips over some gear. Or if you don't show up to a wedding you get sued for ruining the day. So write that into your contract and get insurance.

QED.

I joined 3 bands through JMB. The first I'm still in. The third has stopped due to availability but is definitely a restart prospect when the guys get some time. The second had disaster written all over it from the initial contact. He messaged me. I declined about 3 times. Then one afternoon he catches me out of the blue and asks if I fancied meeting for a jam. I was free so met up. The music was good, he seemed to know what he wanted, despite the initial contact. We then had a few weeks of good rehearsals and then it descended into chaos with random musicians turning up each week. My first gut feelings were correct. He's not actually told me I'm not in the band but he messaged me the other week asking if I knew any venues that were looking for bands. Just strange...

This is Pimlico's law. The longer a discussion goes on about musicians' pay, sooner or later someone will bring plumbers into the chat. It's like Godwins law but with different kinds of tanks.

Many a word spoken in jest.

Did they use music stands?

It is a bit rose tinted. There was a lot of absolute rubbish in the 80s. I endured it. The 90s and 00s wasn't much better. But with the huge amounts of material, some good tunes do come through. It's a good point about not having producers giving music a sense check. Everyone should have a second pair of ears listen to their music for criticism. Saves a lot of playing gigs and wondering why no one is coming to see your band - and thinking it's your social media at fault. 🤣

So if you won a guitar by spending 10% of what it was worth. And then sold it for 50% of list price, you have a tidy profit plus easily another 10% to spend on more tickets. The odds of winning are very high for a pretty good return. That could easily explain why the same names are coming up.

Audiences are easily pleased. If they can tap their feet, or jump up and down they're happy. Bonus points for a chorus they can sing along to the second time it's played if they don't know it already.

Playing originals in a group is an essential part of learning your craft. It's evidenced by a load of originals bands who just don't understand either how arrangements work, nor what form is. You can tell who has studied those aspects and who hasn't.

I actually had someone tell me similar at the end of a gig once. "The bass line to XXX doesn't go like that." My reply: "Well it did tonight mate."

It's down to execution. I saw a band on Saturday night. The guitarist wasn't that great a guitarist and was also playing keys and triggering sequences and samples. He wasn't a great keys player either. It was originals. The singer was getting visibly frustrated that the audience weren't engaging. But to be honest they should have lost all the fancy extra production and concentrated on a simpler guitar part. Whatever vision the band had in their heads wasn't coming across. Plus the drummer had a massive kit and was playing all the drums all at the same time. The whole thing was just a noise. It was originals. And again the traditional hook, and form of verse and chorus were absent.

Agree with everything you've written. And, if they fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy, they'll borrow and/or throw in more savings. Especially if they're tied into a longer contract. Our local has seen 3 sets of wealthy people bankrupted. Why no one has taken out a class action or got together on this, I don't know, it seems incredibly shadey business practices. I had a friend who took a pub contract to a business advisor before signing it, and was told on no uncertain terms not to agree to anything and to walk away. Add in small village mentality where newcomers are distrusted and if your face doesn't fit they won't patronise your business, it's mental.

People are being fed music that has more production done to it to make it sound good than the quality of music it contains.

There is a cross over point. We all enjoy playing music. And therein lies the root. Some people will play at home, or with mates, and never go out and perform. Some people (me) the only reason to play is to perform. That's where the fun is. Some people would happily play Mustang Sally all night, others would rather pull teeth. There is a point at which it becomes work and the enjoyment is secondary, and that point will be different for everyone. For someone who's passionate about performing music they write, the satisfaction and enjoyment of doing that is going to far outweigh what they get paid. For someone who plays several gigs a year, the same songs, some of which are great, some which they don't particularly enjoy, some gigs are stupidly crazy, others are to empty venues. Some you wonder what the point of even loading the car was. That's work.

So that's the opposite to backing tracks. The band are in control of the timing even after you press go, and the lights aren't dictating whether you're playing another verse or chorus.

Did the band have to stay in time with the lights?

I know a keyboard player who programed the whole of Bruce Honsby and the Range, That's the way it is, into his Korg and then mimed every time they played it. Kudos!

From what I can see it's a pro feature and you're supposed to upload your show reel to your account area. Sounds suspiciously like a ploy to get you to sign up to their pro membership. I don't know what the benefits would be to the average player unless they're looking for regular paid dep work. Surely you find a band and then forget the site exists until you need to find musicians again.

Maybe there are just too many restaurants. Tradditional pub grub is generally more expensive and not as good as a dedicated chef manned restaurant. Again talking to people who manage pubs, pub chefs are very unreliable and the pubs can't afford to pay an extra member of staff just to prepare and cook food on the off-chance someone might come in. Pubs that aren't destination restaurants can't survive on selling beer alone. I'm not sure what Whetherspoons are complaining about, they're very good for 'working away from home' meals. A different special every night. Cheap and cheerful and will do for a few days. Not somewhere you'd take someone to impress them or for a family meal though. And Whetherspoons don't do any entertainment. I don't think they even have fruit machines?

My dad's function band, my dad (keys) and the bass player would set up everything before the meal. Play background music during the meal, then the guitarist, drummer and singers would arrive, plug in and adjust drum kit and off they'd go. When we did functions, the drummer would insist we all arrived an hour before the guests to soundcheck. Once we arrived at 5pm, the speeches and auction of promises went on to 11pm. We effectively sat around for 6 hours, played one hour and then packed away.

There were two death blows dealt to pubs. One was open all day. You don't have to open all day, but people now expect it. So you have to pay staff for that middle of the day period where no one comes in. I realise a lot of pubs do shut, but when our local did that it just got a pile on social media and a load of bad feeling. All because one person wanted a pint at 3:30 in the afternoon. The other was deregulation of off-licences. Which came shortly before the "open all hours". I distinctly remember off-licensces being the only place you could but drinks and they also had licenced opening hours. You certainly couldn't go to a supermarket and buy alcohol. Anyway, that's a thread derail.

Most of the audience wouldn't have a clue. A lot of them don't know the difference between the electric guitar and the bass. It all just merges into one sound, or it should, it's only musicians who can tell. And that's how it should be. It's the curse of learning an instrument that you'll never hear a band the same way again. My brother was in a band where he played the keys, they sacked the drummer (for various reasons) and my brother moved onto drums and they put the keys on backing tracks. It was OK, but very hard work and there's no adlibbing, room to move the tempo, or make any mistakes. I was in a band where the guitarist wanted to record loads of overdubs and layers, but we vetoed it citing we wouldn't be able to recreate it live. I wouldn't do it. I suppose if you're promoting an album then you'd want the live versions to be representative, but as above, maybe get additional musicians if you want the band to sound like it has additional musicians. Even a keys player can create an orchestra now.