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School boy errors during gigs


Dread Bass
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Well im doing my first gig in almost 2 years next week and i started thinking abot what silly things i may do.

I remembered on my first gig ever with my one week old alembic i was playing starting to get into and my bass just went dead. I had no backup and im left handed so couldnt borrow one :)

In my blind panic i checked the controls. Yes i had turned the volune down with my hand while rocking out. what a fool.

So i was wondering if i can learn from some of your guys school boy errors or wise words and save myself looking like a numpty again.

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[quote name='BeLow' post='119583' date='Jan 13 2008, 04:54 PM']Classic for me is the shock that chord charts and fretless side dot markers are suddenly invisble when you are under stage lighting conditions.[/quote]

First gig I ever had with a fretless (not long after getting my first one) I realised that wearing sunglasses on a stage with poor lighting while not having good enough monitoring to check my intonation was maybe not such a great idea.

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OK heres the list:-

1st song in set,1st note broke my E string,get what note the song was in?
Stepped on tuner during 'Bass only part of song'
Yanked cables out of guitars,amps,FX etc
Hit singer with headstock (It was an accident ..honest)
Kept tuner on when going into song...
Not switched on Amp
Not connected speaker lead properly...hense panic searching for battery/cable/FX connection issues
FORGOT STRAP! (Dont ever do this EVER...NO.... REALLY DONT!)
Started in TOTALLY the wrong key
Got drunk,and gone mental in the 1st set..then the alcohol lag kicks in,and nearly died doing the next 2 hours onstage.
Walked off mid set,for a piss....
Played fretless (When I couldnt)
Beaten the pub champ at the quiz
Picked the double bingo Ball (thus doubling what the landlord had to pay the winning punter,compared to the week before...bad news for me was,this was the 4TH WEEK it was picked in succession...and the landlord had to shell out about £500)
No cable bag.....("Wheres MY f***ing CABLE BAG"???)
Listened to the singer
Windmill'd and smacked my hand through the Snooker table lights,showering me in glass.

Edited by ARGH
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[quote name='ARGH' post='119698' date='Jan 13 2008, 07:02 PM']FORGOT STRAP! (Dont ever do this EVER...NO.... REALLY DONT!)[/quote]

First pro gig - arrived 3 hours early. Hung out with everyone, laid back, ate dinner. About half an hour before, wanted to warm up. Opened my gig bag... "Where's my strap? Oh ****. Not enough time to go home!".

A friend of the bandleader ran off to another nearby venue and came back as we were about to start the set with a spare guitar strap - a cheap, nasty, weedy thing, but I've never been so grateful.

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[quote name='Machines' post='119580' date='Jan 13 2008, 04:48 PM']Usual ones really. I find simplicity in the signal chain reduces the likeliness for failures, and makes them easier to isolate if there are any.[/quote]

Absolutely. Passive bass direct into amp hasn't let me down yet.

One daft thing I've done was when I decided to check all my leads over before a gig and I managed to rewire one of my speakons out of phase with the other. Anyone who has ever experienced two cabs out of phase with each other will know how horrible that sounds.

Luckily there was someone smarter than me present who figured it out

Another time I left a pint of beer on a shelf where I thought it would be safe. How stupid is that? Rule one is never have drinks above electrics. Unfortuately thanks to Mr Ashdown it vibrated off and landed on the multi-way mains adaptor supplying all our amps. All we knew was that everything went dead. We were in semi darkness. I started fumbling about behind my cabs to trace the mains back and put my hand in a pool of liquid. Thankfully the fault was that the Pub's RCCD had tripped out. I like to buy a pint for the electrician who installed that. Otherwise I'd have been fried

Edited by PaulMartin
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Forgot the little strap that kept my glasses on!

The singer forgot his lucky beads too, so we decided we had no choice but to pop home and get them. Cue our manager chasing after us as we drive out of the car park 30 seconds before we were due to go on!

Very unprofessional, but it was during our "trainee rockstar" phase.

p.

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I've trodden on my lead before jumping in the air and unplugging myself.

Also started gigs with the volume right down.

Also started songs without checking which fret I'm on and turned out to be a semitone flat ( such a small difference, yet so noticeable :) )

The worst one was half way through a song suddenly thinking "hang on a minute, is this how I normally play this" - obviously I immediately forgot how I played the song - I knew the notes but couldn't recall the fingering - and had to work it out again over the next week from first principles. Probably the audience never even noticed but it did my head in.

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For Seitan's sake, this thread is sooo funny sometimes :)

The worst time for me was, when we got to setup in ~5 minutes, if not less, so I didn't set my amp's EQ properly and it was me, who had to play intro... Omg, I will not ever forget playing, and changing EQ settings together.

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At rehearsal tonight I plugged one end of my lead into my amp, the other end into my tuner and then wondered why there was no signal getting from my bass to the tuner. It's not the first time I've done it either.

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mine are jumping off stage for some audience interaction and unplugging myself at same time doh!
playing the wrong song i evaded detection by staring in guitarists direction making everyone believe it was him playing wrong song and got away with it ha ha

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