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Bandmate pet peeves

Why can't most musicians take care of themselves? Why must I have extras of everything? I carry extra extension cords, I l always have tools, outlet tester, extra audio, speaker, and power cables, extra batteries, all kinds of electrical and audio adapters, wall warts, drum key (!), and so on. It's like taking care of children.
 
I'm going to have to add to my list of pet peeves, guys who think they are your boss/dad/big brother who make you feel like crap for being late, ignoring all the other contributions you bring to the band. But hey, that's why I'm almost always the band leader. I don't have a time clock to punch in at the studio just like I don't have one at the office. If they ever put one in, that's the day I find a different office.

I guess being the boss makes it OK to disrespect others by wasting their time. Must be nice to be so special. :rollno:
 
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right now its being the most committed member of the band with guys who place it lower on their priority lists that i do

to be fair, its probably the reverse for them, the annoying bassist trying to schedule more writing and rehersal and recording sessions than they feel they want to do at this stage
 
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People that don't know how to EQ. I know this metal band who's guitarist scoops the mids and cranks the bass on her 5150. It sounds god awful. I did a fill in gig with them. :dead: Plus she uses a volume pedal as a mute switch when changing guitars and the volume never returns to the same spot after the switch.
 
gotta say it's the noodling: in my bands: both guitar players and a drummer.

what they don't get (hasn't sunk in --- theyve been told!) is that it not only interferes with others trying to talk out arrangements, but it also apparently keeps them from 'remembering' those same discussions: so they tend to be unprepared for the next count off! :bored:
 
I'm going to have to add to my list of pet peeves, guys who think they are your boss/dad/big brother who make you feel like crap for being late, ignoring all the other contributions you bring to the band. But hey, that's why I'm almost always the band leader. I don't have a time clock to punch in at the studio just like I don't have one at the office. If they ever put one in, that's the day I find a different office.

I don't punch a clock either. However, when I make a commitment, I tend to stick to it. I dislike wasting anyone else's time as much as I dislike having mine wasted. And I would never dream of using my many other contributions to a band as justification as to why I continually make others sit around and wait for me to be consistently late.

I'll guess you expect everyone to be waiting on you when you finally arrive?
 
My pet peeve is when people noodle at full volume between songs. Makes me crazy when we are discussing what we just played and someone is noodling all over. I swear it's compulsive, because they'll stop when asked, but then start up again 20 seconds later.
/sorry to rant. My regular guitarist doesn't do this but I just jammed with someone who did. Still sulking lol

This is the musical equivalent of Tourettes syndrome. Almost all bands I've been in, have had one or two of these. And guess what ... ONLY... guitarists. For some very very strange reason. Most gtrds suffers from this kind of tourettes. And this is not a sly remark, or something ironic, cynic or sarcastic. The only bands who hadn't got one of these ins, where the bands I was a guitarist in. Of course. I even as fast as there where a pause or break or in between numbers, turned down the volume knob on the guitar, because it buzzed and hum, when turned up even if was silent from playing. Since then that's second nature to me. The only thing I do between numbers are tuning up - muted - to a guitar tuner if needed.
 
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I guess being the boss makes it OK to disrespect others by wasting their time. Must be nice to be so special. :rollno:
When you're the boss you get to make the schedule. If you can record all the instruments, release the albums, foot the bills and book the gigs yourself then you're not wasting your hired gun's time. But then again not every musician can do that so maybe that does make someone special?

I'll guess you expect everyone to be waiting on you when you finally arrive?
Uh no, I'm not an a-hole -_^ If they aren't done I help them carry their gear and set up until we are all ready. It's a team effort.

People that don't know how to EQ. I know this metal band who's guitarist scoops the mids and cranks the bass on her 5150. It sounds god awful. I did a fill in gig with them. :dead: Plus she uses a volume pedal as a mute switch when changing guitars and the volume never returns to the same spot after the switch.
It probably sounds good to her when she is playing solo but she doesn't realize that the band mix is completely different that solo play.
 
We wouldn't get along :p I'm reliably 30 minutes late. I seriously tell people if they have a problem with that then we can't make music/be friends/be... anything.
Neither would we. I find it funny, when it comes to musicians, they're always picky with timing when playing. As fast as you move that timing up to minutes, they can't keep that time, it's too long between metronome clicks. Beats me. This is something one never can rehearse, practice or get good as. We can't make music for sure, but hey there's not that man bands with two bass players in them...frankly those people who are late, have also some lackadaisical timing instinct when it comes to play music. Dawned slowly on me through experience. No I wouldn't be able to team up with neither Chris Squire nor Axl Rose.
 
I don't punch a clock either. However, when I make a commitment, I tend to stick to it. I dislike wasting anyone else's time as much as I dislike having mine wasted. And I would never dream of using my many other contributions to a band as justification as to why I continually make others sit around and wait for me to be consistently late.

I'll guess you expect everyone to be waiting on you when you finally arrive?
There's a dude I play with that has come close to pushing me over the edge a few times. I remember posting here once while I was dealing with it, as I was very close to burning that bridge. I didn't, and it paid off as I was afforded a lot of great opportunities by not tossing this guy out with the bathwater. I learned instead to play his game.

What got me most with this particular person was that I talked with him about it once during a several hour drive with just me and him. I explained as clearly as I could how being an hour late effects me (and others) and his final thought on the subject was that the problem wasn't with him, but rather with others who had a problem with people being late. People need to not take life so seriously, what's an hour here or there. Things happen, people are late. You roll with it, it's not a big deal. At the end he said he would deal with the fact that I have a problem with people being late. How about that :)!!!

Interesting thing is that he really doesn't care if others are late. So I now always tack 1/2 an hour onto whatever time he schedules for things, and I don't care if I'm late. It works. Only hitch is when others are also involved. Luckily, as a bass player I can plug in and play a lot faster than anyone else though.

Yeah... that's probably my biggest peeve.
 
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- Lack of structure to original songs due to other band mates' laziness... To date, it's my biggest peeve. Not knowing where transitions are supposed to happen or how a song is DEFINITIVELY supposed to end drives me up the wall. To have performances in this fashion is ridiculous to me, but nobody else in the band seems to think it's all that important.

- When someone in the band is trying to make a suggestion after we've clearly stopped playing, and someone keeps playing the song or starts noodling on their instrument.

- The drummer playing at one dynamic the entire time. You can do the most impressive fills in the world but if it's all at FF, it kills the musicality.

- Kind of tied to the first one, but I hate when we record a rehearsal a certain way, go a week handling life, come back to the next rehearsal a week later, and the song is still played completely differently from how it was recorded. What was the point of the recording?...

I'm sure I could think of more, but at the moment, those are the main ones that get under my skin...
 

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