Cover band rant - dead air!

[MrTAteMyBalls]

Unless your in my band, then the band leader doesn't understand that dead air is deadly to a good show. Heck, I'm not even sure he thinks its a show. I think he has the mentality that as long as the songs are good, nothing else matters on stage.

6 weeks till I'm done...

haha my originals band is kind of the same. there is dead air between EVERY song. Sometimes we have a setlist and other times just wing it. It just KILLS the set, plus the frontman has no kind of personality for being a frontman.

A friend's band plays to a click....so they set up thier whole show to a click track that is just one long mp3. basically one song ends there is about a 3 or 4 second pause and the click for the next song starts. Problem solved and the show flows great and seems real pro. I think i may try and do that as well.

 

[AwkwardLoudness]

This is going to sound unconventional, but we (the band) fill dead air with....tuning.

I hate dead air, too, longer than a few seconds or so. I play in a psychedelic/indie/noise rock rock band two guitars and bass with odd tunings. We switch instruments frequently since some guitars/basses are only used for one or two songs. So, we make fine tuning part of the performance with panning, delay, reverb, feedback, harmonics, drones. I know it is generally frowned upon to tune loudly between songs, but I think it works for what we do. When guitars are tuned to open Ab minor add 9 chords, then it sounds cool. All of the instruments are tuned before the gig starts, so they're nearly or already in tune by the time each respective song starts.

I remember listening to a Ravi Shankar festival performance (I forget which one, I have a large collection of his music) where the show started with the sitar, sarod, and tampuras fine tuning all strings relative to the fundamental drone note. The audience applauded after the minute or so of tuning. Ravi commented after the applause saying to the audience that if they liked hearing the them tune the instruments then they will really enjoy the actual performance. I guess my idea stemmed from this....tuning as part of a performance.

Also, not sticking to the set list is the height of unprofessionalism.

I politely DISAGREE. The height? Really? While stale silence between songs is unprofessional, there is nothing wrong with a quick change on the fly as long as the band is prepared for it. Hell, I change song segments in the middle of a medley with hand signals. Sometimes it's cool to adjust a set to fit the crown at that moment. There are some situations where changing a setlist spontaneously is not practical, but the "height of unprofessionalism?" I've seen bands far outdo that in terms of unprofessionalism.

 

[DavidE]

wow, that sounds almost exactly like my old band. i can understand changing song placement mid-set (throwing songs that are more "danceable" when the floor is packed isn't a bad thing), but i get where you're coming from - it's very frustrating, to be sure. the good news is (at least you didn't mention it) that they don't turn that dead air into a pseudo-comedy act (which is what my old band did). sure, the jokes are somewhat funny the first time, but when you agree to sub for them a few years down the road and they're still doing them...

The major issues with my old band too. No set list. Too much "comedy" between songs and then "what should we play?" Drove several of us nuts. But it was the singer's "thing," so he refused to change. Due to the lack of agreement on this (and starting on time and more reasonable set breaks), we shut down the full band at the end of last year. I played acoustic duo gigs with the singer this year as the issues weren't as pronounced, but I'm done with that too now as I put two bands together this year and there's none of that.

 

[tZer]

+1 on dead air due to leaderlessness.

The most professional band, and the one that had the longest run with the most consistent crowd had a well-programmed show that included known moments of 'down time' where the guitar would need to switch to acoustic, for example. Otherwise the songs flowed one to the next in a way that made sense - in time, well planned, pro.

I was fortunate enough to play a gig on Halloween as a last-minute sub. The guys who ran this band ran it like true pros in spite of the fact that there was no set list whatsoever. They were able to call up the next song while playing and knew how to work the crowd in a way that made the whole night seamless.

So even without a pre-programmed set list and even calling sound out of mid air, you can still move a show along nicely if you have pros in control of things. These guys were a genuine pleasure to play with and I'd do a gig with them anytime.

 

[RustyAxe]

When I hear dead air (or incessant wanking between songs) I think "amateurs". Sets should flow. From the first downbeat until the last it's a show or it's sh**. Just one guy's opinion.