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Do you ever mess up?

I hit a cloam from now and then, but I always attribute it to two or three things

I am also the sound guy while playing live and I make more mistakes while I'm focused on that rather than my own part

Our drummer needs a lot of babysitting, and sometimes I am thinking about getting him through a hard part more than my own part

and yeah we do 55 songs a night, all memorized, so sometimes my hands go to the wrong place
 
If you push the envelope, mistakes are inevitable. Playing it safe is fine, but if you strive to get better, faster, cleaner, then they will happen. Mistakes litter the road to improvement.


I agree!

I also agree that the quicker you can recover from a bad NOTE, the better. The worse mistake is a timing error, you can't make that seem like a passing note or jazz.
 
That's interesting because the way Jack Bruce plays it on the live 2005 concert bears little resemblance to the way he played it back in 1968 when they originally recorded it. I think your drummer probably needs to get over himself in a very big kind of way.

Yeah I was going to kinda ask about this as well.

Did he get mad during like a normal verse part or because you flubbed a run? Those Jack Bruce runs, while not extraordinarily difficult, take some time to master.

Jack had a very specific personal style and if you want (or need) to play or improvise in that style it does take a little bit of study to even fake accurately.

I can't think of anyone offhand I could say has the same style as him, so unlike some other bassists of the time it's hard to emulate his nuances based on general knowledge of bass playing of that era.

As a result, if he's mad about you messing up some of the runs from the solo section of the recorded version, and you want to make up for it, you'll probably need to sit down with them and practice a bit.

That being said, based on what I've heard from Cream's live output, etc, those runs were likely only played like that by Jack, on that single take that was used for that recording. All preceding, and subsequent takes, were slightly different. As a result expecting someone to play them as written, in anything short of a Cream tribute band, seems a bit silly. 95% of bands I've played with wouldn't notice, unless you had one really big fan, which is likely the drummer's issue.

Those verse parts are fairly important though, melodically, and seem consistent enough that you should make sure you can play them cleanly if you're going to play that song live.
 
No, it is a fairly striped down version. I do some of the runs,such as the ones in the verses, but none of the stuff that he does during the solo and afterwards. I flubbed the part where there is a break between the chorus and the second verse. I am supposed to do a lead-in with the drummer and I missed it. The thing is I didn't play any of it and came in with the guitar players and it sounded fine. That is why I said earlier that not even the guitar players would have probably even caught it. I wish I could play like Jack Bruce but alas, I cannot. Which I have exlained that point to my bandmates.
 
Not much to add other than to say, yet again, everyone makes mistakes, and I mean everyone. Anyone who says they don't is a damn liar.

The pro/seasoned musician rolls with it, recovers, and most importantly never lets on to the audience that anything happened that wasn't supposed to happen, sometimes even turns it into a good thing.

The amateur makes stupid faces, glares at their bandmates, gets mad, and generally makes all of you look like losers.
 
I flubbed the part where there is a break between the chorus and the second verse. I am supposed to do a lead-in with the drummer and I missed it.

So it was a mistake that might have stuffed your drummer up? It's easy enough to see why he brought it up. Lead in's are essentially cues, and more than any other element of a song the Bassist needs to nail their cues.

I'm certainly not suggesting that you shouldn't be allowed to make errors, far from it in fact. I'm just suggesting that it's totally reasonable for your drummer to pull you up on missing that part. He's probably not being a doodle. He's probably just trying to point out that you left him to fly solo and that's not ideal. It's fair and you shouldn't be offended that he called you out. You should thank him.

I'd suggest woodshedding the parts with him and looping it until it's second nature. I personally prefer working with people who are not afraid to point out my screw-ups because there is always room for improvement.
 
So it was a mistake that might have stuffed your drummer up? It's easy enough to see why he brought it up. Lead in's are essentially cues, and more than any other element of a song the Bassist needs to nail their cues.

I'm certainly not suggesting that you shouldn't be allowed to make errors, far from it in fact. I'm just suggesting that it's totally reasonable for your drummer to pull you up on missing that part. He's probably not being a doodle. He's probably just trying to point out that you left him to fly solo and that's not ideal. It's fair and you shouldn't be offended that he called you out. You should thank him.

I'd suggest woodshedding the parts with him and looping it until it's second nature. I personally prefer working with people who are not afraid to point out my screw-ups because there is always room for improvement.

I see where you are coming from, the lead-in we do simultaneoulsy so it just sounded like a drum lead in. Sounded natural to me, and it didn't mess him up. Pointing out a mistake is fine, but I don't think he should just get angry about my flub and start beating the crap out of his drums when he and everyone else had made mistakes also. We usually always nail the part, I just made a mistake and missed it. I would prefer to be called out actually, that wouldn't bother me at all. Sounds here like most people have made mistakes when rehearsing and performing so this whole thread makes me feel a lot better. Thanks everybody for the words of wisdom and great advice.
 
I'll share a recent flub story with you all. Played a gig with one of my cover bands, the BL/singer calls "Get Down Tonight" by KC and the Sunshine Band. This wasn't a song we'd rehearsed, so I ask the guitarist the key. He says F, but starts playing a C. Ok then, I'll follow what he's playing. A few bars in (after the singer had already come in) I realize that he wasn't playing C any more. Whoops! I waited until the first chorus was done, and did a little fill into a key change to F. The guitarist knew what happened, but the singer thought it sounded cool.

The moral of the story? Own your mistakes. Even if you do something so bone-headed that you want to crawl under a rock, just stay cool and rectify with whatever style you can muster. I actually surprised myself that night with how I recovered.

Oh, and your drummer needs to chill out. Throwing a temper tantrum over a simple mistake is childish and unprofessional in the extreme.
 
Lol. The band I am currently in had a gig scheduled two weeks after I joined. I showed up. Played the first set a bit on the quiet side (unsure of some new songs sort of thing). Just mainly trying to survive.

Something didn't sound right. I kept tuning between every song trying to fix it. After the first set I was talking to the lead guitar player and he says " you are tuning down a half step, right?"

I was so flustered I forgot we were supposed to tun down a half step. Doh!

We laugh about it now.
 
I'll share a recent flub story with you all. Played a gig with one of my cover bands, the BL/singer calls "Get Down Tonight" by KC and the Sunshine Band. This wasn't a song we'd rehearsed, so I ask the guitarist the key. He says F, but starts playing a C. Ok then, I'll follow what he's playing. A few bars in (after the singer had already come in) I realize that he wasn't playing C any more. Whoops! I waited until the first chorus was done, and did a little fill into a key change to F. The guitarist knew what happened, but the singer thought it sounded cool.

The moral of the story? Own your mistakes. Even if you do something so bone-headed that you want to crawl under a rock, just stay cool and rectify with whatever style you can muster. I actually surprised myself that night with how I recovered.

Oh, and your drummer needs to chill out. Throwing a temper tantrum over a simple mistake is childish and unprofessional in the extreme.


+ a big one.

I used to start the intro to "Brickhouse" in G a lot. Guitarist would give me a confused look. I'd work myself up to A for when the band kicked in. "Almost" sounded intentional. :)

Sometimes I still do it just to mess with him. Audience liked it either way.

It isn't the off key that lets them know something isn't right, it's the look on your faces. Assuming of course it isn't a total trainwreck.
 
Usually where I run into problems playing the right notes is when the frenzied females have rushed the stage to try to grab me. Sometimes during their uncontrolled desire to get a piece of my clothing they grab my left arm (which is connected to my fretting hand) and it makes me screw up and hit wrong notes. I try my hardest to keep playing when this happens so that I don't let down my band members.
 

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