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First Gig (and last, with that band) Debacle

#62
No offense taken!

Actually, I get that all the time. My I'm-not-making-any-face-at-all face looks "mean". Many people (especially chicks) have told me that the first time they met me, they thought I looked mean. That's really just my I'm-being-serious-and/or-concentrating face. :D

Like I said, next time I'll put "Smile" for every other song in my set list. Heh.
 
#63
StuartV said:
No offense taken!

Actually, I get that all the time. My I'm-not-making-any-face-at-all face looks "mean". Many people (especially chicks) have told me that the first time they met me, they thought I looked mean. That's really just my I'm-being-serious-and/or-concentrating face. :D

Like I said, next time I'll put "Smile" for every other song in my set list. Heh.
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I used to get comments like that, a lot. I always had my serious "bass face" on, and while I always enjoyed gigging, I was always concentrating more than necessary on "being really good".

More recently (past few years), though, I've been in some of the absolute best musical situations in my life and found myself having a LOT more fun.

I think all that changed was being with fully-capable peers who I can trust. I can relax and have fun when I'm not worried about someone being in the wrong key or the drummer having bad time, or a band-mate not carrying their own (musical) weight. Makes a world of difference in my personal experience and in my attitude, and I think, to the audience.
 
#65
FWIW, my bandmates have mocked me from day 1, and for every gig there-after... but it didn't phase me. Here's why: I would actually go to the location a week+ before the gig, and scout everything out. I'd get the model # for their PA/board, and go home and download the owners manual to figure out how to properly use it. I'd get dimensions of the stage to know what kind of footprint we have to work with. I'd go check out another band playing there and see how the PA/soundguy sounds.

I'd find where the power outlets were and how many, so I knew where to run extension cables, and who would be sharing which lines. I'd find out about lighting, load in (back door? I'd check that out too for ramps, etc), parking, etc. I didn't want any surprises. Everyone in my band just didn't want to hear any of it.


When it came gig time, magically there were NO issues! Wow. As if someone had taken all the time to prepare beforehand, and bring all the proper equipment needed for the gig, and everyone's job was simply to set their stuff up and play. Yeah - they never appreciated it until I stopped doing it! hahaha
 
#67
StuartV said:
Well, when I play a gig on drums, pretty much anywhere, I mic the whole kit. Unless it's REALLY small and I don't care about recording it. Micing the kit lets me play the way I play (not extremely loud) and still give the audience a good sound, no matter how big or small the place is. I don't have to turn into a basher with bats, just because I'm playing a bigger venue. In this particular case, the only things on the drum kit that were mic'ed were the snare and the bass drum. And I absolutely think that the place was big enough and packed enough that the bass drum needed to be mic'ed. Otherwise, nobody past the first 3 rows of people in the crowd would have been able to hear it.

DI from the bass was really only so that there would be a signal to the board that would feed into my digital recorder. I generally run the 2 Track Out from whatever board is in use into my Olympus LS-10 any time I play. If all the instruments don't into the board, then the recording would be pretty useless. But, since the recorder actually gets the FOH mix, my plan was to only use my rig to be loud enough for me to hear over the drums, and let the FOH PA reproduce my sound for the audience - so the mix in the recording would sound good. With the drums, the two mics on the kit, plus the drum sound picked up by the vocal mics at the front of the stage would have produced a decent sounding mix in the recording. Decent enough for post-gig analysis, anyway.

As far as sound checks and sound men go, when I play a gig with my own PA (in my cover band), we always do a sound check when we're done with load-in. We play a song and record it from the board, then play it back through the PA and go stand where the audience would be to make sure it sounds okay. If it needs major adjustments, we adjust and to do it again. Usually we don't have to do that, though. We just make minor adjustments and we're good to go at show time.
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drums usually sound better miked up....imho.....i've heard lots of good drum guys foiled by thin sounding kits....
 
#68
ashtray said:
FWIW, my bandmates have mocked me from day 1, and for every gig there-after... but it didn't phase me. Here's why: I would actually go to the location a week+ before the gig, and scout everything out.
Click to expand...


I generally do the same thing! Probably going tonight to scout a place where my cover band is playing in a couple of weeks.

In this case (last Friday's gig), I didn't do any of that because the guitard put the gig together and kept saying "trust me" and "they [the venue] know what they're doing."

Live and learn. In this case, I learned that I should have gone with my gut when I quit the band a first time, a month ago...
 
#69
Now that's what I call being prepared. You should both be getting a little extra pay for doing the extra homework/legwork.
And if the others don't appreciate it, let them try it, or at least they'll appreciate it when you don't do it (as noted above)!
 
#72
Im going to ask a dumb question. Is it possible that your guitar player didnt have the volume knob on his guitar turned up? Or that it was an active with a dead battery?

We are playing similar style rooms now and we are only running vocals, acoustic guitar and kick thru the PA and havent had any issues. (Except for the place we played with no floor monitors so we couldnt hear each other!)

Good luck with your lady of the keys!
 

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