Getting guitar players interested in groove

[eJake]

I friggin love bill withers man... What a great songwriter...

 

[eJake]

Most part time "guitar heroes" don't have the time for groove.

 

[Chrisk-K]

Suggest a Yngwie song to torture the lead guitarist.

 

[murph7489]

I brought up playing the song "play that funky music" to my band..I know everyone plays it to death..but anyway both guitar players didn't show much interest in doing it..Until we learned it and then played it the first time..everyone was dancing and loving the song..The one guitar player that didn't want to play it most said..ya know that stuff is really fun to play. Admittedly I like doing the 70s type dance music like that..its bass heavy, but on the other hand, the crowd really loves it and dances to it everytime..its a 100%er..

Now if I can get them to do more of those types of songs..lol..but seriously the object of the game is to get people dancing..that is the formula for success. yeah its not playing Rush or Yes or other stuff that I love to play but, I"m playing music and having fun doing it and making a little money too..So to me, its a win win..I play the other stuff I love in my bedroom with spotify..lol...that's good practice..

 

[nomaj]

Good funk guitar is a wonderful thing.

 

[Robscott]

Yep, I watched a band go from lots of gigs with happy people when we played uptempo dance tunes, to few gigs with cranky people, when the guitar player (also the band leader, unfortunately) decided every song should be a blues that goes "rumpty-rumpty-rumpty-rumpty" and has three or five or eight minutes of guitar solo.

Haha "rumpty rumpty", I love it! Lemme guess, the solo went "widdly widdly widdly" right?

 

[MtManiac]

I'm literally doing this off the top of my head because I don't have an active electronic list with me at the moment - our main guitarist has a heavily edited master printout that we use to spin off individual sets or just call them out as we're reading the crowd. So here's my attempt at a master list from memory. Songs listed are by the artist's rendition and not necessarily the actual authors:

Red House - Jimi Hendrix
Tightrope - Stevie Ray Vaughn
Five Long Years - Eric Clapton
White Room - Cream
The Bends - Radiohead
Cinnamon Girl - Neil Young
Badge - Cream
LaGrange - ZZ Top
Under The Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Good Time Bad Times - Led Zeppelin
Paranoid - Black Sabbath
White Wedding - Billy Idol
Everlong - Foo Fighters
Sunshine of Your Love - Cream
Maybelline - Chuck Berry
My Hero - Foo Fighters
War Pigs - Black Sabbath
Why Does Love Have to be So Sad - Derek and the Dominoes
Mississippi Queen - Mountain
Mary Jane's Last Dance - Tom Petty
Shooting Star - Bad Company
Roadhouse Blues - Doors
Crossroads - Cream
Just What I Needed - Cars
When You Were Young - Killers
Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd
Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Seeker - Who
You Wreck Me - Tom Petty
Love Me Two Times - Doors
Creep - Radiohead
Down By the River - Neil Young
Leave My Little Girl Alone - Stevie Ray Vaughn
Hey Joe - Jimi Hendrix
Working Man - Rush
Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits

...I'm sure there are a few more that I just can't recall at the moment, but you get the basic idea.

All great songs! But it's hard to imagine people dancing to some of them - like War Pigs, or Paranoid, or Down By The River - do people dance to these?

 

[MtManiac]

Good funk guitar is a wonderful thing.

That's what I'm talking about - I can't imagine either of our guitar players doing Nile justice.

 

[MtManiac]

I friggin love bill withers man... What a great songwriter...

He's one of my favourite songwriters ever.

 

[MtManiac]

There's one tune we used to do, back when we had a different lead player and a full time singer - most of you likely wouldn't be familiar with it, as it was done by a Canadian bar band, Doug and the Slugs - wildly popular coast to coast back in the early 80s, but only in Canada. Pretty much everybody in Canada our age including people who'd be our audience would know it though. The song was "Makin' It Work" if you want to YouTube it. The rhythm guitar does a "chank" on the 2 and 4. Our rhythm guitar player kept just copying the bass part. I pointed out what the guitar part is, hummed it for him while clapping the beat, and he could *not* get it. 2 and 4! It drove me nuts as that little bit was IMO essential to the whole groove, as was the bass part played on just bass. What he was doing was killing the groove. Remember that scene in The Jerk where Steve Martin is trying to clap on 2 & 4?

Another guitar player years ago, he had one of those super flat guitars with two humbuckers and a single coil in the middle, Strat style - I think an Ibanez. Built for shredding, but he didn't shred. We were doing "Stuck In The Middle" and he was just strumming away on the chords, playing the acoustic guitar part. I pointed out what the rhythm guitar part was to him, same way, clapping and humming the part. If memory serves, it's a "chank" on the "and" of 1, and a "chank" on the 3. Have you ever heard that song with two guitars, one acoustic and one electric with poopy tone, just a strumming away? Holy crap, what a groove killer. I did get him playing the right part, and it started to sound much better and became one of our audience favorites, always a dance floor filler.

What is it with these guys?? Rhetorical question.

 

[BwanaDust]

What the heck is "dad rock?" Do you need to have a "dad bod" and wear "dad jeans" to play it? Do you need to have a brace of brats?

 

[Tony In Philly]

All great songs! But it's hard to imagine people dancing to some of them - like War Pigs, or Paranoid, or Down By The River - do people dance to these?

Well - not War Pigs or Down By the River (of course), but a lot of the others, yes. We keep getting rebooked at the regular venues we play too.

 

[MtManiac]

What the heck is "dad rock?" Do you need to have a "dad bod" and wear "dad jeans" to play it? Do you need to have a brace of brats?

What the heck is google??

Rock that old fogeys over the age of 40 listen to to the exclusion of everything else. Eric Clapton, pre-Stevie Nicks Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, etc.

 

[Wisebass]

Hi Bill

Anybody else run into this?

I am not surprised. Two guitars, bass and drums is a classic hard rock outfit.

sounds like you need a musician who plays guitar. good luck finding one!

A lot of guitarists that play in bands like that, only know how to play guitar based rock music.

That doesn' t make them bad musicians but they will find it difficult to translate (re- write)

horn sections or keyboard parts for guitar.

This is something they can learn, but it represents some serious work.

(maybe too much for the average dad band noodler?)

When a guitarist can' t groove? That is something different.

IME a guy that has already played for years (I assume that' s the case in a typical dad band)

and hasn' t got the feeling, won' t turn into a Nile Rogers overnight.

I think they would rock *and* be danceable.

Check Lenny Kravitz tunes. A lot of them were written on and for guitar.

Some real groovy stuff and not too hard to play. (even for dad rockers this one e.g. should work fine!)





greetings

Wise(b)ass

 

[Ostie]

Getting guitar players interested in groove

I wish you luck with this, sir! Most lead guitarists I've played with are more interested in their pedalboards than groove...sigh...

Pure rhythm guitarists, or BL's who play guitar, are a little easier IME

I used to be a rhythm guitarist, but I switched to bass 40 years ago cuz I got more work. Nobody wanted a groove rhythm guitarist, they wanted hot lead guitarists who played like Hendrix or Clapton. Sound familiar?

 

[3Liter]

There's one tune we used to do, back when we had a different lead player and a full time singer - most of you likely wouldn't be familiar with it, as it was done by a Canadian bar band, Doug and the Slugs - wildly popular coast to coast back in the early 80s, but only in Canada. Pretty much everybody in Canada our age including people who'd be our audience would know it though. The song was "Makin' It Work" if you want to YouTube it. The rhythm guitar does a "chank" on the 2 and 4. Our rhythm guitar player kept just copying the bass part. I pointed out what the guitar part is, hummed it for him while clapping the beat, and he could *not* get it. 2 and 4! It drove me nuts as that little bit was IMO essential to the whole groove, as was the bass part played on just bass. What he was doing was killing the groove.

I can't say I'm a fan of that song, but I see what you mean, without that, it doesn't have a groove. It almost gives it a ska feeling (to me). Too bad you're so far away, you have a good sense of these things, would be fun to play together.

 

[Wisebass]

Hi BwanaDust

What the heck is "dad rock?" Do you need to have a "dad bod" and wear "dad jeans" to play it? Do you need to have a brace of brats?

Dad band names

Grand dad bands

Worst Dad Band song

Ideal Dad Band thread names

You should find the answer on one of these threads!

greetings

Wise(b)ass

 

[Frank77]

Anybody else doing the "dad rock" thing and having trouble with guitar players and song selection?

For example - current band, I really want to do some older R&B and British blues rock tunes that carry a beat and a groove, as well as pretty much anything from the 70s-10's that can be adapted to two guitars and has a groove (like Daft Punk "Get Lucky, for example). The drummer and I can carry off our parts, but the guitar players are uninterested. The lead guy wants to do Kenny Wayne Shepherd "Blue On Black", Jimi Hendrix "Red House," and songs that are fun for lead guitar players. The Rhythm guitar player is a bit more on board with the "danceable" aspect of songs but really doesn't know a lot of danceable songs outside of the country genre. Sometimes too, when there's a part where the bass and drums are supposed to play together without guitars, he will copy the bass line on his guitar, which to me totally kills the groove.

I'd like to do some old classics, like Knock On Wood, Soul Man, some Spencer Davis Group tunes, etc and have the guitars figure out something to cover the horn parts. I think they would rock *and* be danceable.

Anybody else run into this? Anybody successfully manage through it?

2 guitar players: That's your problem, right there. Even moreso if their comfort zone is dad rock, the antithesis of groove. Sorry to say this but chances are slim to none that you'll get these guys slightly interested in non-guitar centric material in this lifetime. Asking them to "figure out something to cover the horn parts" is signing a blank check for more guitar wankery that drowns everything out and kills any chance of groove.

Your best course of action, in my opinion, is to start looking for a different band (/side project with your drummer) that has 0 or 1 guitar player who's more into Nile Rogers than Clapton or SRV. Focus on finding a keyboard player first, instead. AND if you can find horns, that can be a lot of fun. I'll choose horns over guitars any day.

 

[pie_man_25]

Groove is a beautiful thing. The subtle art of doing a simple thing really, really well is always more complicated than most would think at a glance.

 

[BwanaDust]

What the heck is google??

Rock that old fogeys over the age of 40 listen to to the exclusion of everything else. Eric Clapton, pre-Stevie Nicks Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, etc.

I only use google for important stuff. BTW. I just turned 62. Of course I have been working at a performing arts high-school since 2005. Still, I think you've got your ages off. I would imagine people in their forties might be more into late eighties/early nineties tunes.

BTW... Mystery to Me (pre-Stevie) is a pretty good album. The Peter Green era was a big yawn. Around my parts, the old semi-talented dudes all gravitate towards blues bands. Nothing like a blues band for a bassist. Luckily, the few times I had to play blues all night, I was on keyboards and I got to drive the BL nuts with ridiculously outside fusion licks.