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Have you ever messed up at a gig?

E

ericmknight1906

Nov 22, 2006
231
14
daytona beach, florida
#1
And instead of your fellow musicians telling you that you played horribly, you just get the silent treatment? My Playing is usually decent but every now and then I may have an off night. Does that make me a bad musician?:crying:
I guess I'm still in that trial N Error Stage.:hmm:

I would also like to know if I play horribly tonight and play great the next night do people forget about your horrible night?Am I as good as my last performance? ....Feedback please.
 
#2
When I have a bad night, I just say, "Sounds OK from my house" and I forget about it. I used to obsess over small mistakes, but it does no good. Can't go back in time. Now I only obsess over other people's giant mistakes. Makes me feel better.

Just try to tighten up a little and work on consistency and you'll be fine. It definitely comes with time, but even the greatest bands have off nights. I once saw Rush have a horrible off-night once. Tempos were all over the place, and they never really caught a groove until the end of the show. And one of the worst shows I ever saw was Van Halen in 1979. Eddie was fantastic, but Alex played terribly and Dave would sing one verse out of each song and then prance for the rest of the song. So it happens to everyone.
 
#3
Everyone who has ever played in front of people has made a mistake or two or a hundred. No one is immune from these things. All you can do is practice as much as possible to find out your weaknesses and try to work them out. This will allow you to make fewer mistakes and may, eventually, lead to the occasional night when the only mistakes you make are noticed by only by you.

I once did a session with some local playhouse actors who were doing a musical. We were the house band at the theater and so we agreed to go into the studio and cut the musical tracks so they could have a record of their performance. The play was Neil Simon's Company. Anyway, on one track, in a particularly quiet spot, I hit a note which was nowhere to be found in the key we were playing in. I corrected it as fast as I could, but it stuck out like a sore thumb. Also, because the actors didn't want to waste any studio time, they wouldn't let me go back and fix it, so it stayed in the final recording. Uggghhh!

Don't sweat the small stuff.
 
#4
Over the weekend I was filling in for a bassist who was on vacation, and the other members decided to have a spot in the set where they would run around and give away shirts and information about the band while me and the drummer did a short solo thing together.

I told him beforehand that I was going to be using a loop, and that it wouldn't be perfectly on time, and that he might need to slow down or speed up a little bit to adjust for it. He agreed and said it wouldn't be a problem.

When the time came for the solo part, I set the loop and he was drumming and it was going fine, but after a minute or so he was so far ahead of the loop that I had no idea what to do... I just stopped it and played the rest of the ideas I had and it sounded really bad without that loop going.

Luckily I don't think anyone in the crowd was really paying that much attention... Only I seemed to notice how off time he was.
 
#7
I'll obsess or harp over a train-wreck. But mistakes are mistakes, and I'm part of a bar band. We're not doing concerts where people sit in nice padded chairs and some over-pretentious know-it-all writes up some self-gloating review in the paper the next day. We rock, people drink, hopefully both us and the drinkers have fun. Mistakes happen. If you have fun with the mistakes then it's not as stress-full.
 
#8
Sometimes I can do no wrong on a gig and those are magic moments. Other times my hands can feel like they belong to someone else. I play all kinds of shows, some with rehearsals, some without. Doing that you get used to rolling with the punches and as long as the ears are open you can usually get out of it. I played with solo artists who drop bars or beats in a 12 bar blues. I just did a gig this past weekend, made lots of notes at the rehearsal but the artist changed a lot of the intros and versus. Tons of fun. Someone once said to me, "its just music, nobody dies" and after that I stopped worrying about mistakes I make.
 
#11
What's weird is sometimes I'll have a crappy gig where nothing goes right :spit: and ppl will come up and say "Wow! Great playin'" :confused:
and the next gig I'll think I'm playin' really good - hittin' on all 8 ...........and not a word! :D

Happens with the whole band, too - "Boy, we're off tonight" --- crowd: "yew guys rawk!". :bassist:
Next night -- "Man, great set! We slayed!" :hyper: -- *crowd silence* (thank you for that marvelous round of indifference). :atoz:
 
#12
I used to rehearse alot so that wouldn't happen, but it always does.

I recall the first gig I ever played. The former bass player of the band was standing right in front of me. If I made a mistake, even just partially, he would laugh really loud. what an a**

Another time, I was filling in for a friends band, and it was death metal and really fast, and each song had 11 riffs and some of them didnt' even repeat. I got lost in the first few songs, and just gave up, I just played it off and went with the rhythm as much as possible. After the gig, I got so many compliments on my playing and stage presence - and was even asked to join another band. I don't think I've ever had a gig where I made so many mistakes!

On the other side of that, I've experienced nights without a single mistake - yet that will only happen when your bandmates have a bad night, and make all sorts of mistakes themselves.
 
#14
Screw it up one night and you'll get laughed at. Screw it up two nights in a row and you get a "look". You get to screw it up on the third gig before anyone gets pissed of. Fix it and it's history.

Mistakes happen - if you're not making mistakes in public you're either not gigging, or not trying.
 
#16
Ok so I got to the House of Blues early , around 6pm when nobody was there, had a sound check and went up to the green room to chill out with the band and some friends until it was stage time. At this point i was a ripe 20 years old and i had never played the house of blues or any venue this commercially big. ........before i knew it my guitar player smoke two joints with me and i got really really high!!! show time came along and now i was walking to the stage a little unprepared wearing an extremely heavy Bathrobe-esk coat. ... all the sound guys checked to see if we were ready and yeah i guessed i was ready.......the curtains opened up and to my surprise the entire House of Blues was packed to the brim!!! ...here came the drum roll.... here cam my first notes...here came the next part of our "big Intro" and i ....totally played the wrong part!! wrong note, wrong riff, wrong motor skill completely!!!!...sounded horrible!!!...so I finally got on track and continued on with the set. I Was sooo damn stoned i couldn't even move let alone look at the crowd. I started to get really sweaty in my completely unnecessary massive coat. In between a song, I tried to gracefully remove my coat without taking off my bass. People whistled and shouted "take it off" " WOOOOOO" ....this was ultra embarrassing!!! Never again will i smoke so much pot right before a gig!!!!!!!!
I felt like one of those soccer player that missed the open goal!............................................i felt horrible.........................i played the next night at a different house of blues and made up for it by playing well. i was still a little stiff on stage i think cuz i was soo green and had never played to so many people but it sounded good..............I think now i finally let it all go and now like to tell the story cuz i think its funny
 
#17
ericmknight1906 said:
And instead of your fellow musicians telling you that you played horribly, you just get the silent treatment? My Playing is usually decent but every now and then I may have an off night. Does that make me a bad musician?:crying:
I guess I'm still in that trial N Error Stage.:hmm:

I would also like to know if I play horribly tonight and play great the next night do people forget about your horrible night?Am I as good as my last performance? ....Feedback please.
Click to expand...

No, I never make mistakes. It's unprofessional. If you can't play flawlessly, you don't belong onstage.

;)
 
#20
Oh dude,

Early 1990's I was keyboardplayer in a local original material band, kind of like allman brotheres/skynyrd/purple thing. Had a hammond clone, rhodes, and a hohner clav at that time.

One night we played a local pub scene, and for some reason I got REALLY drunk, we all drank a few beers or so normally, but that eve, duuuude.

Apparently I have somewhere in the middle of the last of two sets, decided to go my own way and play jimi hendrix style on my clavinet, turning up the volume so my musicman amp rounded and then played with overtones and made a terrible noise while with the other hand making "sweeps" on the organ and not giving a damn about the really angry singer leaning in to my keyboardcorner trying to stop me... and what the band played, I couldn't have cared less, i was in my world and I was the king!!

:D

According to a friend of mine who was there, and was a lil bit less drunk than I was, It was one of the best shows he'd ever seen with me in, though, he's a keyboard player too... and I still question how many beers he REALLY had that eve....

HEHEHE..

D.Don
 

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