How do you buy time on stage?

[rocu]

This is the reason there are banjo jokes. Banjos have to retune for every key change so they get picked on while they’re defenseless.

 

[roccobass]

Depends on the instrument in trouble. In one band I was in, we had two good options we launch into. We were good enough to cleanly segue. The guitarist would play his rendition of “The Clap” or the keyboardist did own extended version of the into to The Year of Cat. Both never failed to get attention.

 

[Ggaa]

Our gtr players have a dedicated ax for droptune songs, we do half a dozen droptune. No waiting for retune.

 

[Yango]

Just grab the mic and mumble incoherently until the one or two people there to see the show, start throwing bottles at you.

 

[ultra60]

Buy time on stage? Take a tip from Rush.

 

[Bunk McNulty]

You don't need it to be scripted. You just play the riff until the guitarist is ready, and then count in the actual song start. Lots of great songs lend themselves to this, especially songs that are danceable. We've done it with Superstition, with Sly Stone's Thank You, and several other good dance tunes. See if you can get the audience clapping along. Introduce the band members. Give a shout out to the bartenders and wait staff. Welcome some of your friends who came to see you by name. There are all sorts of ways you can fill dead air and use it as an opportunity to connect with the audience.

Yes, drums and bass just start the next song, whatever it is. Get it rolling! BL can introduce the audience to the people working the tables. BL always knows who's working the bar/tables, right?

 

[Rib 13]

Don't forget the 'show' aspect of show business:
- last year I occasionally started bringing a checkerboard and invited random folks to come up and make moves. audience vs band. This continues throughout the night, making moves between songs and can be an awesome network time killer if needed

- make a giant hourglass out of wood and put a dowel on it for a handle....spin it like the Windows 'thinking' computer icon ( on my To Do list)

 

[IamGroot]

Keep the music going. Always have something ready to play for the event of a broken string.

 

[Marley's Ghost]

Banter/Riff with the audience. Sports/Weather upcoming shows.

 

[coyote1]

You “buy time” by engaging the audience.

 

[Axtman]

I once broke a string near the end of a song. (I have never done that before.) After asking the BL to stall or take a break, they wisely launched into Fleetwood Mac's 'Landslide' while I furiously changed it and tuned up. (I even had to run to my car to get the spare set of strings.) By the time they were done I was ready to go.

If the guitar player broke a string then the singer/keyboard player and I would do a song together. We have actually done this when the guitar player got stuck in traffic and the venue insisted that we start on time.

 

[Engle]

Hello folks,
I don’t like noodling around between songs but there are situations where you might have to “buy time” on stage for other band members (re-tuning, broken strings, fired the drummer and need to find a replacement, etc.). In our actual set list, our guitarist does a solo song in Open C tuning and needs time to retune his guitar after. I would love to hear ideas, favourites songs or techniques that you guys use it to fill up time with bass only while waiting for the rest of the band.

Last night our drummer and trombone player were outside smoking a cigar when we were supposed to be starting our second set.
We had a drummer friend in the audience come up a do a song with us.

 

[bassliner50]

Vamp. Maybe a little banter over the vamp if necessary. I agree with others, second guitar for unusual tunings or cut the tune.

 

[Sav'nBass]

It should not take longer than what .. 10-15 seconds to retune a guitar. If you have keys .. have the keyboard player do a little pre next song ditty .. or extend the intro to the next song by a few bars .. I tune my bass in about 7 seconds ...

 

[Teijo K.]

This is the reason there are banjo jokes. Banjos have to retune for every key change so they get picked on while they’re defenseless.

Banjos have to retune all the time without key changes.

 

[wintremute]

Hello folks,
I don’t like noodling around between songs but there are situations where you might have to “buy time” on stage for other band members (re-tuning, broken strings, fired the drummer and need to find a replacement, etc.). In our actual set list, our guitarist does a solo song in Open C tuning and needs time to retune his guitar after. I would love to hear ideas, favourites songs or techniques that you guys use it to fill up time with bass only while waiting for the rest of the band.

Good thread. Thanks for asking.

 

[Sonicfrog]

Do crowd work.
-Introduce the band members
-Plug the band website
-Talk up the establishment/barstaff/ when you'll be back

That. Every band should have a plan for things to wrong and have a routine to fill time. Guitarists do have more things that go wrong. If no one in the band is good at banter, then do "When Doves Cry" or some other song arranged on drums and bass.

 

[nilorius]

I doo not.

 

[jmlee]

Do you have any examples of songs with long bass intros?

Some Kind Of Wonderful — Grand Funk Railroad

 

[BooDoggie]

I recently saw a group where the drummer just started playing a simple rhythm pattern with a few varring fills right after they finished a song. He kept this up for several minutes before the bass player started adding in a few notes slowly at first and then built up to a point where he was doing a few simple root note riffs. I noticed that the lead guitar player was doing quite a bit of adjusting and tuning on his guitar with it muted. At some point a few minutes into this the rhythm guitar began to play a couple of chords in sync with the bass. The lead singer used that time to introduce each of the players as they came in one at a time. Then all of a sudden the whole band broke into a song.