How do you feel about......

[Low End Scum]

Well, sometimes it can be taste if they find whatever they're playing to work over it, but it's the obstinance that I struggled with in one of my old bands. There was a Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin tune we were covering. I learned it note for note. I came in and we ran it. Everything was going off perfectly except that there's this alternating version of one of the main riffs where the second and fourth ones are accented/different. The guitarist INSISTED that it was the other way around and the accented version was on repetitions one and three.

So we sat down and listened to the studio track and it was exactly what I'd told them. So then it was a bunch of sputtering that there was a specific Royal Albert Hall live performance that was what they were doing (which of course they could not find), not the studio. Love my old guitarist, great friend, but boy they could be super obstinate about being told they were doing a classic rock thing wrong or that they needed to review the recording.

We ended up playing the wrong version at just 1 show. Nobody noticed. Beers were had.

 

[jdjk7]

.....musicians that can't or don't hear they are playing something wrong??? I was at a band rehearsal (not my regular band) and we were playing We Are Family by Sister Sledge. What are the 4 chords being played during the chorus?? Very simple. The chords are A to a G to a D natural to a G7 sus2 sus4 over a G. On the second chord, the keyboard player kept playing some weird chord and trying to justify it. Annoyed the heck outta me!! I turned to the guitar player and asked him what he was playing. He played the correct chords. I turned to her and said 'can you please play the G. She copped an attitude and changed it on her notation.

I'm not understanding how folks can be musicians and not HEAR wrong notes or chords?? If I said nothing, she would have been happy to continue playing the incorrect chord!! SMDH!! I just don't get it!

What chord was she playing?

 

[BrotherMister]

I’ve had this issue several times. Especially if there is a different note on the bass to what the harmony guys are playing.
Having said that we also need to be careful we are correct ourselves:

We Are Family
Chorus is: A7, G7, D, F/G

Verse is: A7, Em7, D9

I’m pretty sure during the verses Nile voices a straight A on the guitar and plays an Em9 while the piano plays an A7 and an Em7. They both voice a D9.

 

[Guitalia]

I guess she learned a lesson! Don't be lazy. She could have gone to Youtube and gotten the chords easily! My honest opinion? Amateurs, like her, do not belong on any stage. Problem is the gig was already booked and I'm the bail out bassist. Gotta take pride in your craft! She won't get a second chance with me. I'm doing this gig and then I'm out.

Keyboard players often have had years of sight-reading training and little or no ear training. That's probably why they sometimes seem unable to pick up on their own errors (or those of others).

Coupled with that, they're unlikely to respond well when told of an error by someone who didn't also have years of such training.

Example: the keyboard player in my last band had decades of band experience, but he still managed to get chords wrong. Worse yet, he took it upon himself to provide chord sheets on his Google Drive for everyone.

So for the chorus of Joe Cocker's live version of The Letter, he had everyone playing Am - G - Gb - F - E - E - Am, instead of the correct Am - C/G - D/F# - F - E - E - Am. I gave him the correct chords in an email instead of correcting him at a rehearsal (I even pointed out that Leon Russell just noodles around with an Am7 arpeggio with his right hand and plays the bass notes in his left in the chorus), but he never replied and never corrected the chords.

 

[Zach77]

Bet she played an E in the bass.

The problem with keys is that they usually take up too much sonic real estate.

The bass player always determines the chord.

 

[HolmeBass]

Honestly I would first try changing my part. I have been in bands where BL or someone else is playing a wrong chord and tried to bring it up. It never goes well. I have often gotten a “well we’re making this song our own, playing it our way.” Ok, everything is pretty much like the original except this chord, but if you say so.

If guitarists and/or piano are clashing such that I can’t just change my note to make it right, I try to bring it up innocently, just say, “this spot is sounding out to me, can we just play and hold that chord to see how it sounds and let me find a good note?” Which is usually enough for folks to notice they’re not together.

And if that fails, I match whomever is louder. And remind myself that notes don’t mean s*^t as long as the groove is happening.

 

[neddyrow]

I have been asked to fill in on upright for a dead cover band who wants to do acoustic shows. they are known for being very strict on how the songs should be played and arranged to be as close to what the dead would do.

the irony is that they are terrible singers who are constantly off key. it's so weird that they will argue like this thread describes and then go on to sing way out of key. the guitar player in our main band sits in on keys and is an excellent singer. they let him sing a few but the rest is garbage.

luckily, I am too busy to join another band and get to dodge this drama.

 

[Kael]

Worst insult I can give to a musician is that they don't listen.

 

[rodak]

You should have told him. It's one thing to forget to shift pitch but, not being able to hear that you're off key or out of tune. No need to be mean or disrespectful, but it could have been a formative moment. Then again, given the thin skin and "get even" types of people out there, I understand you not wanting to open that door.

Isn't there a Youtube video of Eddie Van Halen playing a solo in the wrong key because he was handed a guitar that was out of tune? As I recall, he seemed to be totally unaware of it. I guess when you play that loud, even the best of us can be led astray.

 

[Sid Fang]

Had a vocalist who also did rhythm guitar and keys. Serious and mostly knew what she was doing. But there was this one passage, the quiet bridge in “You Oughta Know”, IIRC, where the actual song goes to a different, related, key, where she insisted in singing over the same chord. Drive me crazy. I was conflicted between supporting her and actually playing the part. So frequently I would just sort of thump the muted strings on the beat.

 

[lermgalieu]

Isn't there a Youtube video of Eddie Van Halen playing a solo in the wrong key because he was handed a guitar that was out of tune? As I recall, he seemed to be totally unaware of it. I guess when you play that loud, even the best of us can be led astray.

The true story behind Van Halen’s infamous out-of-tune Jump performance has finally been revealed

 

[lamarjones]

Two different things here.

It's one thing to get something wrong while preparing a tune without charts or anything. Saying that should never happen is a glass house imo.

Being defensive when it's pointed out, that just isn't professional.

 

[BassyBill]

The Sister Sledge tune can be instructive in several ways. I particularly like it as a great mythbuster for the oft-repeated "bass must always 'lock in' with the kick" misconception.

 

[BlueTalon]

How do you feel about...... thread titles with no substance ending with a misused ellipsis?

I hate them.

 

[Fuzzbass]

That's my other peeve; players that use tab or charts from their favorite internet site and not referring once to the recorded song the charts/tab was drawn from for accuracy.

For awhile I worked with a band that downloaded chord/lyric sheets from the internet, and never bothered to verify accuracy. The most egregious error: Skynyrd's "Ballad of Curtis Loew" became a I-IV-V song.

Mini-rant: I hate chord/lyric sheets even when correct.

 

[Fuzzbass]

Here's a common problem -- could be laziness, undeveloped ear, or just bad habit:

Learning the song by playing over it, rather than listening carefully first. So many problems with this. The biggest is being unable to tell when you're playing a wrong note or chord. And even if you learn the first verse/chorus correctly, there might be subtle (or even unsubtle!) changes to subsequent verses/choruses that you completely miss because you're plowing through listening to yourself and not the recording. (I say "you", but was guilty of this as a n00b!)

 

[Scarysharkface]

.....musicians that can't or don't hear they are playing something wrong??? I was at a band rehearsal (not my regular band) and we were playing We Are Family by Sister Sledge. What are the 4 chords being played during the chorus?? Very simple. The chords are A to a G to a D natural to a G7 sus2 sus4 over a G. On the second chord, the keyboard player kept playing some weird chord and trying to justify it. Annoyed the heck outta me!! I turned to the guitar player and asked him what he was playing. He played the correct chords. I turned to her and said 'can you please play the G. She copped an attitude and changed it on her notation.

I'm not understanding how folks can be musicians and not HEAR wrong notes or chords?? If I said nothing, she would have been happy to continue playing the incorrect chord!! SMDH!! I just don't get it!

I recently subbed a bunch of gigs with the most popular, most booked dance band in our area. They've been playing for years. I got them sorted on a few tunes where the guitar and keys weren't in agreement on Major/minor, and I really couldn't believe they'd been playing things not the same for so long without anyone getting it straight or really even noticing. They simply weren't listening to each other, just themselves. So I make an effort to not do that myself.

John

 

[Lesfunk]

I don’t know…. Mistakes happen.
if I’m playing something wrong just tell me or show me and I’ll fix it.
Nobody’s perfect. I don’t see the big deal. Nobody needs to get pissy about it.

 

[MichelD]

I don't have a very good ear. The other day we started a song of mine and about two bars in the keyboard player stopped me and said "Wrong key." It's my composition, a very simple two-chord Cajun style song and I was singing in G and the rest of them were in C. I didn't notice.

I wrote it in G and at the first the band didn't want to play it because I sang it off-key because I have a hard time finding the correct pitch to sing in, so we tried C and that works. But this time I had forgotten we had changed it and started it in G as ihave done for the past 15 or so years since I wrote it.

We're not all blessed with magic ears.

 

[Scarysharkface]

For awhile I worked with a band that downloaded chord/lyric sheets from the internet, and never bothered to verify accuracy. The most egregious error: Skynyrd's "Ballad of Curtis Loew" became a I-IV-V song.

Mini-rant: I hate chord/lyric sheets even when correct.

I've been showing up to weekly "jam sessions" in town, which are really just open-mic with zero jamming, but I digress. Anyway, there are apparently endless harmonic interpretations of standard pop songs, and while some of them work, most of them don't. People turn 5 or 6 chords songs into I IV V all the time, and I just can't comprehend how they aren't hearing that the chords very clearly don't align with the melody. But they aren't. II V I? Sure, we can make that a I IV V and nobody will even flinch. III VI II V I? Yessir, I got a I IV V coming right up. On the one hand, it's fantastic ear-training. On the other hand, good lord, the carnage. The absolute sonic carnage..

John