huge difference between good and bad days

[crusie]

Hiya,

the last two weekends we've played a gig, and all was well for the first gig. we all played an awesome gig and was very satisfied afterwards.

then we gigged this last friday, at a dragrace competition, and everything fell apart. like an oncomming trainwreck you just can't seem to fix.

we have this issue in our band, when everything runs smooth we play very tight and nice ( to my ears at least) but if someone in the band is having an off day, he drags the rest of the band down with him.

any ideas to fix this ? we got no problems riding a partywave that's already been started. but to start our own.... we really suck at.

 

[Marko 1]

Without specifics as to who did what wrong it’s hard to come up with advice.

Maybe more practice/rehearsal would be AN answer.

 

[IncX]

i can really relate. this used to be a problem, and it is pretty much centered on our vocalist. sometimes she has off days where her personal life just drags her down and she just doesnt wanna sing, or wanna do anything. she shows up in rehearsal with a long face and just gets everybody down to the point that our rehearsals would sound and feel depressing.

what i did was put down the guitars and bought food and soda for everyone, and just told everyone to eat and not think about rehearsal....

while just hanging out, we started talking about funny stuff and things that aren't really related to music... after awhile we started writing some joke lyrics with a funny backing riff.

the vocalist started getting into a better mood... and before we knew it, she was hyped up and we were running through our old set and writing new music at the same time.

the secret is: keep the band happy. im just glad everyone in my band loves to eat lol

-*-

i reread your post... and oh, i guess it was easy with my band cause im sort of the one who starts the "party wave" ...

as to how i do it? ... it always helps that we have the same interests in the band... so its easy to have some funny story that interests everyone.

 

[P. Aaron]

Some of it is having confidence that under any circumstance, you can play your parts solidly. Each member has to have some of that in reserve so even off nights sound pretty good.

Then, on nights when your playing is truly inspired, you are floating on air.

Most of it is trust that each member will musically support the others.

Example: "I've got this part down!" It rubs off when members know this about one another.

 

[MrLenny1]

This is a major part of gigging and sounding good every night.
Everyone has to be spot on or the whole band feels it.
Some musicians are moody as hell and that really throws a gig off.
Some drink, smoke too much and that kills a gig.
The better bands have a handle on this every night.
If you have issues before the gig leave them backstage.

 

[Mystic Michael]

Without specifics as to who did what wrong it’s hard to come up with advice.

Agreed. Without more detail about the problem, we're just shooting in the dark. That said, maybe the OP himself has no idea about why this happens.

Maybe more practice/rehearsal would be AN answer.

Yes. But maybe even more important than more rehearsal time would be more QUALITY rehearsal time. Since the "train wreck syndrome" is occurring in performances, chances are it's happening in rehearsals as well. If so, don't keep playing through the train wreck! Stop the train, right in its tracks, and fix the problem, so that it doesn't happen again. If it happens again, stop the train again, and fix it better. And so on. That's what rehearsals are for.

It's amazing to me how many young, inexperienced musicians have no idea of how to run a rehearsal. They treat it as if it's just a weekly or bi-weekly jam session. And when they make mistakes, they just keep right on playing, rather than stopping to fix them. Doing that only further crystallizes the mistakes in everybody's minds, ultimately making them even more difficult to correct.

The only time & place you should be playing through the mistakes is in performance. And the point is to minimize (and preferably eliminate) mistakes in rehearsals - before you ever get to performance. The only exception during performance is when you see the train wreck coming on, and it'll kill the entire song, unless it's stopped.

In that case, it's up to the band leader to put up his hand, and loudly shout "STOP"! Then start it over from the top.

Isn't that embarrassing? Sure, it's embarrassing. But not nearly as embarrassing as trying to play through a train wreck.

MM

 

[mambo4]

Steve Martin said in his auto biography something to the effect of:

It's easy to be brilliant every once in a while.
Anyone can have the stars align and the luck and just have great set.
What's hard is to pretty good most of the time.
That is what practice and rehearsal and craft is for.

 

[JustDavid]

Michael's great post reminded me of a quote I've heard;
"Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent."

Went through a similar situation & we ended up trying a different methodology. Instead of keying on the member who was down or off their game, we would focus on the member most on their game. This ended up being pretty helpful; it seemed to give the down member a much more solid song to get back into.

 

[crusie]

thanks for all the advices on here everyone - really inspiring to read

what I really ment with the train wreck is something in the lines of this:
personally I usually have my thing down when playing. but on off days ( last time we gigged I had a bad fever and a head full of snot + a sour throat). I found myself messing up chord progressions - usually something small, like the band members might notice, but normally not the audience. I does throw me off my "auto pilot" though, meaning I'll have to focus the playing more and performing less. This of course affects the others, and it all fall like dominos. I believe it's called the butterfly effect.

In a normal night, if I have a hick-up of some sort I'm either able to shake it off and laugh about it. We are by no means more that weekend warriors.

I do agree that practice makes permanent to some degree. I know that even if I've practiced alot I can still get a "brain fart" while we play. maybe I just haven't practiced enough to make permanent yet... who knows. I saw another similar subject on here regarding pro vs amateur where someone said something along the lines of: " an amateur practices until he gets it right - a professional practices until he can't get it wrong"

focusing on the one that has most "game" that night seems like a really good idea - I do really think we need a "party boy" in the band though

 

[jive1]

Went through a similar situation & we ended up trying a different methodology. Instead of keying on the member who was down or off their game, we would focus on the member most on their game. This ended up being pretty helpful; it seemed to give the down member a much more solid song to get back into.

My old band did something similar. It was a little goofy, but we had something we called "The Belt". It was the world heavyweight championship belt, and we gave it to the hot player of the night. Every gig was a battle to get the belt. The drummer was usually the holder of the belt, but it was our goal to win the championship belt from him.

We had fun times with that, and it was something that motivated us to do our best and carry each other through if needed. The guitarist's wife liked the idea so much, she used it for her all-female string quartet.

 

[Timmah]

Somebody once said "amateurs practice until they get it (in this case a set) right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong." Maybe you gotta do that more often, god knows it's the case with me

 

[jaywa]

My former band was like that. When we were "on", we could hold our own against any band in town including those making double or triple the $$ we were. But when we were "off", we didn't even belong on a stage, much less getting paid for it.

The problem in our case was that we hardly ever gigged more than 2 or 3 shows a month, and we never practiced. It was a "hobby band" in every sense of the word which just happened to have some very good players (who also didn't practice very much on their own time). Also, because we never practiced, we hardly ever learned new material which meant we worked off basically the same set list for 3 or 4 years. Basically we all knew the songs TOO well, so every now and then we'd just mentally check-out and that's when things would get ugly in a hurry.

The band I'm in now, we gig almost every weekend and the weeks we don't gig we usually practice at least once. We also target to learn 3-4 songs of new material every 6 to 8 weeks, which keeps us on our toes and our show from getting stale. We still have off nights, but those consist of a bad song or two as opposed to an entire bad set or worse.

 

[HolmeBass]

There was an interesting column in Bass Player magazine, the back section where guest pros write a small column. I can't even remember the player, but the gist of the column was "raising you musical floor" so that when you have an off night, it's just not that bad. Rehearsal and individual practice are how you raise your musical floor, as well as gigging as frequently as possible.

 

[jaywa]

There was an interesting column in Bass Player magazine, the back section where guest pros write a small column. I can't even remember the player, but the gist of the column was "raising you musical floor" so that when you have an off night, it's just not that bad. Rehearsal and individual practice are how you raise your musical floor, as well as gigging as frequently as possible.

Agreed. You want to get to the point where a "good" or "bad" night is defined by things that 98% of your audience won't even pick up on. Things like how tightly the bass and drums are locking, what the stage sound is like, the overall "energy" coming off the stage, etc.

Things like wrong chords, blown or sloppy riffs, botched drum fills, songs played too slow or fast, forgotten or switched-up lyrics, instruments and/or vocals out of tune and other examples of essentially bad music-making... getting those things right are just the basic expectations of a band that has been given the honor of a stage to play on, and those are the things that need to be vigorously targeted and eliminated from your show -- night in and night out -- by any means necessary. Those are the things an audience is going to catch even if they've only got half an eye or ear on your band so there's really no margin for error on that stuff.

 

[Jazz Ad]

The difference between good and bad days means that you rely on luck instead of work to deliver a good performance.
If you have good and bad days then you need to practice more.

 

[jive1]

Another thing to consider is your stage volume and monitoring system. If you guys have a hard time hearing eachother, it will be difficult to be tight as a band.

 

[jad]

In my experience based on video or audio recordings of shows at both extremes, it's never really as good or as bad as it seems. It's best to have a short memory when a song doesn't go just right. Make up for it on the next one!

 

[Mystic Michael]

My old band did something similar. It was a little goofy, but we had something we called "The Belt". It was the world heavyweight championship belt, and we gave it to the hot player of the night. Every gig was a battle to get the belt. The drummer was usually the holder of the belt, but it was our goal to win the championship belt from him.

We had fun times with that, and it was something that motivated us to do our best and carry each other through if needed. The guitarist's wife liked the idea so much, she used it for her all-female string quartet.

Sounds like a fun idea, Jive. I like the positive reinforcement, and the camaraderie-building aspect of it.

My only concern would be that the friendly competition to win The Belt might start to resemble a sporting contest - and hence, disintegrate into a chopsfest. And as we all know, chops alone don't equate to actual music...

MM

 

[jive1]

My only concern would be that the friendly competition to win The Belt might start to resemble a sporting contest - and hence, disintegrate into a chopsfest. And as we all know, chops alone don't equate to actual music...

MM

It was never about the chops. It was about carrying the band. Our drummer had solid, but not fancy chops, but he had such amazing feel and ability to lead the band and keep things together from behind the kit that he was clearly the holder of the belt. On the flipside, the guitarist was awesome and would try some interesting things from time to time. If it didn't catch, he'd do some crazy chromatic licks to cover up his flub and get back into it. We'd call that the "Russian guy" coming out, because it sounded like some odd Russian tune. Man, that was a fun band while it lasted.

 

[Joe Nerve]

The more a band gigs, the less the difference becomes between the on and off nights. I'm still a strong believer that 1 gig is worth 10 - 20 rehearsals.

The trainwreck effect I think has to do with your individual efforts though. I learned a while back that I need to known material inside out, so that if someone else is screwing up, it doesn't throw me. When one person screws up, if anyone else in the band is unsure of themselves chances are they're going to question what they're doing, and then trainwrecks happen. When everybody is confident, even if someone brain farts and goes off for a few seconds, the rest of the band can hold it together. If I were in your band I'd heavily suggest that everyone does a little more homework, and gets totally confident on all the material.

My lesson in the above came with one of the best gigs I ever had. The music was complicated, and we were about to go out doing some high end tours. A new guitarist came into the band a week before we were heading out and started making a lot of mistakes. His mistakes threw me, mini trainwrecks were happening, and the tours almost wound up being cancelled. I had played and gigged the songs countless times with other guitarists who played them right, and didn't realize how much better I could know the songs until this dude started screwing me up. My desire to keep the gig got me to work a whole lot harder. Guitarist pulled it together also. We did the tours. Thankfully I held onto that work ethic. Only downside to this is I now expect everyone I work with to work the same way and unfortunately that's rarely the case.