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Music Stands on Stage??

#161
peterpalmieri said:
If your really concerned with having a stand keep it out of view. Sometimes you can put it behind someone or something that allows you to glance over at it without the audience noticing it...
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I'm really not too concerned about it. We practiced about 20 songs on Tuesday and the majority of them sounded pretty good. I will probably just be tucked in the back anyway, which I am perfectly fine with :p. The stage is fairly small. There are only a handful of songs that I will need to be looking at the changes a lot anyway.
 
#164
bassybill said:
How many of the guys saying stands are a no-no regularly get asked to play gigs where you need to be an accomplished sight reader?

Just askin' is all.
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As I have been reading through these threads it seems to me, like many things, that there is a time and place for music stands. If you are being asked to sit in with no rehersal time then the stand is necessary but if you are playing in your own established band you should be able to memorize you songs.

I remember reading an interview with Frank Zappa once and he said that makes his guys play from memory but they reherse many long hours to get there.

Todd :)
 
#165
I have no choice but to use a music stand in front of me. I don't like it at all, but I can't live without it.

I'm a middle aged guy who has trouble remembering the lyrics whilst playing an unlined fretless 6. I'm the only singer in the band. If I don't have the lyrics in front of me I forget the words because there's a bass to play, too, it's as pure and as simple as that.

I hate seeing in front of me (in photos) but without it there's be no vocals.

The music stand has never prevented us from getting the audience dancing, nor has it prevented them wanting an encore.

It's a regular feature in pub blues/rock bands where I live in UK and I've taken comfort for my situation from that fact.

Best.

John
 
#166
TimWilson said:
Ultimately, it comes down to this:

Everything you do, say, and even wear says something to your audience, whether you want it to or not. And a music stand says to your audience, "I couldn't be bothered with learning this music. It's not important enough to me to spend my time on. Nor, by association, are you. Engaging you people, interacting with you, and putting on a show... None of these things are worth the time it would have taken for me to learn this music."

Of course, no stand-user means these things literally, but that IS what your music stand tells your audience. Like it or not.
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When I see a musician on stage with a stand it usually says one thing: they can read music.

In rock and pop gigs this becomes less true, but those are the gigs that you typically won't see stands at for various reasons (unless the band has an extensive repertoire and if so, I understand).
 
#167
TimWilson said:
OK, maybe I should have qualified my statement by putting it in the context of MY live experience, which is, admittedly, limited to live rock, funk, dance, and country music shows where the audience is loud, dancing and partying. The audiences I play for respond in a big way to the band behaving like the crowd. In retrospect, I should have stated that MY area of live performance is only ONE area, and for many, many others, the musicians onstage aren't expected to/rewarded for looking and acting like the bands these crowds are watching on MTV and CMT all week. Our set lists are worked out several days in advance of a show, giving everyone lots of time to prep. And those gigs are two-thirds showmanship and one-third musicianship.

Nobody in my Sunday church band would even try to play without a stand, including me. But if I propped one up in front of me Friday night, I'd get the big ***? from our crowds.
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Sorry, but I still think you're mistaken about some of this. This isn't quite such a generalisation as your earlier post, but there's still some incorrect assumptions in there that just don't apply as generally as you suggest in my own experience.

One of my main bands is a ten piece covers band - soul, funk, disco sort of stuff, often for private parties or corporate events, where everybody has a few drinks and goes nuts. We have a big repertoire and all our stuff is written out as dots. We all need to refer to these at some stage during the set, which changes around quite a bit from gig to gig.

Just like your band, one of the BIG crowd pleasing aspects of our act is the way the band (especially the five piece horn section) dances, goofs around, mingles with the audience and just generally have a good time with the punters, who enjoy the music, enjoy the vibe and enjoy their event. I can honestly say I don't think a single member of any of our audiences has ever cared the slightest, tiny jot about the fact that each member of the band has a music stand on stage.

I'll tell you what might be interesting for you, in terms of investigating the way your audience perceives your band. Try putting a stand on stage discreetly to one side of you on your next gig, just as an experiment. I'd be surprised if this inflames any of your audience sufficiently for them to say "***?" or get offended by the fact that you're telling them you don't care enough about them to learn your music. :D In fact, you'll probably find they won't mind at all, mainly because they won't notice.
 
#168
I agree entirely with BassyBill.

I play in a blues / rock pub band and, like I said, I simply can't operate without the stand. I admit it's far from ideal but without it there's no show!

No-one ever commented on it or complained or whatever. It's just part of the stage gear now. And believe me, if I could learn the lyrics I would. But I can't. I'm not being uncaring of my audience, I just can't learn the words well enough to play and sing them together. I honestly think it's because of my age! I really do.

Best.

John
 
#169
There is no right or wrong here - it's completely subjective and there's no way that one answer is going to satisfy all.

I'll be gigging tonight - with a stand. My band does original/reinvented cover/experimental improvisation-based stuff that's different for every show. Some tunes are 100% made up on the spot and don't require any charts while others are sets of progressions that can get ordered and re-ordered on the fly. While other tunes are familiar covers, but I remove the song title so that whoever starts the groove based on those changes is more than likely going to put an original spin on what would normally be a 'cover'.

Add to that the fact that we have many guests who will sit in on this mayhem and who appreciate very much when I hand them a little packet of charts to help provide some frame of reference for the chaos that will ensue. They've all said that they find the fact that we can hand them these charts when they sit in to be a VERY pro thing. So if charts are pro and stands on stage are not, where does that leave things?

We could all throw the charts on the floor rendering them virtually unreadable and otherwise useless or we could all have our little music stands, nicely lowered and as unobtrusively placed as possible - OR we could skip the charts altogether and have the show run into the ground or spiral into tedious, randomness...

I prefer stands in this situation.

One 'negative' stand-related thing that I addressed was that our singer was using a wire stand that he'd raise almost up to face-level for his lyrics and other word-prompting pages. I redid all of his lyric sheets with much larger font rotated landscape and he'll be using my, more pro-looking stand, lowered and out of the way tonight. The larger font and rotated lyric sheets should be much easier to read from a distance. Obviously that will look much better!

But when we spin into a spontaneous jam and he needs to lay some sort of lyrical content in, having pages of poems and other useful word-based source material is essential. Music stands are not only necessary in our case, they're quite professional, in my opinion (of course).
 
#170
tZer said:
There is no right or wrong here - it's completely subjective and there's no way that one answer is going to satisfy all.

I'll be gigging tonight - with a stand. My band does original/reinvented cover/experimental improvisation-based stuff that's different for every show. Some tunes are 100% made up on the spot and don't require any charts while others are sets of progressions that can get ordered and re-ordered on the fly. While other tunes are familiar covers, but I remove the song title so that whoever starts the groove based on those changes is more than likely going to put an original spin on what would normally be a 'cover'.

Add to that the fact that we have many guests who will sit in on this mayhem and who appreciate very much when I hand them a little packet of charts to help provide some frame of reference for the chaos that will ensue. They've all said that they find the fact that we can hand them these charts when they sit in to be a VERY pro thing. So if charts are pro and stands on stage are not, where does that leave things?

We could all throw the charts on the floor rendering them virtually unreadable and otherwise useless or we could all have our little music stands, nicely lowered and as unobtrusively placed as possible - OR we could skip the charts altogether and have the show run into the ground or spiral into tedious, randomness...

I prefer stands in this situation.

One 'negative' stand-related thing that I addressed was that our singer was using a wire stand that he'd raise almost up to face-level for his lyrics and other word-prompting pages. I redid all of his lyric sheets with much larger font rotated landscape and he'll be using my, more pro-looking stand, lowered and out of the way tonight. The larger font and rotated lyric sheets should be much easier to read from a distance. Obviously that will look much better!

But when we spin into a spontaneous jam and he needs to lay some sort of lyrical content in, having pages of poems and other useful word-based source material is essential. Music stands are not only necessary in our case, they're quite professional, in my opinion (of course).
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Sounds like an interesting gig. :)

I agree completely about the fact that stands can, with a bit of thought and preparation, be used very discreetly and this aspect of appearance on stage is a small but important issue of professionalism.
 
#171
Bassybill - it is, if I do say so myself! (And I do!)

One thing I really enjoy doing is handing out those anonymous charts to the group (the singer gets the real lyrics so he knows what the tune is) but the rest of the group typically has no idea.

For example - I handed out the changes for the Stones, "Miss You" and them with the changes from the Neville Brothers, "Congo Square". Everyone looked 'em over to get a feel for where they were heading, then I had one of the guitar players fire it up based on whatever groove he felt like laying down.

We all rolled into that groove and got the changes rolling and it all sounded really killer! Totally original and nothing like the original songs. Then the singer laid in the lyrics with his own kick-ass interpretation based on the established groove and everyone in the room lit up like a christmas tree when they realized what song they were riffing on!

It's a great way to keep things fresh and crowds dig the hell out of it!

We've created a LOT of 'games' like that to challenge us and keep things exciting!
 
#174
i played my first gig a week ago with a new band that i had joined a fornight before the gig. we could only fit in 2 band rehearsals as lead singer was sprouting a child so i did my best at learning the songs. but then i was smacked by the flu. by now i had learned the songs but in that week out they started to fade away. i recovered the day before the gig. and took a day off my full time job to relearn the songs. but alas i could not learn them as well as i had hoped. i hated it but i had to have some chords on a music stand next to my rig which was mainly to the left of me. what with the chords there and the fingerboard on the left it made for a quick handy reference. without having to move my eyes much from the fingerboard. and then i could look back at the dancing croud. i think i realised that night that even if i think i'm going to look silly with a stage. you hit that groove like a groovy think the croud aren't going to mind. the other bands that played that night didn't comment on the music stand but they did comment on the tone and the playing. it should completely be upto the person who is playing the music and not upto other people who think that you look stupid. my face looks far more stupid than the music stand but if i nail the music hey ho. it don't matter if you look like a goof if your grooving like another groovy thing (different to the first groovy thing because this one has some serious funky flares going on).

i like this idea of a fake monitor box that seems pretty cool.

actually all that was a waste of time. why do we all play bass and music?..... because we enjoy it. each to he own but as long as he enjoys it.

rutty. (still grooving like a groovy thing)
 
#175
bassybill said:
Just like your band, one of the BIG crowd pleasing aspects of our act is the way the band (especially the five piece horn section) dances, goofs around, mingles with the audience and just generally have a good time with the punters, who enjoy the music, enjoy the vibe and enjoy their event. I can honestly say I don't think a single member of any of our audiences has ever cared the slightest, tiny jot about the fact that each member of the band has a music stand on stage.
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I think a good point to note here, is that if someone is really proficient at reading, then they have no problem reading and doing all of those other things at the same time. When it seems like a reader is glued to the page and not interacting with the band / audience, it is probably a sign that they are struggling with reading.

I asked some non-musician friends about music stands, and their general response was: So what, if the music is good. If they're not musicians, I doubt they even understand the mystique about memorizing tunes.

With one group that I play with on occasion, there is a local jazz arranger who will simply show up with a new chart, and hand it out to the band, to hear how it sounds. The pianist is also trying out his arrangements in this way. I think the audience enjoys seeing a band at work, developing new repertoire -- it adds a dimension to their experience.
 
#177
Thing is, you can have a music stand and not necessarily be glued to it. As a matter of fact, the goal most of the time is to know enough about how to get what you need from it while looking up and entertaining the crowd most of the time.

You should be able to run the chart once - maybe twice really looking at it, then only having to glance down occasionally after that if it's a brand new chart.

Being connected with the crowd usually means looking up most of the time and letting them see your eyes. So if you can read and retain your chart, you can engage the crowd.
 
#178
aside from other musicians being critical of one another, do non musicians really notice or even care if bands are using music stands? I doubt it. I posted a similar question on the drum forums "can non musicians even tell the difference between a low end and a high end kit?" again probably not. If you asked an audience about a band they saw and what kind gear they were using 3/4 of them would probably say "oh yeh that guitarist had that shiny red and black guitar"

I would rather see a band have a couple of stands and pull off a great performance than see a band keep screwin up because they forgot half the chords in a song. A music stand doesnt say anything to me except maybe, this cover band has list of 200 songs to pick from and occasionally someone may have to refer to a cheat sheet in order to remember a chord progression. As long as they arent standing there reading each and every song note for note (save that for the orchestra pit) I dont see a problem.

either that or I'm just getting too old to care
 

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