• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join freeLog in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Noodling/Showing-off between songs

Our guitar player breaks into the Star Spangled Banner (Hendrix thing) with little or no notice sometimes.

He asked me once what I thought. I said "even if you nail it, no one will think you're better than Jimi." He said "yeah, but I nailed it though." I said, "and you drove everyone off the dance floor."

He just kinda made a sour face and walked away. :rolleyes:
 
My jazz band at school has five guitarists and a newbie drummer. After a while you learn to just ignore all the noodling, since it's happening literally ALL THE TIME. Luckily for me none of them ever pull any of that crap when we play. Of course, we're only played once in front of people so far...
 
There is nothing more unprofessional than noodling in between songs. Nobody finds it entertaining except the one doing the noodling. It pisses me off, too. I've left clubs because of it. If I owned the club, I would fire the band for it.
 
One of the guitards frequently starts noodling a song we didn't play as a band, sometimes the drummer starts in too. Someone in the audience would recognize the riff, get amped up thinking we were about to play their favourite song and request it after they finally stopped. The guitard would look at the rest of us for support knowing we never worked on the song thinking we may just once want to save his hide. With an embarrassed look he would have to admit over the PA he didn't know the rest or the band as a whole hadn't practiced it.

Funny bit is he never learned and after maybe 100 times still does this. :mad:

I think I hate this more than anything else that happens at a gig. It's a sign that I'm not going to be playing with this band for much longer.
 
its even better during rehearsals..when your guitarist brings his 4x12 marshall rig..while the rest of the band has a 1x12 combo..and just LOVES all those great van halen riffs, that make the rest of us gag..

That's the guitarist I play with!
Except that he's got TWO 4x12's. Because he really needs to run his GT10 in stereo mode. And he has to spend 15 minutes at the start of every rehearsal going through all the 80's heavy rock riffs he knows. You know, to warm up...At full volume...

I'll admit that I, once in a while, noodle at rehearsals (not gigs, I hate that!), but at least I have the courtesy to roll off a bit of volume.
 
I'm usually pretty easy going. Nothing gets to me much EXCEPT THIS!!! Someone was noodling full volume (4x12 with a Marshall head) at rehearsal the other day while the rest of the band was trying to arrange endings of the songs. I snapped. "Dude, if we're not playing a song or trying to figure out a part then shut the 'ell up." He didn't talk to me very much after that. But we got the parts worked out! ;)
 
Worse yet, our singer/guitar player will break into a random song, people will think we are doing it, and then he has to stop as he only knows the intro or first verse or something.
 
My jazz band at school has five guitarists and a newbie drummer. After a while you learn to just ignore all the noodling, since it's happening literally ALL THE TIME.

Easy...

12126_0.jpg


Gruesse, Pablo
 
as an audience member, i like that **** for a second or two. a drum roll or a funky slap bass line. if it goes into a song that they're not ready to play and it craps out after the intro, that sucks, but i don't care if your fingers are itching.
 
My crappy cover bands guitardist is guilty of most of these. Noodling between songs, starting songs we don't cover with the drummer joining in, and most annoying of all, NOODLING BETWEEN SETS! It got so bad that after the last note of the set I immediately walk over and unplug his cable. Why can't people at least pretend to be professional? :mad:
 
i once noodled les claypools master of puppets during sound check for bass....:hiding:

Playing something for a sound check is not noodling. You can play whatever you like, so long as your levels are good for the room.

But do it in rehearsal when someone is talking, or between songs, or between sets, and I'll throw stuff at ya.

I didn't know that Claypool had covered M.O.P.

Cherie ;) :bassist:
 
Playing something for a sound check is not noodling. You can play whatever you like, so long as your levels are good for the room.

But do it in rehearsal when someone is talking, or between songs, or between sets, and I'll throw stuff at ya.

I didn't know that Claypool had covered M.O.P.

Cherie ;) :bassist:

I can see what you mean but I disagree about your soundcheck comment. If you're going to be playing some mellow tunes, don't go slap-happy for your soundcheck. You don't have to play exactly what you'll be playing but at least play something similar.

The band I was in for college last year had a noodler. He was an older guy, in his 40s I think? He strictly played accoustic guitar, which was fine. But when he plugged himself into the PA during rehearsals and did not ever stop playing...we all got irritated. He just didn't shut up. In between songs while we were all trying to talk about how to get a good ending or how to improve a key change or something relevant to the music, he just played full volume. Any time we asked why he was doing that he says 'Oh I was just waiting for you guys to stop talking so we could play'...Seriously? You're part of the band...get involved!!!

Yeah he was very annoying...oddly enough, any time we had a rehearsal without him, we got so much more done! I wonder why...
 
sometimes it's necessary to talk things out , but i always hated the people that wanted to talk forever and ever between songs. if you need to say something, go ahead, but i didn't come to practice to listen to you talk. besides, working things out on the instrument always seems like the best idea.
 
OK that's it. I'll have to stop in-practice noodling now. (Gig-noodling never a problem).

But they are good noodles. I did once catch the guitar/singer watching me noodle. I stopped, and he said "Don't stop, that was nice".

Having said that, he has his own noodle. Just one. The same one. Whenever he plugs in, changes guitar, changes settings, kicks a footswitch or warms up. It's about 5 seconds long and goes "Dang diddle iddle iddle iddle iddle DAAAANG". Except that the DAAAANG is ALWAYS the same note, which is off-key. Should I tell him to learn a new noodle? (He's not a bad front man but not a good listener).

That other stuff, though, is so unprofessional and needs to be sorted out. With a baseball bat if necessary.
 
my last band use to do that once in awhile, never thought it as unprofessional, I just thought it was normal, I didn't have anything "impressive" to noodle inbetween songs so I usually always stayed quiet and just wanted to get to the next song, then our band got lazy, well I guess our singer in general got lazy and every show we played for a long time he never bothered doing a set list anymore, just winged it, which got annoying because it probably looked ******** with all of us looking at each other on stage going "what do you wanna play?" "I dunno, what do you wanna play?"

then we got a lead guitarists that could shread like no tomorrow, great guy, loves his guitar, almost to much, THATS when noodling got annoying is when it got frequent, and he's kind of a drunk noodler (meaning he noodled more the more drunk he got) between almost every song he would rip out a shread scale, and if he's really drunk, he would rip out old school metal songs like pantera which would annoy the HELL out of me because 1) no one in the band knows it completely, 2) as stated above, the crowd hers it, gets excited, sees we don't/can't pull it off, and lose respect for us,

so now that I know that people view it as unprofessional I'm really glad I left that band cause all in all it was a waste of my time, though the 3 years I played I learned alot about gigging and got ALOT better at bass playing, still got a long way to go, but atleast I'm mildly decent, and surprisingly have alot of respect from alot of people who have seen me live, though they flatter me with their "oh your so amazing" when really, I'm average IF that. woops, started to ramble