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Playing live and making mistakes

#141
zenman said:
my absolute favorite is when the drummer is counting off a tune & I'm thinking to myself, "That song title means nothing to me, I have never heard it before and I have no idea how it starts or what key it is in...". Yet miraculously, in the last millisecond before the first note, it all comes back & I nail that sucker.
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That happened to me SO many times (apart from the bit about nailing the sucker... but it would at least all flash into the brain) I just wore brown trousers and bicycle clips for gigs and relaxed.
One time, I was watching the excellently-named No! We're Fast, a local band I knew well and the equally-excellently named singer-bassist, Bolt Upright, hit the wrong note and slid it up. He did that casual eyes around the room, nobody noticed, think I got away with it thing and then his eyes landed on me - gently shaking my head with an oh dear expression and he semi-crumpled. I am a git; I've often made mistakes live. As someone previously mentioned, my favourite gigs for audience reaction have not been flawless performances by any measure.
 
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#142
I was playing modern country for a couple years. Mix of originals and covers. There's one cover song I really didn't like, and we played it 2nd to last for about 100 shows in a row... it's an easy song with only 3 or 4 parts, and although I could tell you every part in my sleep, every single time in those 100+ shows, when it got to the 2nd half of the chorus, I would miss the change. I don't know if it's just because I didn't like the song, because I was tired from a night of playing, or because of some psychological thing, but whatever it was, I did this every single time, every single chorus. LoL I think the only time I actually played it perfectly was on our farewell show. haha good time to get it together.

Sorry for the basically worthless story. I make mistakes... it is what it is... if you make mistakes because you aren't a good player, practice harder. If you make mistakes because you don't care, that band isn't the right one for you. If you make mistakes because you're putting on a show and ---- happens, then don't beat yourself up over it. It's not the end of the world.

I played in a band with a drummer who wasn't a good player and couldn't recognize his own mistakes, and refused to practice... now THOSE mistakes will really piss off your bandmates. But an honest mistake? No sweat.
 
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#143
Mata Leao said:
Probably been covered before, but for you guys and gals who play live often, and at a high level, how often do you make mistakes while playing? I'm talking about anything from just a missed or wrong note to playing the wrong song or even having a brain dump and forgetting how to play a song. Let's hear it.
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I haven't played out much lately, but the wife and I are getting back into it. The first gig or two I might hit a sour note, especially if I'm singing at the same time. I remember the first time I played a fiver. We knew the other band and were just going to play a couple songs on their equipment and I assumed the fifth string would be higher. It was lower. So the first few bars were pretty ugly. I also filled in with a band on short notice and somehow on one song I was always late to the changes so I just turned way down and hid in the mix. People are much more forgiving of flubs live than recorded because you can only process so much new information at once. So I rarely make mistakes, but when I do they are big and obvious.
 
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#145
Mata Leao said:
Probably been covered before, but for you guys and gals who play live often, and at a high level, how often do you make mistakes while playing? I'm talking about anything from just a missed or wrong note to playing the wrong song or even having a brain dump and forgetting how to play a song. Let's hear it.
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I’m probably my own worst critic. I do something every show I feel I could have done better. I rarely play the wrong notes but sometimes on parts where I’m pushing my ability limits I’ll miss something. Once or twice a year i do have a brain fart and forget to tune back up to standard after playing a drop tuned song. I’m decent enough to adjust quickly so it’s not like I play wrong notes the entire song it’s just until I play that first note or two on the bottum string and realize I had a brain fart. Sometimes I’ll mess up and try to go to the next partnof the song early because a part is really repetitive and the monitors suck and I can’t hear vocals well. I think the biggest things for me is I’m really rough on myself about stage energy and playing with dynamics because those are two things I appreciate seeing others play.
 
#148
I try to reset myself with "It's totally the best performance I could give, considering the level of preparation". My mates are supportive and I'm grateful for that. This is a great thread. Next year I will get aggressively serious or perhaps not.
 
#150
Mata Leao said:
Probably been covered before, but for you guys and gals who play live often, and at a high level, how often do you make mistakes while playing? I'm talking about anything from just a missed or wrong note to playing the wrong song or even having a brain dump and forgetting how to play a song. Let's hear it.
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I make mistakes everytime I play. Wrong notes, incorrect phrasing, missed bars....the list goes on. We have a pretty deep list of tunes that we draw from and do very little rehearsing, so in general I just try to roll with it and have a good time. After all.... if the dance floor is packed and the booties are shaking : whether you hit every right note, is frankly inconsequential.....:smug:
 
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#151
All the time.

Own them, get past them without making a big deal about them. 80% of the time the audience doesn't notice.

For the really bad ones you cant hide, laugh them off so the customers can see you laughing them off. "Wow, I really screwed that up, LOL."

If you completely forget a song, you didn't practice enough or you drank too much.
 
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#153
One thing I just remembered from Vic’s Bass Camp. Lots of folks have posted his advice that you’re never more than a 1/2 step from a note that will work.

But another deeper concept is that there are really no wrong notes! One post hinted at this saying mistakes are subjective. Ric Fierabracci also said this same thing in a guest column he did in Bass Player. Some notes are very consonant, others have more tension. There is no right and wrong.

Felix Pastorious did a wonderful master class at Vic’s camp on this topic. He laid down a C major pad on his looper, and then proceeded to improvise using the 6 notes that are not in the C major scale! It was beautiful and ethereal. Sure, it didn’t really ever resolve, but it was a great demonstration that a “wrong note” has more to do with how you play it, play through it, and conceive of it. Victor is a ninja at playing wrong notes right by what he plays afterwards, by how he relieves the tension.

The crux came during “one note solos”, and exercise to get us thinking about using all the expression available in music other than note choice (dynamics, articulation, rhythm, etc). Vic laid down a C major pad, and then had us each take a crack at a one note solo using C#! It was a great experience and really did teach me something about what exactly makes a wrong note wrong.
 
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#154
Basshappi said:
Once is a mistake, twice is Jazz. :D
Just keep playing as if nothing happened. I have seen major bands have the rare trainwreck, it happens at all levels.
We are humans, not machines (heck, even machines screw up from time to time!)

There is an old axiom that states; An amateur practices until he gets it right, a professional practices until he never gets it wrong.

The important thing to remember is that while every dedicated musician works hard to raise their "ceiling", professionals work just as hard on raising their "floor". This is so that when the inevitable bad gig happens it is still perceived by the audience as being a very good performance.
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advice i got and still use - " Will the audience remember it tomorrow?"
 
#155
Even after 4 yrs, my transition from 4 string to 5 string has not been without 'challenges', shall we say, especially at the beginnings of tunes. (Crap, that's not the A on the E string, is it...) I cringe inside, the rest of the band says, "Yep, we knew you were human after all."
 
#159
zenman said:
Yep, mistakes are going to happen, you just have to learn to recover gracefully. But my favorite feeling is when the drummer is counting off a tune & I'm thinking to myself, "I have absolutely no idea how this song starts..."

OK, that's not really my favorite, my absolute favorite is when the drummer is counting off a tune & I'm thinking to myself, "That song title means nothing to me, I have never heard it before and I have no idea how it starts or what key it is in...". Yet miraculously, in the last millisecond before the first note, it all comes back & I nail that sucker.
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I do that, or at least I used to before I started writing the first note for each song next to the title on my set list. Even songs I've played 1000 times. As long as I can hit the one correctly, I'm good to go.
Can't tell you how many times I was either lost, or started in the wrong key before that.

It didn't help that one of my first pro gigs was backing a singer-songwriter who wrote a lot of songs in E and A with very similar changes and long instrumental intros.
I worked with him on and off for 3 years and only ever learned the titles to about 4 of the songs we did in two 45 minute sets.
He had a couple of songs where the changes were identical, but the tempo and bpm were different, so I would play the same bass part for whichever one came up first in the set, then make up something else for the other one. He never noticed.
 
#160
I make a few mistakes on every gig, but then I am my own fiercest critic and most of the time not even my band members have noticed, never mind the audience. We video every one of our gigs and rehearsals and, sometimes, even when listening back to gigs that I thought were fraught with mistakes, I’m hard put to hear them myself .

On the other hand there are sometimes real howlers, like slamming the A on the fifth fret of the E string, to emphasise the first power chord on the intro to a song, only to realise that you forgot to tune up from the previous drop D song...or when you’re just going for that killer fill and the singer trips over your lead, snatching the bass out of your hands. Then there is the occasional brain fart when you make an inexplicable mistake on a song you play perfectly 999 times out of 1000. Under those circumstances, just laugh...the mistake will be over, gone and forgotten in less than a second, unless you draw attention to it.
 

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