Tense rehearsal yesterday

[pepj]

Its a 3 piece band plus a female vocal. Very hard to cover top 40 with those line ups, so imv, by definition, you need to be creative and sorted.

 

[Fuzzbass]

I'm willing to take the singer's complaint at face value: The guitarist is throwing her off in his (presumably well-intentioned) efforts to introduce a little variety and creativity, combined with her limited music knowledge and ability. I suspect that in her other band, everyone plays the same chords in the same voicings every time, and she needs that to keep herself in tune. That doesn't mean that anybody is "right" or "wrong": It's just a practical problem to be resolved.

That said, it seems to me that the path of least resistance would be to encourage the guitarist to do what the vocalist needs -- i.e., play the same chords in the same way every time while she is singing -- and save the inversions and substitute chords and such for the instrumental parts.

100%, I came here to say essentially the same thing. In short: OP, ask the guitarist to compromise. It's unfortunate that his creativity is throwing the singer off, but her limitations have been well known and she won't get over them overnight (if at all). Start by eliminating her biggest pain points, and perhaps work with her so she'll accept some of the other alterations.



Relevant anecdote: many years ago I subbed for a bassist friend for a couple of months while he was doing an orchestra gig. After it was done, I was horrified to receive a call from my friend, who said his band had fired him because they preferred my playing to his. He said "As you know my hero is Duck Dunn, I try to play as simply as possible. I guess they liked your fancy chops". I assured him that I am not a chops guy. It wasn't my band so all I did was try to play the bass lines as close to the record as I could.

And I believe that was the problem: my friend was doing his own thing based on the Duck Dunn thing: altering, simplifying, and perhaps omitting some recognizable bass parts. I'm certain that his playing wasn't wrong, but it wasn't like the record. It's harsh that he lost his gig because of it, maybe other factors were involved. Point is, some don't want "creativity" even if they aren't thrown off by it.

I prefer it when bands take liberties with covers (when cleverly done!), but if a BL wants it just like the record I will not push back. It's funny: I got accustomed to playing during the verses of "All Right Now" because a couple of BLs wanted more phatness there (these bands had only one guitar, no keys). I then did that at a sub gig with a new band, and the BL/LS freaked out: "no bass, no bass!!" So I held up my hands to signal "message received". He may have thought I was being self-indulgent, but I only started doing it because I was asked by other BLs.

 

[sawzalot]

Record a rehearsal or a gig and distribute rough mixes for everyone to listen to. The recordings don’t lie.

 

[Major Seven]

I'm willing to take the singer's complaint at face value: The guitarist is throwing her off in his (presumably well-intentioned) efforts to introduce a little variety and creativity, combined with her limited music knowledge and ability. I suspect that in her other band, everyone plays the same chords in the same voicings every time, and she needs that to keep herself in tune. That doesn't mean that anybody is "right" or "wrong": It's just a practical problem to be resolved.

That said, it seems to me that the path of least resistance would be to encourage the guitarist to do what the vocalist needs -- i.e., play the same chords in the same way every time while she is singing -- and save the inversions and substitute chords and such for the instrumental parts.

Seems this would be easiest. Its rock. Keep it simple. The audience will never hear a thing.

 

[Pep]

I’m in agreement with recording the rehearsal. That way everyone hears what’s going on and it allows her to point out what’s bothering her.
You also need the guitar player to be consistent in his playing so she can hear what she expects. It might be different if you had another guitar or keyboard but you don’t.
The worst thing anyone can do in a trio is change something without trying it at rehearsal first. It sounds like you tried that but he should have mentioned the changes before you did each tune so everyone was prepared for what was to come.
Last but not least, it sounds like she’s your “paycheck”, and now she has some confidence with another band so she feels in control.
She’ll probably leave but it would be wise for you sit down with her and discuss where she’s at, and then with the guitar player to emphasize consistency.
I feel bad for your guitar player because he’s in the middle, as it appears she’s gotten used to the guitar player in the other band so she’s unjustly judging him.

Good luck and please update.

 

[Pdaddy1978]

Band drama.
I'm still waiting to hear about that ONE band that dosent have any.
I'm starting to think they all do.

 

[Wasnex]

Its a 3 piece band plus a female vocal. Very hard to cover top 40 with those line ups, so imv, by definition, you need to be creative and sorted.

There's a difference between doing an arrangement and doing a reasonably authentic cover. If you are doing a cover you generally try to stick as closely to the original as possible. Frequently there is more going on in the original than a band can realistically cover. IMHO simplify and stay as true to the original intent as possible. Don't add fruity chords or change rhythms or the feel.

If doing an arrangement you can play whatever you want as long as everyone in the band is on the same page. Change the harmonic structure, change the rhythm, change the feel, change the meter. Whatever you want.

Here's my sad little story:
Years ago I worked with a really good guitarist. He would always screw up the intro to Brooks and Dunn "Only in America." I'll post the video below.

The guitarist had two issues.
1. He wanted to play like his hero SRV--By this I mean with a certain raw intensity and thick strings. Not really the best choice for this song. All that is required is a single jangly guitar.
2. The original intro has multiple guitar tracks and he wanted to try to imply all of them

The result is he constantly caved on the intro. Basically he would trip over himself and fall out of time, or even get stuck and miss playing parts of the lick. His failure rate was close to 100% and IMHO it was embarrassing.

I repeatedly asked him to simplify and play light enough to nail it, which he basically refused to do. So I made him lay out and let the lead vocalist play the intro guitar part. He wasn't a great guitar player, but somehow he always nailed the part and it sounded great.

I have this cued up to the lick.

 

[singlemalt]

Sounds like your singer, and gig bringer, is being recruited by the other outfit.

Good bet that the other band is on their best behavior, blowing sunshine up her skirt and promising unicorns and rainbows. With maybe a kitten thrown in.

Your gal now has more options and less time.

It’s probably just a case of greener grass, and time to start looking for a new singer. Or a new band.

 

[micguy]

Like it or not, the singer is the focal point of a band, us instrumentalists are support. If what you are doing isn’t putting your vocalist in her happy place, your band is suffering for it. Learn what she needs and do that.

 

[NocoLaw]

I would try an honest band discussion. If guitar throws the vocals off (and needs a helpful critique anyway), that’s a problem. If the vocalist doesn’t know how to communicate what she needs, that’s a problem. Seems like you and the drummer (presumably) are in a good position to be open and honest and clear it all up, or at least try.

 

[s van order]

I am very sympathetic to the guitarist trying to add more color to the band sound. It's a very musical thing to do. But we all know singers are the draw in bands in all pop genres and his singer can't hack what he's doing. People want to hear and see the singer. Sidemen are not to yuck that yum, it's how you get paid. As a cellist, for example, with my singers to fit their voice the best I have to play some tunes in sub-optimal keys for the instrument. But I'm there to compliment the singer's delivery, so I figure out the 'comp and it's a good challenge. I have found singers can be the least musically savvy of the band members. But if they have a quality of voice that catches the ear, and a good delivery and presence, that's what keeps the gigs flowing.

 

[ashtray]

I played with a jazz guitarist who would “over-complicate” the chording for some songs. Talented guy, but it can definitely throw people off. Maybe that’s why everyone followed ME. I’d lock in with the drummer, and the female vocalist made sure to stand near enough to my amp to hear my basslines, so she knew her spots.

It also probably helped that during a guitar solo (say 16 bars, 4 bar repeat x4), I’d change up the way I linked the last bar to the first for each repeat. So on the first repeat, I might walk the B up to the E (say 1-4-5 in E), the next time I might do an octave of the B and hold that; third time I might walk down from B to E, etc. Whatever I did, I kept it the same every time we played the song, and though it was just a little thing, the others in the band subliminally could use it to count the repeats and everyone knew when the lyrics were supposed to come back in. (If I messed up the order, it would throw the whole band off but no one knew why everyone suddenly got lost! Hahaha)

Anyways - point being, the singer can follow your bass instead of listening to the guitarist.

Also, for the guitarist, they might want to try running clean and overdrive sounds in parallel. That way you get both the clean chording but also the overdrive thickness and sustain. The Line6 Duoverb amp was designed just for that, but there’s other ways to achieve it with pedals in the signal chain. Some overdrive pedals might even have a “blend” knob. Something for them to consider.

Or you can replace the guitarist and bass player with a keyboardist! Hahaha j/k! But you can ADD keys if you want to thicken up the sound.

 

[jnewmark]

Wrong chordings would surely have me up in arms, to be honest. I feel her pain. Learn the song properly and play it properly. You should always strive to be professional if you are a gigging musician. She may just jump ship if the guitarist continues doing what he's doing. I know it would annoy me!

Yeah, I was going to say, if you are in a cover band, the parts should be pretty cut and dried, I mean, they've already been recorded, so just " cover" them.

 

[TheReceder]

Best response so far I think.

2nd best response so far.

 

[yodedude2]

there's no drama like band drama, it's like no drama i knoooooowwww

 

[J Wilson]

It wore me out to no end that those least qualified get in the biggest pi**ing contests arguing about who is or isn't playing parts correctly. Obviously it still happens.

Bands have shelf lives, regardless of success.

It sounds like without this woman, you' re nowhere. So I would quietly begin making arrangements for yourself in case she does bail on you.

 

[sean_on_bass]

Just venting, not really a situation where I need advice to manage, but we'll see where it goes.

So my bread-and-butter gig is a cover band, for the last seven or eight years or so. Like a lot of cover bands, we play a variety of stuff, classic rock, pop, a little country, and so on. We don't try to make a big deal out of being somehow "different" from your normal bar band; we just try to do it really well. ONLY songs that go over, no personal vanity picks, and we keep the set list moving rapidly so there's no dead air. It works.

The band is built around a singer who has her strengths and weaknesses. She has a pretty good voice, not quite as good of an ear, and is musically largely untrained. But especially, she's very much a native of the local bar scene, the venues know her and like her, she has lots of friends who come to see her. Bookings come in pretty steadily and gigs are generally decently-paid and -attended. It's a good gig.

We had to replace our original guitarist a couple of years ago and there weren't very plentiful pickings for the range of music we play. Pretty much only one guy who auditioned was up to it. He also has his strengths and weaknesses. He has good chops; doesn't blast excessive volume; and has a real sense of how to arrange set lists to keep the flow going that's our signature. He's also very aware of being the only treble/chordal instrument in the group and thinks a lot about how to fill the space or arrange his part when the song originally had keys or a second guitar. That's important (we're power trio + singer), but not always on the mark; some songs he applies too much gain when it should be clean because he's afraid the single clean guitar will sound "wimpy," or he'll try to keep up a rhythm pattern while also playing a lead. It can wind up overbusy. Sometimes he'll vary the chord, using an inversion or something to change it up. A lot of the time his ideas work; sometimes I'll hear a clam or he'll get off the beat. The drummer is solid as a rock and I'm pretty good at holding my part down, so given the lack of options we found, I'm content to tune the clams out and let him work it out.

The singer, though, tends to pick at him, and really laid into it at last night's rehearsal. She keeps asking if he's out of tune or in the wrong key. He isn't, and she barely knows what those terms really mean (she's the least musically trained of the four of us, remember). What it usually is, is that he varied the chord in some way, brought out an interesting harmony or voicing, and she got thrown off because she wasn't hearing what she was expecting. She's also been sitting in with another band from time to time over the last few months. So this time she wouldn't let it go; she says that singing with the other band is "easy," nothing throws her off, while at our gigs lately she's been having a hard time and feeling like things don't sit right. She backpedaled after saying that, I think realizing it sounded like a threat to quit, and said she had been feeling this way before she started singing with them. But it's out there.

I try to stay out of this. My philosophy is not to tell another musician how to play their instrument unless I know exactly what it is they need to change and how to do it (I sometimes find myself counting out loud along to a recording to show him, or her, what beat a note falls on). If I were him, I wouldn't feel great about coming into rehearsal to get raked over the coals about my playing by someone who doesn't know what I'm trying to do. I do sometimes encourage him to trust his clean tones more, to lay back and leave some space in the song, and to remember to count to four. But I really don't want him to feel like we're piling on.

So there we are. I guess I'm trying to gauge whether I should let it blow over, let the two of them hash it out, take a side, or what. I've been playing with these people a while and we're friendly, not tight friends, and I don't play with them because the songs are my own personal "heart" music. It's that I like to entertain, I like to get people dancing, plus it's nice to get paid, and this band has been a great vehicle for that. I'd really rather not see it implode over this.

While maybe a little tense, i don't think this amounts to a very material issue that is worth working to resolve unless it turns into some sort of recurring argument.

For context, i've had singers say almost the exact same thing to me on the bass. They simply could hear the right thing that made sense to them to sing over. In some cases they were right in that a real mistake was being made, and other times it simply isn't what they expected to hear. But it's never turned into a real negative situation, because i always entertain the critique and am willing to try something different that better suits their expectations. If your guitarist didn't budge, he kind of messed up and forgot he is supposed to support the vocalist above his own artistic vision. Part of playing with vocalists is realizing that they are always right, even when they are wrong.

Ultimately this is what rehearsals are for...to work out arrangements and come to a consensus as a band. That's not "raking someone over the coals" as you put it. It's simply negotiating how to play the tune. A vocalist and a guitarist need to be in lock step with a band configuration like this. I'd be surprised if they DIDN'T challenge each other every now and then. If things never seem to finally gel, it's time for someone to move on.

Now for some speculation - it kind of sounds like you don't have a huge amount of respect for either party here. Guitarist is sloppy and vocalist lacks musicianship but is the draw. You say the guitarist has good chops...but then he also misses beats and clams up notes. That's not good chops to me, and mistakes like that on a guitar really stand out. I'm getting the vibe he is not cut out for the role here.

 

[Super Bass]

Find another band....

 

[LiptonJigglers]

How hard can it be to ask "what notes are you playing there"?

 

[feterpatch]

I've occasionally worked with guitarists who in my opinion get overly concerned about the instrumentation not being "full enough". Recognizing the value of space in the music is important and I've worked with guitarists who embrace that concept. A guitarist who's willing to let the "fullness" take a back seat, together with a great rhythm section, can sound fantastic and not thin at all.
Maybe your guitarist is overthinking things?
You may also need to explain to your vocalist that what your guitarist is doing is not technically wrong, but also not necessarily enhancing the music the way he thinks it is.