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The Real Reason Why Bands Play the Same Old Tired Covers

#281
TinIndian said:
I don't buy into the we play these songs because that is what everyone wants to hear argument. My current band was started with the stated intent to do songs that are different than everyone else around here and since we have been playing out are finding ourselves in demand more and more because people WANT to hear something else. The problem I find most often is that guitarists are the ones that seem to be stuck in a rut and don't want to progress past what they've been playing for 30 years. So many classic rock bands in this area and so many of them aren't very good.
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My band is the same way, we do stuff that was on the radio at one time or another, some of it is more familiar than other stuff but it is always rewarding when people come up and say things like "wow, havent heard anyone do that tune before, man I love that tune" and to that I say "thats why we play it, glad you enjoyed it"

I have found some club booking folk will automatically dismiss us as an "oldies band" they are generally twenty somethings, oh well ... sorry we dont play anything by Maroon 5 or Beyonce.
To my way of thinking an oldies band is a group that does bad versions of CCR or Chuck Berry or the dreaded Mustang Sally, I happen to like all those artists, but you get what Im sayin.
 
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#284
Okay, stopped at page 7, seeing recurring themes.

1- Boomers still think they"'re relevant. They're also not the ones at my gigs unless they're lifetime barflies. I've watched so many young and attractive people walk out the door on us.

2- Judging by my experience watching bands, the tired stuff is tiring because of the way you play it. If you still sound like the first month you played Song X then the problem is you and not the audience. As bass players you have a lot more freedom to adjust the attitude of the song than you realise.

3- Hard rock guitarists are a waste of your time. They will never learn anything new outside of their genre and will deliberately play it badly to keep it off the list. Fire them and get someone who is cross-genre and has textural skills. Watch your paycheck climb.

4- the modern pop songs you keep dissing with narrow minds (apparently some of you believe that there are only two modern artists: Beiber and Gaga ) are challenging and fun to play. There is structure, movement and texture in them. There is MUCH more effort put in writing and arranging those songs than your tired standards ever had. Show some modicum of respect and try learning some of it. Dissing it says more about you than it does the song in question; when you smugly bash and invoke the above names the rest of us just immediately assoume you dont know jack and are just flapping your gums.

5- demographics do matter. If you always play at a roadhouse of booger-picking corndog yahoos who want to hear Gimme three Steps ad nauseum that doesnt mean that every other venue in the US and beyond wants the same thing. Dont pretend to be an authority on audiences if you havent entertained them all.
 
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#285
jive1 said:
That is so true, and why so often a tune that some musician thinks is danceable bombs. They don't dance themselves, so they don't know what to deliver.
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In a related story I play behind a duo that thinks that any song that's at a slower tempo is a "belly bumper"..i.e. love song for couples dances. They never actually play love songs; its always some slow rock song about depression, satan worship, redneck mothers, drug adeiction....anything but a love song for couple dances. They dont understand why it never works even though I've told them point blank repeatedly. They just think I'm stupid despite my extensive experience as opposed to their one and only band ever in their lives.
 
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#286
jive1 said:
And really, how hard is it to learn a pop tune? Lots of competent players can get the changes after a couple of listens. What is that, like 10-15 minutes, plus a few more to jot out some notes? Maybe spend a couple more hours to learn a few in depth? Is it really that much time and effort?
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Apparently, yes it is.

One band I play in has a very talented guitarist with a great sound pallette. But he like blues, so he's the worst and weakest link in our pop band.
Just chunks along playing muted chords imitating the bass lines; cant get on top of the beat to save his life; doesnt understand the difference between verse, chorus and bridge because blues doesnt have that in it's structure.
Doesn't grasp that texture is mre important thn slamming out chords. Cant understand how to play spaces in a funk or polynesian rhythm.

It is most anooying to me to have to be a guitar teacher when I want to be the bass player.
 
#287
avvie said:
the modern pop songs you keep dissing with narrow minds (apparently some of you believe that there are only two modern artists: Beiber and Gaga ) are challenging and fun to play. There is structure, movement and texture in them. There is MUCH more effort put in writing and arranging those songs than your tired standards ever had. Show some modicum of respect and try learning some of it. Dissing it says more about you than it does the song in question; when you smugly bash and invoke the above names the rest of us just immediately assoume you dont know jack and are just flapping your gums.
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Here here! I would LOVE to be in a band that does modern pop, the likes of Rihanna and such. I am sure it could go down a STORM. But it involves hard work - a song like "Umbrella" has a lot of little, subtle changes - and let's face it, for a lot of musicians "work" is a dirty word.
 
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#288
The hardest part of pop arrangement which I have the most trouble getting others to understand is that the song should be an inclined plane, starting and a low point and building to a climactic crescendo, so to speak. If the last verse is played just like the first verse you're doing it wrong.
 
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#289
avvie said:
The hardest part of pop arrangement which I have the most trouble getting others to understand is that the song should be an inclined plane, starting and a low point and building to a climactic crescendo, so to speak. If the last verse is played just like the first verse you're doing it wrong.
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Boy if I could like this 100 times I would! There's a reason that the harmony vocals don't come in until maybe the second verse or chorus. There's a reason it's only one guitar and drums at the beginning then other parts come in. I always say keep it sparse at first then slowly build.
 
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#292
A lot of pop songs (depending on which exactly we're talking about here) you have to figure out your arrangements to get them to work, especially if you have limited personnel. We do a lot of them in one band, which is power trio + chick singer. No keys or sequencers or even a rhythm guitar. We like to "rock them out," but laid down an iron rule that the original groove still has to be there. Not much point in playing a dance song no one can dance to. We've had compliments on how we do Bad Romance, I Love It, and That's Not My Name. The latter two of those have a grand total of two chords in them (each), but with That's Not My Name in particular, by the time we get to the ending it's a full-out hard rock jam session.
 
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#293
avvie, remember boomers like to dance too. If the youngin's want there beat box music there are plenty of those places for them. As long as there are people that enjoy what we do than apparently were still relevant to somebody,
 
#295
avvie said:
Okay, stopped at page 7, seeing recurring themes.

1- Boomers still think they"'re relevant. They're also not the ones at my gigs unless they're lifetime barflies. I've watched so many young and attractive people walk out the door on us.

2- Judging by my experience watching bands, the tired stuff is tiring because of the way you play it. If you still sound like the first month you played Song X then the problem is you and not the audience. As bass players you have a lot more freedom to adjust the attitude of the song than you realize.

3- Hard rock guitarists are a waste of your time. They will never learn anything new outside of their genre and will deliberately play it badly to keep it off the list. Fire them and get someone who is cross-genre and has textural skills. Watch your paycheck climb.

4- the modern pop songs you keep dissing with narrow minds (apparently some of you believe that there are only two modern artists: Beiber and Gaga ) are challenging and fun to play. There is structure, movement and texture in them. There is MUCH more effort put in writing and arranging those songs than your tired standards ever had. Show some modicum of respect and try learning some of it. Dissing it says more about you than it does the song in question; when you smugly bash and invoke the above names the rest of us just immediately assume you don't know jack and are just flapping your gums.

5- demographics do matter. If you always play at a roadhouse of booger-picking corn dog yahoos who want to hear Gimme three Steps ad nausea that doesn't mean that every other venue in the US and beyond wants the same thing. Don't pretend to be an authority on audiences if you haven't entertained them all.
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Somebody gets it!! Not totally with you on #4 but def with some of it.
 
#297
Just got a call from a drummer friend. He's putting together a band. "100% floor fillers, no-shame pop all the way. If people dance we're playing it".

Young female vocal, keyboards, guitarist with some skill.

I'll let you know how long we go before reverting back to classic guitat rock.
 
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#298
hrodbert696 said:
A lot of pop songs (depending on which exactly we're talking about here) you have to figure out your arrangements to get them to work, especially if you have limited personnel. We do a lot of them in one band, which is power trio + chick singer. No keys or sequencers or even a rhythm guitar. We like to "rock them out," but laid down an iron rule that the original groove still has to be there. Not much point in playing a dance song no one can dance to. We've had compliments on how we do Bad Romance, I Love It, and That's Not My Name. The latter two of those have a grand total of two chords in them (each), but with That's Not My Name in particular, by the time we get to the ending it's a full-out hard rock jam session.
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Same here, although our singer does play minimal keys.
We used to do "Shut up and let me go" but it kinda fell flat, at least around here. I had never heard 'That's not my name" before you mentioned it. We had talked about doing "I Love It" - just kind of never happened. Do you just do it without the big synth slide part?
 
#299
avvie said:
One band I play in has a very talented guitarist with a great sound pallette. But he like blues, so he's the worst and weakest link in our pop band.
Just chunks along playing muted chords imitating the bass lines; cant get on top of the beat to save his life; doesnt understand the difference between verse, chorus and bridge because blues doesnt have that in it's structure.
Click to expand...
I had a very talented drummer tell me that Jazz was easy, and that pop was harder. I didn't get it at first, since Jazz tends to have much more chord changes than pop. He went on to explain that most Jazz standards are pretty straight forward, playing sections that follow a standard format like ABA, AAB, ABC, etc. But, pop is harder because you have different sections in a song that you have to be aware of. Even if the song is just 3 chords, you can have breakdowns, stops, bridges, etc. that you need to be aware of.
I had to replace a pretty accomplished Jazz bass player because he couldn't seem to play Pop arrangements. He was constantly missing stops, bridges, etc. Whether it's due to laziness, lack of knowledge of the genre, not knowing the material, etc., it wasn't cutting it. It just wasn't something you can cold fake without having heard the tune and have the band sound tight. For example, take a couple of popular Bruno Mars songs like Locked of Heaven or Just the Way You Are. The songs only have 3 or 4 chords, but the verse and chorus are distinct from each other for each song and they have a break down. There's lots of dynamic changes in those songs too. Even if you have a chord chart, if you don't know the arrangement and haven't spent some time learning the tune, it's not going to sound as good as it could. Having all the chops, knowing all the chords and scales, etc. are useless if you can't nail a 3 chord pop tune.
 
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