Boring = bad. But the deal breaker is the unprofessional behavior of wearing out their welcome by playing over their allowed time.
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Which is worse - to be bad or boring?
- Thread starter bdplaid
- Start date
boring is subjective, to some extent. maybe you don't like their repertoire, perhaps others do. bad is less subjective. wrong notes, out of tune, playing wrong chords, soloing in the wrong key or otherwise incompetently... all of this is worse than a band just not being interesting to you.
Fair enough. But my reports from the audience thought they were boring, which is actually what prompted my question. They hung around waiting to see us.
edwinhurwitz
Supporting Member
Sadly, that's true in this genre. However, we play pretty well.
I can ignore boring, but it's hard for me to ignore bad.
Assessing a band or musician as either "boring" or "bad" is often a matter of personal taste and opinion.
Musicians who are not capable of keeping time or playing in key or in tune are more objectively just bad, which to me is FAR worse than merely not being interesting to me. I can shift my attention to something else if the performance, material, or playing strikes me as dull, but I am likely to walk out if a live music performance is terrible.
Musicians who are not capable of keeping time or playing in key or in tune are more objectively just bad, which to me is FAR worse than merely not being interesting to me. I can shift my attention to something else if the performance, material, or playing strikes me as dull, but I am likely to walk out if a live music performance is terrible.
I think that's part of the essence of the issue: Do we want audiences to be able to ignore us?
I've seen it happen... musicians get jaded to the point of believing that their job is to be ignored. I've played a lot of "background music" gigs, and I make sure that I play something that would be interesting if someone were actually listening... which they often are. If the event itself is boring enough, it's possible to strike the perfect balance where you're still playing "background music" but it's the most interesting thing going on.
Bad is much worse. Boring is listenable; you can stay in the room. Bad is unlistenable; you want to flee from the room.
I've been to plenty of shows with top name musicians on stage and watch many in attendance ignoring the show. I don't get how people will spend a lot of money on tickets and then spend all of their time on the smartphones and jabbering away with friends.
Those are the people who are more interested in having the experience of being there (and probably being SEEN there) than in actually appreciating the quality and skill of the musical performance. They probably also expect everything performed live to sound exactly like the original recording, which is why they either don't notice or don't care when the performers are miming to pre-recorded tracks. Music to them is disposable entertainment of little artistic value.I've been to plenty of shows with top name musicians on stage and watch many in attendance ignoring the show. I don't get how people will spend a lot of money on tickets and then spend all of their time on the smartphones and jabbering away with friends.
Yeah, I'm cynical and have as little regard for folks with that kind of mindset as they do for creative musicians.
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The point is that he may not be boring, but he’s brought in as a journeyman worker to assist in the construction of some very boring music(cough, James Taylor, cough).
Yeah that's a nice subjective comment. Not objective though so thanks for your opinionHate to be the bad guy and say it, but, nope, that's a bad take
