TimR

Me: My Ibanez machinehead has sheared off. Are you able to get a replacement. Salesman: I'll just check..... Sure but they only do packs of 4. They're £x and delivery is about 3 days. Me: Not sure if I can get to your shop in the next week or so. Salesman: No worries give me your credit card no and adress I'll have them sent straight to you. That's how it should be done. Thankyou Machinehead Music, Hitchin.

Before everyone gets excited suggesting 100w PA is not big enough shouldn't we find out what size audience the OP is expecting? Whether people are expecting to dance. Whether this is just a few songs to demonstrate that the kids can play as a band.

That will be because he knows what a difference having musicians who can read and play well makes. IME You turn up to the tech rehearsal having only skimmed through the parts if at all.

Funilly enough I've always been paid quite well for playing for AmDram musicals.

I guess it's changed then. In the 90s when I used to temp during the day and was a rock star during the evening I worked a few weeks swapping the machines between pubs. My local landlord used to take his wife and two kids to Florida every year off 3 machines. Beer is something like 60% profit before overheads.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1340259090' post='1701722'] Had this same conversation with a heavy metal guy yesterday...he said the had two gigs in the diary. I asked him how many people they could get to a pub..and he thought quite a few. He also said they were desperate for gigs and charged next to nothing. ... [/quote] I would have asked why they thought they were desperate. Are pubs calling out for Metal bands. Do they bring out the girls? If the girls don't come the the guys don't either. Are they good? People don't tell you when you're not good or you're not playing what they want to listen to. They just don't turn up to the next gig. If you're not getting gigs you need to look at what you are selling, NOT how much you're selling it for.

[quote name='brensabre79' timestamp='1340268558' post='1701847'] I don't get the plumber comparison at all. How many musicians, pro or otherwise sit around waiting for the phone to ring for an emergency pub gig? .... [/quote] Exactly my point. Relying on the pub gig and even a function gig as your main source of income is not going to cut it. During the day, teach, do shows, session work, work in an office, whatever.... Don't feel sorry for the pub because they appear to have a small turnout. The fruit machines only pay out 10% so every £10 they payout the landlord gets £90. Small pubs are closing in rural areas so there's no money there so you're not undercutting anyone.

Most comparisons don't stack up. You could compare the Musician with a Plumber. A plumber doesn't sit around all day hoping that he'll get called out late at night to an emergency. Emergency call outs are fun, you don't know what you're going to get. During the day you have to do the boring stuff. Blocked drains, central hearing installs, train apprentices etc.

I would hire. Then after a few gigs you'll have a better idea what sort of PA she'll be needing.

There are a lot of people who do it for fun, who make it a lot harder than it needs to be. 7 hours for a pub gig and 100s of emails? If you're doing it for the money you soon become pretty efficient at it. Generally we arrive separately at 8:00. Set up and start playing at 9:00 sound check on the fly finish at 11:00 and out the door 11:30. I've been involved in bands where the drummer starts loading the van at 4 and drives round picking up the rest of the band, all arrive at the pub at 6 and then spend ages messing around. Endless discussions about whether the 10piece drum kit is needed and whether it will fit in the corner, whether the guitarist can use all 7 guitars and where will his 100 pedals fit, where to point the lights, can the singer have a bit more 2Khz in her monitor, whether we're doing the extended remix of Mustang Sally.....

[quote name='brensabre79' timestamp='1340193879' post='1700721'] But this is the point, the band are effectively 5 or 6 (or however many) employees (or freelancers) for the night just like bar staff, chef etc. Some of the bands work does not happen inside the pub but based on the earlier example (it varies from gig to gig) its 6 or 7 hours work. £50 for 7 hours work is [b]£7.14/hour[/b]. All things being equal, Tax and NI needs to come out of this too. Not to mention, staff usually get free soft drinks and sometimes a meal - that doesn't happen in many of the pubs we play in. The going rate for a musician playing in a function band is about £200 for 8 hours work (functions are invariably a slightly longer stint), that's [b]£25/hour[/b] - or 3 and a 1/2 times as much as a pub gig. [/quote] All I was saying is that the pub doesn't necessarily make your fee on the night you are playing. It's another of their overheads. They may make £1000 on the bingo night on Tuesday and some of that is used to pay you. Using the £/hour method is not particularly constructive. Our sax player turns up 5 mins before playing and is out the door as soon as we've finished. £50 for 90mins is £33 an hour. The bar staff don't get paid more for a busy night or a quiet night and don;t get paid for breaks or travelling to/from work. You have to offset the low paid gigs with the high paid gigs. So if you do a Fri at £50 and a Saturday at £200 you've got £250 for 14hours. £17/hour is pretty good in my book. As others have said, you have to do the pub gigs as advertising, not your main source of income. It's scratch my back, scratch your back. The other option is that the pubs start charging on the door which works quite well even at £2 because this creates an aura of getting something of value and people will actually queue to get in because they think there is something special going on. Mad!

If that puzzles you: I went to my local last night for something to eat. I was the only one there Probably in for best part of 30mins. Spent about £15. Landlord, bar girl and cook. The Fri/Sat nights are usually subsidising the rest of the week too. I chatted to a landlord once about his takings for New Year and Christmas. He agreed they were extremely good, but that no one goes out in January and generally it didn't pick up properly until everyone had been Paid in February. So the Christmas period was subsidising the first 6 weeks of the new year. It must be a complex way to live unless you're a tied house.

Two biggest problem in bands. Big Egos and Bad Communication. I can live with the first. Avoid emails and Texts unless it's for information - like "The gig is 22nd July" not like "We're using a dep, how do you feel?" Face to face and phone is always better.

[quote name='jonnybass' timestamp='1340104806' post='1699053'] ... No matter how much they enjoy it it might still be difficult and so people should be paid what they are due. ... JB [/quote] You often find that people who are good at what they do enjoy doing it. Or Is it that people who enjoy what they do become good at it?

I'm not so sure. The general public are pretty good at recognising really bad playing/singing as we see on the X-Factor. The really bad acts get short shift. There are quite a few that can get by and these are the people that generally we as (good?) musicians are fairly quick to criticise as being quite bad. A lot of people don't listen to live music, most listen to that sterile pop music that has had all the drums quantised and all the vocals auto tuned and sub bass added to the bass guitar. You find that function bands that spend lots of money on sounding like the CD tend to get paid more than the pub bands who, although very tight and excellent musicians, don't sound like the CD and play music instead of the latest 2chord wonder by Dizzy Feet feat iHo.

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1339443767' post='1688647'] What did the singer say when you rang her to clarify what she meant in the email? [/quote] Seriously. You have called her haven't you? You've had over a week.

[quote name='jaydentaku' timestamp='1339965060' post='1697017'] I particularly like the way that Flea is the first thing you see, yet he isn't actually included. Which is fair enough, but Daft Punk and Interpol (?) is. awesome [/quote] I quite like his efforts on You Ought to Know - Alanis Morissette. Sp? 10 greatest bass lines? What makes a great bass line? I'll YouTube all those tunes tonight as I don't recognise a lot of them by name

It's hardly a family life if you're not there is it? In my 20s I worked as an engineer US, Canada, Europe. Would get a couple of weeks notice where I was going next then off for 3-6 weeks at a time. You can sustain a long distance relationship, but the more engineers, oil rig workers, cruise ship workers you meet you start to see a pattern. Alcoholics, divorced - on third or fourth wives, etc I didn't really want to be part of that. It's a young man's game, or a single man, or an older man whose kids have grown and the mortgage is secondary. If the money is there then the women will stick around. Probably a cynical view but, hey!

I've been playing the SR400 for 10years. Gigging a couple of times a month. No problems.

They one I had suffered from extreme neck dive. But that was about 12 years ago and I've not seen anyone comment recently on this. I liked the fact you don't have to play a open E and found most of the time with a 4 string my default hand position is the bottom 5 frets whereas with a 5 string it's first finger on the 5th fret.

Check your house insurance you should have some sort of basic cover there. Watch that you're not excluded because the band could be described as a business activity.

I think that anyone who has worked hard to become very good at their profession makes what they do look very easy. Be that carpenter, engineer, or musician. Most people see someone doing something well and it looks easy. How many people have said to you "I wish I could play an instrument. When I was younger I started to learn ....... but never stuck with it. " So I think people know it's hard and takes a lot if work but think because they're enjoying listening and dancing then you must be enjoying playing, so why would you want to be paid?

Relax your plucking hand, don't dig in too hard and don't forget to breathe.

.... the brake pedal on a BMW X5. Never seen anyone who has worked out how to use one properly.

[quote name='P-T-P' timestamp='1339671502' post='1692319'] Easy solution. Hand them your personal date sheet and say, "Fill this with gigs and I'll happily be a one band man." [/quote] It doesn't matter how many gigs someone is offering I'll never strap a bass drum to my back and learn harmonica!