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those quiet bits at a gig....


Chappers
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Don't do it !
It always sounds exactly what it is, a cover up.

If it's something that happens often then your guitarist needs to get his guitar seen to and should have a spare to grab anyway.
The frontman needs to keep the audience interested whilst the guitarist does a swap.

Edited by icastle
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[quote name='Chappers' timestamp='1329689939' post='1546095']
Hi Guys,
Does anyone have any suggestions for instrumental breaks the bassist and drummer can play while waiting for the guitarist to re-tune his guitar during a gig?
I hate those long drawn out silences once the singer has stopped interacting with the crowd.
Cheers,
Col
[/quote]
Get a guitarist who can actually keep the guitar in tune. Anything else is just not good enough.

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[quote name='Chappers' timestamp='1329689939' post='1546095']
Hi Guys,
Does anyone have any suggestions for instrumental breaks the bassist and drummer can play while waiting for the guitarist to re-tune his guitar during a gig?
I hate those long drawn out silences once the singer has stopped interacting with the crowd.
Cheers,
Col
[/quote]

Depends what kind of set you do I would say; in the good old days of yore Slade used to do a verse & chorus of Bolan's "Hot Love" for that exact reason; H's John Birch guitars could be a sod for staying in tune. It gave Nod a chance to go off for a couple of beers & then take the piss when he got back.

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I agree with the others ... just don't. In my last band we used to have a couple of filler tunes if there was a serious problem with the guitarists gear. Only once had to sing space cowboy .. just me and the drummer, the guitarist managed to get his back up guitar out and tuned just in time for the solo .. it almost looked planned. The singer also had a couple of acoustic crowd pleasing numbers he could do on his own if anything went wrong with the drums or bass .. only had to do this once when my old ampeg failed on me .. thankfully I had my back up head with me which I got up and running just in time for the build up at the end of "candy".
Get your guitarist to tune up quicker and get your singer to fill the rest.

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If a guitar keeps going out of tune, get it to a luthier to check it out. It may be something very simple that can be dealt with.

The other thing is though, some guitarists just have to tune up after every song, irrespective of whether their guitar has gone out of tune or not. Could this be what`s happening here?

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Try recording the sets and playing it back to them the gaps are pretty shocking. It's pretty disrespectful to the audience to constantly retune on stage and I don't think they realise quite how much time they take up. Are they playing drop D or DADGAD or something, then get a second guitar or run the set so the retuning only has to be done once or twice. In the end I run an extra mic for me and we banter whilst the guitarist sorts himself out. Not perfect but better than ignoring the audience. Sometimes it seems like Ken Dodd could do his whole routine in the gaps.

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It really does depend on what your style(s) are. If you're a straight out rock band, then have a couple of songs that start with bass & drums & just extend the intro, play a short solo piece or let the drummer do a solo & add incidentals in (if you practice together, then you could have certain parts where you play along just a couple of notes).
In my old rock band, our drummer would play something completely random (usually jazz based) & we'd just jam an unusual version of a cover, usually so it wasn't known to start with & then once everyone was ready we would break into the song (quite often it was Use Me, by Bill Withers as the chords are just E & A so the band recognised it).
If you can get away with it, have a listen to some DnB. [url="http://ourhelicalmind.bandcamp.com/"]Our chap here has some good stuff that's just Drums & Bass...[/url]

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[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1329721949' post='1546260']
The other thing is though, some guitarists just have to tune up after every song, irrespective of whether their guitar has gone out of tune or not. Could this be what`s happening here?
[/quote]

It's like a nervous twitch.

The only way to stop this behaviour unfortunately seems to be to beat it out of them.

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