Imposter Sydrome

[Bob Lord]

then there's the opposite - times where you kick donkey. You know it's all sounding great in the room. Everyone in the band is singing and playing at the top of their game, and you're all locked into a really tight feel. You think to yourself 'this is ace! If I was in the audience, even I'd be impressed (and I'm not easily impressed)', but you get next to NOTHING back from the audience.

That's far more demoralising than feeling a bit guilty about getting a reaction you didn't think you earned

[Happy Jack]

8 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

To this day I have no idea what happened to bring about this bizarre disaster and I've never played Jazz again.

But now we all have a much clearer idea of what was obviously a formative moment in the History Of Skank.

[T-Bay]

10 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

Only time I've ever depped it was by accident.

Nearly 40 years ago I'm back from college for the summer, been playing guitar for about a year and I've put it around I'm looking for a punk band. I get a call from this bass player says he's looking to put something together, do I want to hook up and try some stuff, he's got a room booked upstairs in a pub Tuesday evening. Sure says I.

Tip up at this pub, hump my gear upstairs to find about 20 people sitting around at tables, drum kit in the corner and a stand-up bass. Little old bloke scurries over to me, put your amp over there next to the kit, we'll start with some standards.

Standards? WTF is going on?

Little bloke gets out his fake book and calls some jazz standard in something like Db (a key with which I am entirely unacquainted) and off they go. I noodle some single note stuff in the wrong key and what seems like five years later it ends. Little old bloke's giving me murderous looks. He calls another song I've never heard of. Same thing happens, ghastly row, punters are looking bewildered, the drummer's looking nervous.

I suddenly realise that I am a total novice playing guitar at a jazz gig and I've never listened to jazz in my life let alone played it. We make it to half-time and little old bloke storms over and gives me a complete bollocking, says his mate George told him I was a great player, what's going on? 

'Who's George?' says I. 'I don't know any George'.

'George the Dixieland trumpet player' says he.

'Never heard of him,' says I. 

'Well, there must be some mistake' says little old bloke.

'Clearly,' says I. He decides he doesn't need my services for the second set, they'll play it as a duo so I off I trudge, feeling a bit disheartened.

To this day I have no idea what happened to bring about this bizarre disaster and I've never played Jazz again.

 

 

Well at least some good has come of it!

[BassTractor]

12 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

To this day I have no idea what happened to bring about this bizarre disaster and I've never played Jazz again.

Sounds much like me when I was called to do a blues gig. I'd only played Penderecki, Stockhausen and Xenakis for decades, and suddenly have to play a 12-bar blues? Totally out of my depths.
We'd always just done whatever the eff we liked. Couldn't even count to 12 !

[lurksalot]

5 hours ago, Bob Lord said:

then there's the opposite - times where you kick donkey. You know it's all sounding great in the room. Everyone in the band is singing and playing at the top of their game, and you're all locked into a really tight feel. You think to yourself 'this is ace! If I was in the audience, even I'd be impressed (and I'm not easily impressed)', but you get next to NOTHING back from the audience.

That's far more demoralising than feeling a bit guilty about getting a reaction you didn't think you earned

It could be the audience that are the imposters ! Just some people out for a beer and a chat when a band breaks out, they are not necessarily  an audience we just think they are 

[neilp]

On 06/12/2018 at 15:19, Happy Jack said:

I started in live music by playing at one of the better jams in West London (the Drayton Arms, Ealing, formerly the King's Head, Acton jam). 

Quite literally everybody in the room was a better musician than me, and the great majority (including the guitarists) were better bass players than me.

So? You have to start somewhere. If I could get in a time machine and go back those years - taking my bass with me, natch - there would still be plenty of better musicians there.

There will always be better musicians than yourself somewhere, if you look hard enough. So stop looking and enjoy what you do. 

There will always be better musicians than you, yes. If you really want to be a better musician, go find them, play with them. Beg them if you have to. You'll be amazed how much you can do when you really have to. The higher the quality around you, the more you will raise your game. It's scary, but feels amazing afterwards.

[josie]

Actually when I feel most like an impostor is when I'm sitting at home alone trying to work out a bassline for a new song and it just doesn't make sense, nothing I play sounds right. Especially when it's a song that should be easy. That's when I look at my beautiful bass guitars and think I should stop kidding myself and give them all away to *real* musicians. 

[TimR]

25 minutes ago, josie said:

Actually when I feel most like an impostor is when I'm sitting at home alone trying to work out a bassline for a new song and it just doesn't make sense, nothing I play sounds right. Especially when it's a song that should be easy. That's when I look at my beautiful bass guitars and think I should stop kidding myself and give them all away to *real* musicians. 

And the closer to a gig you have to learn that song, the more impossible it is to learn. 

[clunkie66]

On 06/12/2018 at 15:26, T-Bay said:

The best bit of advice I was given when I started was that as long as you start together, stop together and smile together, no one notices the bit in the middle. I thought they were joking but it’s surprisingl true. There have been a couple of car crash moments when we have murdered a song but never has anyone commented on it. Quite the opposite on one occasion where we did a short set and for some reason just weren’t on it (borrowed kit,  no set up time didn’t help) but we had people raving about us, in a good way, on Facebook.

Played a gig last night with 20 of my family and friends in the audience. Went well, no pink torpedo-ups until the last number when the drummer completely forgot his lines. Drumming totally out of time. Me and the lead guitarist tried to keep things together, he got back into it and we finished OK. I thought it sounded like a disaster but speaking to my family and mates afterwards, not one person noticed...

[Newfoundfreedom]

2 hours ago, josie said:

Actually when I feel most like an impostor is when I'm sitting at home alone trying to work out a bassline for a new song and it just doesn't make sense, nothing I play sounds right. Especially when it's a song that should be easy. That's when I look at my beautiful bass guitars and think I should stop kidding myself and give them all away to *real* musicians. 

Thank God!!!

I thought it was just me. 

[BassTractor]

On 06/12/2018 at 16:26, T-Bay said:

start together, stop together and smile together

Thanks! Couldn't report back earlier, but my black metal band Morhn Tormentum now start together, stop together, and...

 

...wait for it...

 

...smile together!

 

Success! 😉

Edited December 10, 2018 by BassTractor

[lozkerr]

3 hours ago, josie said:

Actually when I feel most like an impostor is when I'm sitting at home alone trying to work out a bassline for a new song and it just doesn't make sense, nothing I play sounds right. Especially when it's a song that should be easy. That's when I look at my beautiful bass guitars and think I should stop kidding myself and give them all away to *real* musicians. 

Oh boy. This, absolutely this. But when you crack that first phrase and suddenly it all drops into place, even if what you're playing doesn't exactly match the recording you''re trying to mimic - hell, you feel on top of the world. Zero to hero in an instant.

I've been working on some Passions basslines recently. Apart from I'm In Love With A German Film Star, which everybody and their dog knows and it's dead easy, they're about as common as rocking horse sh|t, so I've had to to spend ages recording little snippets and sussing out the basslines by ear. But that feeling when I've nailed just one phrase and the whole song's opened up as a result - well, there's nothing to beat it. I have to keep reminding myself that Claire Bidwell wrote the basslines wile she was working with the band forty years ago and she never published them, so I'm having to put in more graft than she did.

I think impostor syndrome's a good thing, even though it plays hell with your psyche - it's the direct opposite of complacency, which is fatal for a musician. There's aye someone better than yersel!

[T-Bay]

10 hours ago, clunkie66 said:

Played a gig last night with 20 of my family and friends in the audience. Went well, no pink torpedo-ups until the last number when the drummer completely forgot his lines. Drumming totally out of time. Me and the lead guitarist tried to keep things together, he got back into it and we finished OK. I thought it sounded like a disaster but speaking to my family and mates afterwards, not one person noticed...

It’s truly amazing what you can get away with, when I was given the advice I mentioned I had only been playing a few weeks and thought the person (very experienced) was having a bit of a joke but it has been the best bit of advice I have had really. The worst thing you can ever do is stop of let your face to show you have messed up.

[ianrendall]

11 hours ago, BassTractor said:

Thanks! Couldn't report back earlier, but my black metal band Morhn Tormentum now start together, stop together, and smile together.

Success! 😉

Starting and stopping together is great. It’s the notes in between I struggle with! 🤣

Edited December 10, 2018 by ianrendall

[fretmeister]

All the time.

 

I play in an educational trust group that has loads of ensembles. In the jazz ensemble there are kids, some as young as 14 with anywhere from Grade 3 to Grade 8.

 

I am definitely the hack in the room. My only saving grace is that after 30 years of playing I can improv to just about everything - I'm working on my reading skills but I'm only about Grade 2 or 3 at a push for sight reading.

[Monkey Steve]

Having a few moments of doubt at the moment - not exactly depping in the sense of "there's a gig next Tuesday, here's the set, see you there" but I am helping a band out for a couple of Christmas gigs with two month's notice and it's very technical death metal.  Meaning: 1. the recordings of the early albums are awful quality - you cannot hear the bass at all; 2. the rest of the band are brilliant musicians - you may not appreciate the genre but there is no doubting the talent that these particular guys have (YMMV - other DM bands may not be quite their standard) and I'm easily the worst musician in the room (though, not the worst bass player they've had in the last few years); and 3. it's unbelievably fast, riff after riff after riff, often not repeating itself - the last track I worked out had 30 different parts in a 4 minute track, all played at break neck speed.  The last 30 years counting to 4 and relying on feel doesn't apply here.  Also, spectacularly impressive as the drumming is, bars and bars of blast beats means you don't always get the usual anchors to pin the playing to or to give cues for the changes.

I've had a couple of Josie's "I cannot work this out, it's going to be a disaster!" moments in the last few weeks.  No bass tabs on t'internet, and where I have been able to find some guitar tabs and used them to work out the roots of the chords, they are almost always wrong.  Some spectacularly so.

Fortunately the band themselves are aware of just how complicated it all is and have been not just very patient and happy to go over stuff until I know it properly (especially the drummer and lead guitarist) but manage to do it in a really supportive way, pointing out my mistakes without any hint of a criticism, just something I need to change.  they've also been very open to, not exactly changes, more to me doing it my own way - their shared position is that they have no idea what the previous bass players did and they're not bass players so they don't pretend to be experts in writing or playing bass lines, so as long as it all fits, I can do what I like (within reason).  That really helps.  As does the fact that I am undoubtedly a much harsher critic of my playing than anybody else - they are telling me that stuff sounds fine when I'm not happy with it (but if you're going to make a mistake, make it in the right key). I will be fine by the time I'm on stage, and will be doing nothing but listening to the tracks and playing through in order to get everything into my head between now and the first gig.

[ricksterphil]

6 hours ago, T-Bay said:

It’s truly amazing what you can get away with, when I was given the advice I mentioned I had only been playing a few weeks and thought the person (very experienced) was having a bit of a joke but it has been the best bit of advice I have had really. The worst thing you can ever do is stop of let your face to show you have messed up.

It is!  Back in the day (i.e. the 70's when I had hair and abs), I played in a school band. We were playing 'Ruby don't take your love to town' one night, with me on vocals and I completely forgot the lines to the last verse which as most of us old gits know, is accompanied by the drums only. I mumbled along and sang anything which came to mind and we finished the song. Afterwards, no-one noticed including my band mates, girlfriend and anyone I asked in the audience. I was mightily relieved...and then a bit p*ssed off that no-one was bl**dy listening!

[knirirr]

This might be vaguely relevant:

Playing in a noisy bar in Oxford. The following conversation ensues:

Saxophonist: I fancy another fast one. Rather than following the set list, how about doing [speech obscured by background noise].
Pianist: Cool!
Me: Hang on - what tune*? What key?
Saxophonist: One... two... one, two, three, four [honk, parp etc.]

It wasn't something I recognised so I had to fake it on the low notes (5-string EUB with poor acoustics in the bar, luckily) until I could guess some of the changes. Whilst I was still guessing (it took a while and wasn't 100% successful) there was a chap looking a bit like Student Grant from Viz watching me from just in front of the stage, clicking his fingers and nodding his head whilst clearly getting into it. IIRC the rest of the band didn't notice either.

 

* Tune? This is jazz!

[skankdelvar]

17 hours ago, BassTractor said:

Thanks! Couldn't report back earlier, but my black metal band Morhn Tormentum now start together, stop together, and...

...wait for it...

...smile together!

Success! 😉

A band isn't a real band until you all bow simultaneously at the end of every song:

[Dad3353]

6 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

...all bow simultaneously at the end of every song:

No mean feat for a drummer; respect. 

[Happy Jack]

Don't get excited Douglas, he stood up to to it!

[Dad3353]

12 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

Don't get excited Douglas, he stood up to to it!

For some of us, that, too, is no mean feat.