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C*ck-ups


Deep Thought
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[quote name='wazz' post='40905' date='Aug 3 2007, 02:07 PM']It does look like a meeting of the 'statues' club rather than a dancing audience.[/quote]

Oh they all danced all night .. except for when they stopped for orange juice and chocolate biscuits... I kid you not :)
They are stood still, and I'm not playing, 'cos it's a Ceilidh and I took the picture at dance setup time .. We are just telling them when to do a left hand star or Doh! Zee Doh!, Homer, or whatever...

So, to pile on your agony G-bitch, there's 110 attractive students all doing what we tell them to .....
:huh:
See, Folk 'n' Roll can be fun after all .....

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[quote name='G-bitch' post='40967' date='Aug 3 2007, 04:16 PM']Superb. Well I'm moving to Bristol end of this year, high student population, just need to find the right band - folk'n'roll just moved up on the list![/quote]

Yeah Seems to be flavour of the month at Bristol.ac.uk We've had about 5 enquiries from them this month.
Drop me a PM and I'll put you in touch with a few people who know a few people ..
Also get onto the [url="http://www.bristolrock.co.uk/"]Bristol Rocks Website[/url]

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Dropping the odd clunker because you're developing an idea, going for that 'little extra' or are feeling inspired is cool, because its what live music is all about (IMHO).

Flatulent honkers due to being pissed, stoned or otherwise wrecked are just letting your band members/mates down.

I regret to say I've done both, and I know which one feels most 'noble'...I always feel that the art of improvisation is the ability to 'go with he mistake'. It seems to me that Jimmy Page has made a fabulous career out of it.

Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead tells a story about a fistfight he had with Jerry Garcia on a night when they accused one another of playing the whole night in boxing gloves, not listening, fretw*nking etc etc.

When they heard the tapes back six months later, they released it as a live album...

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Started Midnight Hour intro with a big fat C chord instead of a big fat F chord last night .. My band gave me a bad time over the mics about converting to a 5 string at my advanced age .. :)
As I pointed out to them (also on mic), I'd counted the notes I'd played at the gig up to that point and there were 5764 correct ones. I play ONE wrong note and they give me hell ...

The audience were well into our humour by then and were rolling about laughing with us ...

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[quote name='OldGit' post='41239' date='Aug 4 2007, 12:14 PM'].... I play ONE wrong note and they give me hell ...[/quote]

I think herein lies the rub! :)
If a guitarist or other chord based instrument plays a wrong note it generally gets soaked up by everything else going on, being the providers of laying out the Harmony etc, if we play out of key, its a bit more obvious.

The situation in my two bands:
[b]First Signs Of Frost: [/b]2 guitarists, all parts are written and rehearsed as is, no room for messing around. And so mistakes are less frequent because we're all good players and make sure our proverbial is together!
[b]Re:cover (covers band):[/b] one guitarist so i have a bit more sonic and harmonic space to play about with whilst he's soloing etc, and thats when i "explore my modes" and chordal playing etc. I've found that the Phrygian Dominant mode works great in Superstition! :-D

The worst clanger I've managed is when we played a birthday party in the covers band, and we had to learn a load of 70's disco funk etc, not my fave! Most of the keys were in E or B for the singer, i couldn't hear the guitarist one iota!! So we started Sex Machine, he was playing in E, and me in B.............at least it was a harmony......the whole way though the song haha. The poor singer couldn't pitch it! Thats definitely the worst!

Si

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We had a keyboard player who had a hammond organ complete with bass pedals. he used to be backing for a singer. trouble was he couldn't keep his feet off the pedals, i'd be playing and there would be this sound and i'd be thinking i'm not playing those notes! it would be the k/b player on the pedals doing it without thinking, in the end we had to tie his legs to his stool to stop him, :) not very health and safety looking back on it.

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Up until recently I was playing in two bands - the second being mainly covers done in rather eccentric styles. One of the songs we did was REM's "The One I Love" where I ended up playing the main "guitar riff" on fretless bass. Since it was important to get this right I spent most of my time practicing the riff at the expense of the other parts of the song. The first time we played it live we got to the bridge at the end of the verse and I had a complete blank about what came next. In panic I looked around at the guitarist to see what chords he was playing so I could at least play something root and safe, only to find that he was busy tuning up, having heard something out of tune (me) and suspecting his semi as being the culprit...

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Did a stand in once at a do preceded by a meal. Was assured that it was chord charts not fly sh*t (as my sight reading is really not great) and of course got there & it was pages of fly do. Mind you that was not the problem the organisers had omitted to say they wanted some music to eat by.

So we get up & busk our way through stuff with the keyboard player calling changes from one of those ring bound buskers books & to the sound of clanking cutlery. Did a couple of tunes to no response at all, then the keyboard player picked a number from the book & started us off only to find a page is missing when we are off & running. It sounded like the worst form of freeform jazz you have [i][b][u]EVER[/u][/b][/i] heard, but we struggle to some form of conclusion & guess what......all the cutlery went down & we got applause for it!!!


As to mistakes generally well just do it again with conviction next time around & say you meant to do it :)

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[quote name='OldGit' post='40980' date='Aug 3 2007, 04:33 PM']Yeah Seems to be flavour of the month at Bristol.ac.uk We've had about 5 enquiries from them this month.
Drop me a PM and I'll put you in touch with a few people who know a few people ..
Also get onto the [url="http://www.bristolrock.co.uk/"]Bristol Rocks Website[/url][/quote]

Cheers mate - very much appreciated. I'll probably post a thread up when I move to get the full skinny off the south-westerners.

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[quote name='OldGit' post='41239' date='Aug 4 2007, 12:14 PM']Started Midnight Hour intro with a big fat C chord instead of a big fat F chord last night .. My band gave me a bad time over the mics about converting to a 5 string at my advanced age .. :)
As I pointed out to them (also on mic), I'd counted the notes I'd played at the gig up to that point and there were 5764 correct ones. I play ONE wrong note and they give me hell ...

The audience were well into our humour by then and were rolling about laughing with us ...[/quote]
LMAO! Inspirational! :huh:

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A few weeks ago, my first gig with the new band... my first gig in over seven years :) and we're playing a school charity fun day. We're partway through my most involved song in the set when we have to stop for an announcement. Announcement over and we're straight back in, starting on the second verse, thing is, my mind thinks we're halfway through it (where we'd stopped) so I go into the bridge far too early, completely on autopilot, wondering why everything else sounds different. Realising my mistake, thought I'd finish off the run and then play it again when they'd caught up!

(OK, it's really because I didn't know a good way to get back without sounding worse)

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I f*ck up regularly at practices and try and throw in a few at gigs :)
One of the bands i'm in does punk covers and during one gig i'd been playing 'rockaway beach' verse by the ramones and everyone else has been playing 'judy is a punk' and they never noticed, i noticed just in time for the chorus :huh: i regularly have trouble with my mind wandering during Ramones songs cause they're so basic, great fun though..... if you play the same tune as everyone else in the band!

d.

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A music teacher I once had (alright more than Once, if I'm honest) used to say that [b]"bedroom musos practice til they get it right. Professional musicians practice til they can't get it wrong"[/b] it really stuck with me and when I have the time to get new material sorted properly I work and work and work at it.

I do a lot of depping gigs, often at very short notice, and I seem to have a reputation as someone who can get a lot of new material under his fingers quickly. I have a good memory and decent chops, I guess, but that practice mantra goes right out the window on a dep gig.

I make as many cock ups as everyone else does; they used to really bug me but these days I just laugh them off. Life's too short.

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[quote name='Scoop' post='44674' date='Aug 13 2007, 03:05 AM']I make as many cock ups as everyone else does; they used to really bug me but these days I just laugh them off. Life's too short.[/quote]

+1
as someone said earlier it's how you recover from the c0ck-up that matters. In the middle of one song I use to do, I had a slap solo, just me and the bass drum. Once, and I don't know why, I played just the first half of the slap riff, leaving 2 empty beats with just the bass drum keeping the beat.
2 beats of 4/4. At any tempo not a lot of time, but enough for me to think
1 - bu993r! what just happened?
2 - sh1t! I've just fek'd up!
3 - Bu993r! what am I gonna do about it?
4 - sh1t! here goes!

There's an old saying from musicians "if you make a mistake, do it again, then people will think you meant to do it".
Well that's what I did and it worked :)

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