Perhaps a slightly more civilized version of the One Man Band thread?

[Phantasmagoria]

Re: Perhaps a slightly more civilized version of the One Man Band thread?

There's got to be something performers without bands can do to compensate for that right? How about the tried and true strippers in cages?

hmm..that might work :33:

 

[AmirH]

Re: Perhaps a slightly more civilized version of the One Man Band thread?

I'm just gonna leave that right there.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Perhaps a slightly more civilized version of the One Man Band thread?

But if you're on stage with "excellent" musicians, it does sound the same every time. The same notes in the same place. That's called Consistency. Yes you can take small walks within the structure, but those are small walks, more like pacing or meandering, actually, but you can't stray too far or you blow the performance of said song.

And yes, you can actually program machines to "wander", especially with drum sequencers that have "humanize" features like adjustable Swing/Feel.

Obviously you can't do that if all you've got is a CD in a karaoke machine and a guitar plugged into it. TwilightOdyssey did not suggest doing it with just a CD, but it was mentioned by someone else in a reply earlier (the other thread I think). There's a world of difference there.

With on-stage sequencers, you can take your hand off your guitar to tweak a running sequence during a song.
It takes skill, and practice, just like a crowd of warm bodies with instruments in their hands.

With a multi-track recorder or sequencing unit running out to a mixer, you can set up alternative patterns and fills in a given sequence and swap them on the fly with the channel mutes to keep it from being "the exact same thing all the time".
Or you can leave the backing tracks alone and make the primary focus the current solo/melody-carrying instrument.

I don't know about this. When I play with excellent musicians, the notes are not in the same place all the time. This is where the music actually happens for me onstage. Their creativity propels the music along, and keeps people coming to the shows. BTW, it was never suggested that it doesn't take skill to play along with sequencers. I do prefer the musicians onstage make all the sounds I hear.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Perhaps a slightly more civilized version of the One Man Band thread?

We make variations to parts of our songs to make them more fun live that makes more sense in a live context than studio but we play songs that we have written that people come to hear. Changing them the way you described would make them the songs we had written no longer. People listen to the CDs or Spotify of whatever, see the band they like is playing and attend because they want to hear those songs but better because it's live. Whether you're in the audience or not is irrelevant at least in regards to us because I seriously doubt you would like our music anyway and if you attended a show with us or any other band with a following and then left because it wasn't up to your idiosyncratic standards, I can't the band would notice.

I appreciate a band that plays original music up there. But yeah, as with any band, if I don't like it, I leave. I do manage to go out and see a ton of live music, though, and there are plenty of excellent musicians who bring something new every time I see them.