Performance
Over the years I’ve met some incredibly talented bass players. Some of the chops I’ve seen are approaching the greats of bass players, ie Flea, Wooten, Pastorius etc… Some odd statements that come from a few folks with the golden hands include things like “I can barely make enough money off of music to eat”, [...]
Yep, here it is, Duke Ellingtons 1943 version of It dont mean a Thing if it aint got that Swing. Swing, if done well is amazing, if not, it really comes across poorly. An interesting exercise is to take a good listen to Frank Sinatra singing Summer Wind. He really nails it. Then after a [...]
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Its pretty much a guarantee when one is touring that sooner or later things will not go well. It could be a timing issue such as a blown tire enroute, a missed plane connection, or even a venue scheduling issue where in one only gets 25% of the time normally needed for load in and [...]
Martin Atkins stated “There is no Reason You Cannot Do This” in reference to on demand posters and tshirts. He was not referring to on-demand like in cafe press, but more so, actually screen printing while on tour. As a fellow who consulted on massive screen printing operations such as used for tshirts sold in [...]
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In the corporate world, enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a big deal, and when it works, its amazing how it can save time, and wring out costs. In the music world, I’ve often looked for a parallel for the touring group. Something simple enough that a group getting started could use a module or 2, [...]
When starting out, every one uses duct tape, its cheap and readily available. I remember years ago, going through miles of the stuff… However, its not without peril. Duct tape, over time, or after after 1000+ folks have trampled on it, or PAR cans have boiled it, of any such combo makes for a nasty [...]
Fire signoffs in some venues can be a pain, especially if one is not prepared ahead of time. The thing is, the danger is very real. Case in point, the Nightclub fire in RI back in 2003. http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/02/21/deadly.nightclub.fire/ Ninety-six people died Thursday in a fast-moving fire at a Rhode Island nightclub, Gov. Don Carcieri said [...]
From my old contacts, I’ve been hearing the Christian Music business has been on the decline for years, and with the economic situation, its gotten quite a bit worse. Certainly for those whose livelyhoods depend on the industry, thats a bad deal at a very bad time. From a kingdom point of view, I’m not [...]
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For those who have been there done that, they personally know the horror stories of paying a union guy $250 for electrical connections, or a few hundred for loadin/loadout. For others, such seems an overblown fantasy story. Well, for some venues, it is very real… and what you dont want to do, is tick off [...]
After reading Martin Atkin’s book, entitled Tour Smart, a lot of things came to mind, and as such, I’ll be periodically posting tourtips. These are things I picked up the hard way, both as a touring musician, but also a engineer involved with industrial tradeshows. The number of parallels between the two of them are [...]
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