Mike King wrote a post entitled “Are the PROs hindering the development of new artists?” and I think the opposite is the case in many situations. Far too many new artists are being taken advantage of ranging from pay to play, to perform for free, to perform for a pittance. If ones music AND ones presentation of it brings in revenue to a venue, then that revenue should be shared with those associated with its production… and even the smallest entities if managed well can and do make more revenue with live music.
The concern is that when the PRO’s (performing rights organizations such as BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC) come in to collect their yearly fees, the venues will quit having live music, and thus kill off opportunities for new artists. The example cited in the article was a coffee shop who had monthly open mike nights, and would need to pay a $332 fee per year. Or in other words, about $30 per open mike night, or about half the cost of an employee, and likely a fraction of the interest they pay for their operating line of credit, or any number of other expenses… In this case I am 100% on the side of the PRO’s. Its not that they can’t pay, its that they dont want to… and if they are that cheap concerning performance rights, I’d hate to think what the musicians get paid. I think most small entities fall into this domain.
The other side of the coin, is that many new artists only play their own originals, where in the song writer would not be compensated by the PRO anyhow. In that case, I would be on the opposite side.
There is also the issue of non-commercial entities with very low revenue such as small libraries, and other community venues. For sure the song writers should be comped in their material is being used… otoh, there needs to be enough volume of scale to make such worthwhile. Ie, it an entity has a gross revenue of $5000/year, all the “employees” are really volunteers, and the musicians play for free has about zero scale. It is likely such a venue will never be large enough to earn enough revenue to even cover their overhead. Otoh, such a venue might well be a stepping stone for a new artist, and thats where things are tricky, and exemptions should be written to encourage rather than discourage live music.
There is also an issue of cultural diversity… I made good money with well known cover tunes (which did get old at times). Otoh jazz fusion and ethnic music which was a blast to play was never received very well by those with the purse strings. Such was more art for the sake of art, rather than for $, and it showed. In a lot of ways, the new artist is in the same boat, irrespective of genre. The songs need to be known, and how do they get them out there, if there are no venues for them? Putting the venues out of the live performance arena is not the answer, but neither is pay to play.
Another challenge is how to sift the non/low revenue outfits, from the small places that are making money left and right. When I think back to my younger days, and small bars (under 25 seats) paying us hundreds of bucks a night, they did so, as they made tons more money with live music. Otoh, I think of the mid size library who brings in folk singers and hammered dulcimers as more of a community service than anything else, and I’m sure even $332 would be a stretch for them. When one looks at the wide scope of music, venues, and situations, its near impossible to come up with a one size fits all solution thats fair to everyone.
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Tags: ascap, bmi, pay for play, sesac
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”, “I can’t find any gigs at all”, “I was only with Band ABCD for 2 months”. I used to go “?????”, this makes no sense. How on earth can this incredibly talented bassist be running into all these roadblocks, opportunities are everywhere.
This hit home years ago when I was in LA. I was working with a number of other bass players, and this one guy could run circles around me. That was of course until we received some major chart revisions. It turns out, he had to hear the music first, if he couldn’t hear it, he couldn’t play it. I was floored. The fellow had amazing chops and an amazing gift to hear music once and be able to play, but no ability to work off a chart, much less so read sheet music. I ended up sight reading the changes for him, and then he was good to go, and proceeded to play circles around me. Otoh, I was swamped, and he often had trouble getting work.
In another case, I was blown away in rehearsal, albeit this fellow was a guitarist. He had amazing talent, and we thought wowzers, its uber cool that we could find someone of this calibre. That was, until gig time. It turned out the fellow had amazing skill, but also a huge drug problem, such that he was either in jail, or so out of it, he no-showed or crash and burned the vast majority of time. While incredibly gifted, he never took his role as a musician seriously… what a sad deal.
I sort of like what Ed Friedland had to say about his bass playing epiphany…
“One: Having chops doesn’t mean s**t to people outside the jazz scene. Two: If I was going to make a living at this – I’d better start taking the electric bass seriously. Three: Refer to Epiphany #1. Oh, and Four: NEVER work for a booking agent from Brooklyn that has two first names.”
Another bassist, Paige Garwood makes the following statements:
1. You are not the show. You are a sideman. You are not there to stun the audience with your Jaco-esque 16th note patterns or your Wooten-like tapping or triple thumb popping/slapping techniques. You are there to serve up a groove so solid that my great aunt Edna would dance to it…
2. You own beats one and three… the drummer owns two and four.
3. Lock up with the kick drum.
4. Simplicity is NOT a sin… rather it is a necessity. Especially if your band doesn’t spend a lot of time together. Simpler is best. Can I say it any stronger… in case you haven’t picked it up yet… SIMPLE!!!!!!!! There…. Now I feel better.
This is not to say technical skill is not important. More than a few times I’ve been given a piece which is 95% root whacking, with a few measures of insane 16th note patterns all over the fingerboard. Such patterns were obviously written by a composer who had never touched a bass in their life… chops do play a role, but they are only part of the game.
If I were to prioritize things, I’d go with the following list.
1. Groove is key. In a lot of ways, its like the song, “It dont mean a thing, if it aint got that swing”. For bassists, such a saying equates to; if you dont have the groove down, all the technical ability in the world means nothing.
2. Music theory matters… I dont care whether its formal, whether its tab, or whether its by ear, but you need to know what to play and when to play it, and if need be, when to use short cuts in order to keep #1 the priority.
3. Music awareness matters. One should know a multitude of styles and approaches… and have a pretty good feel as to what type of bass line works best for any given tune in order to accomplish #1.
4. In order to accomplish 1-3, technical skills can help, but they better not get in the way of any of the above.
5. Being the good guy does pay off… being on time, going the extra mile, doing everything in your power to assure the gigs success will go much further than technical superiority. By the same token, technical superiority only in the narrowest cases will make up for being a jerk.
The answer to the groove thing is practice, practice, practice… and not just by yourself, or with a drum machine or metronome, but with but with as many different groups, orchestrations, and styles as possible. The metronome/drum machine is a crutch, a very good, and in most cases necessary crutch… but going live is where the rubber hits the road. The metronome wont move, but the inexperienced drummer likely will. The drum machine wont move, but the emotional lead player may be taking the tempo all over the place. Getting a grove going in such a situation will teach you way more than even the most expressive computerized drummer.
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 few pass listening, try to sing it, and capture the swing… yep, even for a bass player.
Next, run over to singsnap, and give a listen to a wide variety of folks trying to sing Summer Wind karaoke. Some absolutely nail it, and others, rather than getting the triplets right, either head towards eight notes, or doted eighth sixteenths.
Tags: Music Theory, Swing
I made up some new business cards, and thought it would be a good idea to put something useful on the backside. Over the years, I’ve experienced Nashville Notation many a time, although realistically, each person who has given me such a cheat sheet has called it something different. As such, I sat down with MS-Excel for a bit and created a table… and then got thinking a bit more, and tied in the circle of 5ths/4ths with it as well with the following result.
In addition, here is the actual Excel spreadsheet. Its free for anyone to use as they see fit, albeit a link back here to my blog is appreciated.
Tags: Music Theory, Nashville Notation
I’ve been playing around with notation software a bit, and actually found Finale’s Notepad to be pretty cool… and then my pc did a crash and burn. As such, in the process of bringing it back to life, I found my backups of the programs was lacking in a huge way… thus time to go and redownload as much as I could still find.
Its cool that the link to Notepad 2008 still exists on Finales website, and you can get the serial number too. Sadly the file download didnt work, but a bit of googling, and I found np2k8win.zip on a number of filing sharing sites. Of course, such is a bit of a pig in a poke, who knows what might be mixed in with it… so either spend $10 for Notepad 2011, or cross your fingers and run antivirus/malware checks on what you download for free. Either way, Finale Notepad is a way cool program.
For more power, Printmusic really rocks, as it can scan in print sheet music with really decent accuracy. If one adds a microphone, it will also allow you to go from audio direct to notation… a feature I think is cool, albeit dangerous lol. I haven’t tested it, but the cool factor may take me there in the future.
Tags: Notation Software
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 sound check. It might be that a series of thunderstorms comes through, and leaves the venue, as well as any backup venue without power. It could be a medical issue such as having a speaker bin land on ones foot, slicing ones hand open on a par can, pain meds from a pulled tooth causing a majorly fuzzy brain, or perhaps last nights corn dog was on the roller grill for 20 hours instead of two. It could be a mental issue too… a close relative or touring member passes away or is serioulsy injured. A engagement breaks up, or someones marriage falls on hard times, or even the reverse… someone on tour gets engaged, and now their head is only half in the game.
Most any of the above factors, situational, medical, or emotional will interfere with even the most dedicated musicians ability to perform at some point. Thus, knowing such can/will happen, a contingency plan is in order… Obviously, one can’t formulate a plan for every possible situation, but most certainly having a few paths laid out ahead of time can make a crazy time a whole lot less stressful at a minimum, and in a lot of cases will avoid the really bad situation of having to cancel a show entirely.
Granted, some of these issues should seemingly fall into the domain of the road manager… and a top notch road manager is worth multiples of their weight in gold. On the other hand, few bands can afford a good road manager, much less a top notch one, and some end up recruiting a band members relatives, or groupies who have never done such before, and others skip the role entirely and sort of wing the whole deal. Ultimately though, no matter how good the road manager is, there can be situations where multiple things go wrong at once, and the workload is far more than even the best road manager can handle, or even delegate. This is where the whole group needs to come together as a team, rather than sitting back and saying, “not my problem, I’m just here to make music”.
Over the next few posts I’m going to present a few game plans and such which have saved me, and the groups I’ve been with over the years a whole multitude of headaches, and even saved a few shows from cancellation. For many, such may seem like a whole lot of overkill… and if nothing goes wrong, they would be correct. On the other hand, nearly all of these can be done well before going on tour, and at little to no cost. In other words, this is a case where the bass player can put in a nominal time investment upfront, and when everything is going wrong, and folks are going crazy, the bass player can uphold the long standing stereotype that bass players never get rattled. 
Tags: Preparedness, Touring
Last Sunday, I get the music for the 10:45 service at 10:20, where upon I find out I have a bass solo for the postlude. As one who over the last kazillian years mostly ends up sight reading live performances, this was not a big deal… except there was a page turn right in the middle of a fairly busy solo.
So, I cheated, I took advantage of one aspct of the fair use doctrine, and made an “emergency copy” of the flip side, such that I would not have to play a series of runs and manage a page flip all the while trying to sight read the peace. (Granted, I silently sight sing all music before I play it, such that the first time I play it, I’m already pretty familiar with how it goes).
After church, I was talking to the guitar player, and said “someone should make a thin, super light weight tablet pc” that would have some type of sheet music browser, with an Amazon ebook type link where you could download any and all types of sheet music in the world. Even better, such a tablet should have provisions for automating the of turning pages. He was thinking, yep, a IR, or bluetooth foot pedal would be cool… I went one further, and said, why not have the tablet pc listen, and then automatically turn pages. We both joked about how such could turn into a nightmare pretty fast.
After a week of thinking about this… perhaps not. Back in my days of seismology, my buddies and I could see that if there were ever enough computing power, it would be possible to correct out of tune notes on the fly. Too bad we didnt run with that idea… I bet lots of seismic guys thought the same thing, but only Andy Hildebrand took the blue sky concept and turned it in something other than a discussion in the back of a vib truck.
Of course the big problem is not a technical one… its the sheet music business model. If an Amazon or Itune method of distribution were to arise, thousands of businesses would be in a real world of hurt. There is just too much money in, ordering, hoop jumping, dealing with paper, hoop jumping, printing, and, hoop jumping, and of course copyright enforcement. On the other who knows, maybe there will be a Steve Jobs of sheet music one day.
Tags: DSP applications, Sheet Music, Software, Tablet
Often times it would be nice to adjust the monitor mix on the fly… but alas, the monitor engineer can’t read minds, and I’ve never seen a on stage talkback microphone just to the monitor engineer. Of course a talkback mic isn’t much help if one is a vocalist either. The end result, levels are pretty much static during an entire song. The only exception being if one works out some type of hand signals with the monitor engineer.
In my situation… I dont have a monitor engineer, and often times its a challenge enough to handle page turns, much less run over to the monitor console to adjust the mix.
One concept… a foot pedal controller to adjust monitor levels.
Some features:
- foot pedals to increment or decrement individual channel levels
- highlighted LED bars with user customizable overlays indicate to the user which channel is being adjusted
- a middle foot pedal which serves to select the appropriate channel to adjust
- no master volume control on the pedal board, as that is set once at the main amplifier… ideally only individual levels would need tweaking. I may need to rethink this a bit. (its only a software and overlay mod)
- output is digital only… in keeping with minimally invasive audio, I want to keep multiple audio signals off the stage floor as much as possible. (likely the data will be midi sysex messages to control a midi mixer)
- a LED bargraph meter to provide feedback as to current level setting
Comments invited
Tags: Engineering, Foot Pedal, Monitor
I’ve returned to live performance, albeit on a very small scale. Its been interesting to note how quickly most of the skills came back… but sadly hearing is not one of them. I fully believe hearing issue is not so much the loud music of my younger days, as much as it was a kazillion hours of roaring aircraft engines.
To add insult to injury, the church I play at logistically stacks the deck against me in a huge way. It has a very powerful HVAC system, which seems to reverberate off of the projection screen creating an area of massive standing waves… right where I am located. The end result, while I can hear the low frequencies just fine, ie my bass, other must-hear sounds like the vocalists, and the keyboard are pretty much buried whenever the HVAC system comes on.
Granted, years ago, this would have been just a minor annoyance. Many times back then I ended up in positions, where I could only hear myself and the drummer, and due to a much higher skill level it was no big deal. Well… add in rust, and what once was just annoying, is now frustrating.
So, the solution… easy, just add an extra wedge, and feed the vocal and keyboard mix back to my location. However, like 99% of church gigs, there is no rack of splitters for FOH/monitor mixers, nor a splitter snake, nor is there even a monitor send on the PA, much less any amps/wedges. Thus, what might be a simple deal in a concert setup becomes significantly more difficult where I am currently planted. Obvious super simple solutions like changing my position, and or turning off the HVAC system during services are not very realistic. Its the same deal with spending $2000 for an off the shelf solution (I dont have $100 to spare, much less $2000), to say nothing of the possible integration problems with the existing system.
Being similar issues plagued me years ago, in venues ranging from churches to dance halls… there does seem a need for simple, lost cost, minimally invasive monitoring system. Stay tuned for more.
Tags: Engineering, Monitor
I found the following pretty useful, albeit its from 2005.
Health insurance for an independent contractor is impossible. This country is in a terrible health insurance situation. We have at least 400,000 songwriters affiliated with the three performing rights organizations who have no coverage at all. These are people that we know don’t have health insurance. It reflects what we’re seeing on a national level in the U.S. Health insurance has just become so expensive for independent contractors; more than half don’t have any health coverage.
Ideally, it would be nice for ASCAP to get group rates, but we would need 70-80 percent of our members to sign up for our health insurance to get group rates. If you don’t do that, you get something that is called “negative selection.” Negative selection means that if you go to any organization and say, “We don’t care if ten or 10,000 of your members sign up. We’ll take any ten or more. If they sign up, fine.” Who signs up? People who can’t get insurance anywhere else. It just blows the whole thing apart. You can’t do that. You need a broad base of people to sign up. We can’t get 70 percent of our members to sign up. Those who really need insurance may have a spouse that has insurance and they’re not going to sign up with us. Or, they can’t afford it, even with a group rate. People who are just starting out of college can’t afford it, for example.
Read more at
http://www.ascap.org/playback/2005/summer/features/musicpro_story.html
Tags: Insurance
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