General Music Chat

The guy has a boatload of talent, quality gear, when soloing he channels Leon Russell, and he has a great ear. Wow! cool! But... he is kind of a wilting violet. I don't know how much stage experience he has but he seems really fearful about making a mistake and is often way too quiet for the songs.

How do I encourage this guy to step into the light?

Let him know you'll cover for him. That his band brothers will pick him up. That you all have each other's backs.

Easier to slay the dragon as a united front.


And... Let him know that the audience is on his side. They want him to succeed. They'll forgive mistakes, and probably won't notice many of them.

Yep GT that was the talk we had 2 weeks ago. It works with most but I don't think it sank in yet with this guy. That is what good bands do. They catch you when you slip and give you a place to regain your footing. I guarantee I will lay some eggs during most live performances but I can't tell you which songs yet. If we fat finger a chord or solo and it's a real stinker we just call it jazz.

Live music is always imperfect and that is a good thing.

Might take a couple of 'oops' experiences before it's more than words to him. (As long as he doesn't freeze up)

You could appeal to his sense of self, if he thinks this is what he was meant to do - "god made you for this. Don't doubt your purpose."

If all else fails, I hear cocaine and tequila is a cocky combination.

It's tough if he doesn't have much stage experience. The big quesitons woudl be whether he really wants to do this. SOme guys get so content 'playing at home' that they never develop the jones for playing in fornt of people.

My .02 from the perspective of a recent convert to the world of musicians.
You all know I've only been at this a few years. A drop in the bucket as it were in comparison to most of you life long performers.
Fresh in my mind and hot off the press . . .

Give him a little spot to the stage rear . . . not stuck right out front . . . so he feels 'protected' by the musicians in front of him to begin with.

And put him on stage playing live.
Help him develop a stage presence and ego from there.

Was not so hard for me because of countless public performances in the martial art world, but still, it takes time and experience to develop the sense of being a live performing musician.

All good input thanks guys... except maybe for the cocaine part
Yep we have him in the back next to the drums and he likes it fine there. The two who sing (Bass player and me) are out front and we like it that way as well so we can move a bit.

We are planning a shakedown gig at a local pub in a few weeks. We will only do about 10 songs we have down cold and shoot some video. This should tell the story if he wants to do this.

How do I encourage this guy to step into the light?

you could always ask him

It will take milage for him to be 100% over that. Because the only way ultimately, to deal with screwups in the music is to play a lot with folks. It tightens you up but more importantly, you learn how to cover your errors. That is a necessary job skill!

My younger brother was like that. Sort of a Bill Wyman on lead guitar. Then one night he took a knee to adjust some peddle he was using and people starting cheering for some reason. He looked and up and, 'Wooooh - I like this!' Problem solved.

Talbot

How do I encourage this guy to step into the light?

beer?

plenty of good advice above. hopefully w time his confidence level will increase.

what's he like when he's not behind a keyboard? confident...or not so much so? in my exp you are what eat.... and you play who you are.

These days I mostly play with seasoned performers, so I cant really relate.

To me you just have to support him and pull him out, so what if you make a mistake, man I make more mistakes than anyone I know.

Weve got this young guy at our open mic thing that always wants to play Paranoid, Enter Sandman, Man In The Box and the other night added Living After MIdnite, songs Ive done a gazillion times, I have been trying to get him to solo more, but he always turns to me and says you take it, and I took em when he handed them too me, now Ive played these songs a million times thru the years, and honestly dont really care if I play on them or not, but i just happened to be playing, afterwards hes like man Ive never heard anyone solo on those songs like that, while my mind is thinking well I screwed up the front on this one, got way out of key in the middle passage of another one, and whatever we played last I just threw the book at it and did the wildest things I could think of which arent even close to the original.

In saying all of this, its all a matter of perspective, I mean I thought I sucked and this guy thinks Im the shred king now, and so did some other people there, cause I really dont do that very often, just try to support the younger less experienced players.

You have to support this guy, and if he happens to make a mistake dont let him worry about it.

It takes a lot of gigs to really get smooth at screwing up, hell Im still working on it, each and every time I play.

LOL, like others have said, when I really get outside the box on a solo, I will just tell the other guys I was listening to Coltrane today and just got an idea from that, they go oh yeah JAZZ! LOL!

I don't know this keys player very well and he is pretty quiet during breaks. I find that keys players are often a bit introverted so no surprise. I send him song lists and lead sheets for different arrangements and he rarely gets back to me.

He is a long time friend of the drummer and the drummer is just killer excellent. Drummer has been in rival bands for years and I always appreciated his work. He also toured and recorded with a bunch of majors including Earth Wind & Fire and others back in the 80s-90s. I am leaning on the drummer for guidance here and he is not real happy with the keys progress so far. An interesting dynamic. I'll do what I can to get this guy in the game because skilled keys players are rare and always working.

Funny story about the open mic JW. We had a similar thing happen at a jam last month. Somebody wanted to do Red House so I started it off. I haven't worked on this song in maybe 5 yrs and forgot a lot of the moves so just did my slow blues thing with a Jimi vibe. A bystander recorded it and put it up on facebook raving about how excellent it was. I actually felt sick watching the vid as the guitar work was a mess from my perspective. I removed my "tag" because I don't want that ugliness on my page but people are still giving it thumbs up.

It takes a lot of gigs to really get smooth at screwing up, hell Im still working on it, each and every time I play.

LOL! yes...THAT!

often the quickest and easiest way to tell the pros from the less experienced...how well and how quickly can you cover up your screwups!

LOL, like others have said, when I really get outside the box on a solo, I will just tell the other guys I was listening to Coltrane today and just got an idea from that, they go oh yeah JAZZ! LOL!

yeah, how nice for you rock gawds! so...what am I supposed to say when i hit my ration of clams on a jazz gig??!?!?!!?!??!

i do find it interesting how we all deal w that.... yet another fine line that we find ourselves walking from time to time....when we know we haven't performed at our best, and yet others from the audience, our friends, significant others, or even our bandmates think we've knocked it outta the park ....when inside we're looking around for a gas mask to deal w the smelly load we just dropped.

Mark - just tell them you were 'channeling some John Wilder'! Of course they won't know who you mean, but it'll shut them up!

It takes a lot of gigs to really get smooth at screwing up, hell Im still working on it, each and every time I play.

LOL! yes...THAT!

often the quickest and easiest way to tell the pros from the less experienced...how well and how quickly can you cover up your screwups!

For sure. I'll walk away from a song that I totally f*cked up and mention something about it and the reaction is usually a blank stare - they had no idea. So just pretend it was all planned, you're all set.

Mark - just tell them you were 'channeling some John Wilder'! Of course they won't know who you mean, but it'll shut them up!

OUCH! aw snap.... JW...you've been DEALT mah brutha!

thanks for the belly laugh, mike.