Bar Band Review — Good Players, but everything else was wrong

No, I’m not going to name the band or the bar, which would give it away.

They were incidental to why I went up to the local dive to watch the ‘9ers game. Unfortunately, the band came on during half-time, so I had no choice but to listen to them.

All of them were good to very good players (the bassist), and I haven’t heard so much wrong with a band (maybe three bands combined) in ages.

Here’s what was wrong:

• They were way late setting up, the earliest of them arriving half-an-hour before they were due on; (normally you want to be there at least an hour before);
• The drummer didn’t arrive until 20 minutes before they were due on;
• He was so late they didn’t do a sound check;
• They didn’t have monitors;
• All they were miking was the vocals;
• And as a result, the mix was way off during the first set, with the snare way too loud during the first three or four numbers;
• Because they didn’t do a sound check, the vocal mics were feeding back, sometimes painfully, for half the set, and they didn’t have anyone riding the board so they didn’t adjust for it;
• Despite the feedback problems, the vocals were too far down in the mix (yes, it is possible);
• It sounded like the vocals were dry (i.e., no reverb or other FX);
• On the final two or three tunes, they had some idiot sitting in playing claves badly — think the clunk, clunk, clunk of “Magic Bus” rather than the
  clink, clink, clink that you want — and just enough off the beat, and irregularly so, that it was annoying as hell;
• They had two — not one, but two, count ’em, two — keyboard players, and on many of the numbers the keyboard player playing lead was using a soul-sucking artificial synth sound a la The Cars that was abandoned for good reason back in the early ’80s;
• I didn’t like the guitarist’s tone (too muted in an attempt to be pretty — but that’s just me);
• And (a more general whine) they advertised themselves as a “soul” band, but they didn’t do soul — they did lounge, the closest thing to soul being their closing number, Al Green’s “I’ll Be There”;
• And, of course, just covers, no originals — it ain’t that hard to write originals, but writing good ones is another matter; why most musicians don’t even try it is beyond me.

At the break, they finally did a sound check. I had to sit through their first couple of numbers in the second set before the ‘9ers kicked the winning field goal in the final seconds. (Go ‘9ers!)

What I noticed was:

• The feedback was finally gone;
• The balance was a bit better
• The vocals were still too far down in the mix;
• They were still dry;
• And their material was almost as awful, non-soulful ands non-original as in the first set.

The lessons here are pretty obvious:

• Get there early enough to do a sound check;
• Do a sound check;
• Use monitors;
• Mic everything (and I mean everything);
• If you’re not competent to do a good mix, have someone along who’s competent to do the sound;
• And above all deliver what you promise: if you promise blues, play blues; and if you promise soul, play soul.

 

 

 

 

 

Musical Tip of the Day: How to Play Claves (hand percussion) Correctly

by Chaz Bufe, author of An Understandable Guide to Music Theory.

The word claves refers to two things (in English): the rhythms underlying Afro-Cuban music (especially the two-bar “son” or 3-2 clave pattern: 1, and of 2, 4; 2, 3 — a long pre-existing, basic pattern which Bo Diddley somehow had the balls to relabel as “the Bo Diddley beat”); and the approximately 9″-long (23 cm) hardwood sticks (usually mahogany or, here in the Southwest, ironwood), one slightly smaller in diameter than the other.

Claves are almost always misplayed on rock recordings. (They’re normally played correctly on Afro-Cuban and Latin Jazz recordings.) Why? Rock musicians simply don’t know how to play them properly, and so get the dreary “clunk” sound — exemplified on the Who’s “Magic Bus” — rather than the much brighter “clink” sound when properly played. (The “clunk” is produced by wrapping your hands around the claves and banging them together wherever’s convenient.)

So, how do you play them correctly? There are three things to keep in mind:

• Do not wrap your hands around them. Rather, cup your hands, grasp both claves about 60% of the way up with your thumb and index finger, and rest the butt on the heel of your hand. Again, do not grasp them.
• If you’re right-handed, hold the smaller (skinnier) of the two claves in your right hand — it’ll produce a brighter sound when you strike it against the other. (If you’re left-handed reverse this: the thing to keep in mind is that the smaller clave is the striking clave.)
• And strike the clave in your left hand about an inch or a hair over (about 3 cm) from the end.

Do this, and you’ll get a great sound — better (at least in this regard) — than The Who. It’ll take a bit of practice, but you’ll get there quickly.