Tag: Cover Band

Practice Time

Just getting ready to go to band practice. We’re going to be short a singer tonight (he’s in Chicago… I still think we should try rehearsing over skype) so the focus is on tightening up the rest of us.

The downside for me right now is that I am exhausted to the point of distraction. I took a shower today at about 11:30 and ever since I sat down to tie my shoes following that shower I have been on the verge of sleep. I went out to run some errands and that was okay, but as soon as I got home I just wanted to sleep. I expect that this will carry over to practice tonight and I will suck something fierce.

13 days to our next gig. I am going to do a lot of practicing at home. Probably going to be noodling on the guitar while watching TV with the kids after work and stuff. I will be ready when the time comes. Hell, I’m almost ready right now. Just not tonight… Urgh. Is it bed time?

On a related note, my wife and I started binge watching The Man in the High Castle last night. After practice we expect to have enough time to watch two more episodes before we have to give up and go to bed…

We have three episodes left.

Nooooooooo!!!!!

Musical Morning

It’s been a musical morning so far. I did some work on my 50/90 failure. I recorded lead guitars for five songs. I’ve got seven more to do but my finger tips are starting to sting pretty bad, and I have a band practice tonight. So I think I’ll take a break, then maybe practice for rehearsal tonight, then maybe sneak in one or two, and then be paralyzed from the top knuckle up for a day or two. Totally worth it.

50/90 ends in six days, and Lizardfish gig #2 is in 13 days. No problem!


Band Practice/Crunch Time

We had a band practice last night. Since it’s down to the last three weekends before the next gig we added an hour to rehearsal. We should have added more.

Boy, were we bad last night. Everyone was tired and hot and a little cranky and some of us were a little sick. We just did not play well at all…

…and that’s probably a good thing.

It’s been two months since the last gig. We took quite a bit of time off afterwards, and we’ve added a ton of new songs. Maybe we’ve been a little over confident. Sucking up the joint last night will probably have the beneficial effect of scaring us straight. The next practice will be much better. Bank on it.

I was trying to push through it and I gave myself a good blister on my left ring finger. That should be fun. I haven’t changed my strings since July 1st. If I pop a blister while playing I’ll probably need a tetanus shot. Totally worth it.

Band Practice

Tonight was our first band practice in something like three weeks. We have a gig in a month but rehearsal time has been hard to come by.

The main focus right now is getting a handful of new songs up to speed. Some of them are songs the band played with their old guitar player, so they are only really new to me.

I expected us to be rusty and sloppy and not very good, but we played surprisingly well. It was pretty intense too and my finger tips are burning. My calluses were not as hard as they should be, and the strings were digging in to my skin something fierce. I need to practice at home more than I do.

We have until Saturday October 8th to get our collective shit together again. We will be ready.

Band Practice

This weekend’s band practice was pretty good.  I didn’t play terribly well.  I felt like I couldn’t get out of my own way.  It was weird.  We did a bunch of songs that we’ve been neglecting, and a couple of songs we added last week.  Not too shabby.

The interesting thing for me personally is the lack of pain.  Last week’s practice was completely pain free.  This week I had one song where things tightened up and ouch, but otherwise it was fine.  I’m not sure what I did different, but I hope I keep it up!

Here are a few songs.  I haven’t listened through these all the way yet so if there’s a major screw up I don’t know about I’ll edit things out of the playlist.

Enjoy(ish)

I Live to Play Guitar Again

Whatever it was that I did this weekend, it worked. I had very little pain in my hands during last night’s band practice. Every now and then it would flare up just to remind me that it was there, but it was never bad and it didn’t last long.

So what was the cure this time? Increased practicing on my own? Starting to warm up an hour before rehearsal started? Stretching sooner? The double shot of Advil I took just as rehearsal was starting? Playing my Les Paul instead of my ES-335?

Or did I just relax and not tense up the way I usually do.

I don’t know. Some combination of all of them? I don’t know, but I’ll try the same routine next week. With the pain out of the equation, I was able to concentrate on what I was doing and I felt much better about the quality of my guitar playing. My singing too, although who cares about that, amiright?

We played a bunch of new songs, and for the first time since I started mic’ing the room the recording sounds half decent. The vocals still need to come up and maybe the guitar needs to back off a bit (fat chance of that happening, amiright?). I even did a tiny bit of mastering this time. It’s just a stereo track. I put a compresser on the whole track, added a little eq, and just the tiniest touch of reverb. I also unmuted the left side of the drums.

What do you think?

Music from this Past Weekend

I told you all that I played really poorly at this past weekend’s practice, and that the pain in my hand was significantly worse than ever before.

Did I also tell you that I recorded most of the practice and didn’t notice until we were done that one of the two mics on the drums was muted on the mixing board? Other than that the recording is almost okay. Next week I have to turn my vocal mic WAY up and maybe nudge the PA output up a smidgen. Also maybe turn up the guitar a bit. As for the drums, un-mute the right channel (you fat idiot), pull the low end up a little more (again) and maybe turn both channels down a hair so that the crash cymbals don’t blow your brains out when you’re listening with headphones on.

Oh yeah, and don’t play the guitar like a quadriplegic with the IQ of a salmon egg. That will help improve the quality as well.

Here are a few songs from Sunday. I picked the ones with the fewest colossal guitar screw ups, although the guitar is a touch out of tune on the Gaga tune.

David Crosby

David Crosby from Crosby Stills and Nash is on Twitter. As celebrity Twitter users go I think he’s my favorite. He answers tons of fan questions, usually in one word answers, and he’s always an entertaining read.

I saw this tweet yesterday:

Well, speaking as one who plays in a cover band, I take that as a challenge! We have three singers in the Lizardfish, but we don’t have three Crosby Stills and Nash level singers. Pulling off songs recorded by what is probably the greatest three part harmony vocals of the last 50 years would be quite a stretch for us.

Fortunately one of my favorite Crosby songs doesn’t have any vocal harmonies at all! We could probably make this work, sort of…

Yes?

Yes formed in 1968.  From then through last week there were approximately 746253647 different band members, but only one bass player.  Chris Squire.  He lost a fight with cancer back in June.  When he first got sick the band had a tour booked.  He had to back out and asked a former band mate to sit in for him.  It sounds like his intentions were honorable.  If the tour was canceled, all of the crew would be out of work.  

When he died, I assumed the tour would be canceled after all.  I was wrong.  The shows started a few days ago.  There are no original members left in the band.  The one man who represents the band’s identity, Jon Anderson has been out for years.  The most noted guitarist and drummer are there.  The keyboard player spent a brief time with the band in 1980, but he’s more known for working with other bands.  The keyboard player most fans want to see has been out of the picture forever.  Now we replace the one constant with an ex-rhythm guitar player who probably had no business being in the band for the blink of time he was.  It’s just not Yes anymore and anyone who shells out money to see them is deluded.  They are nothing but a cover band that happens to feature a guy named White and another guy named Howe.

I can forgive the band for carrying on with this tour.  It was Chris Squire’s wish that the show go on.  Given that, sure let this tour happen.  After its through though… Please oh please let Yes stop.  Let it end mercifully.  Let the cover bands take care of being cover bands.  Alan White, Geoff Downes, Steve Howe, John Davidson (is that his name?), please put an end to this.

Tipper’s Gonna be Pissed

Damn, Tipper Gore is gonna be pissed off at me.

This is a song from Thursday night’s practice. I didn’t include it in the playlist I posted yesterday because I made a dumb mistake during my guitar solo and it soured the whole thing for me. Now that same mistake is going to bring down the might of the PMRC (is that what Tipper’s censorship group from the 80’s was called? I can’t remember).

I was feeling a little goofy all night. I was also feeling a little adventurous. The result, I did a lot of silly little gimmicky things that sound okay when you pull them off, but sound really dumb when you don’t. Most of them sounded okay. During this song I got it into my head that I was going to strum a dominant 7 chord way up high on the neck during my solo. Robin Trower does it all the time and it is super awesome when he does it. Unfortunately for me, having the same first three letters of my first name does not make me as skilled a soloist as Robin Trower. I started playing the little gimmick and then realized… what the hell am I doing? That chord doesn’t work in this key. What are you an idiot? As I stopped I shouted an obscenity. I won’t repeat it here, but it started with the letter “f”. Now I know you’re all crushed to learn that I sometimes say bad words, but you’ll just have to accept that I’m not this pillar of morality that you thought I was. I’m sorry about that (not really).

At some point later in the song it occurred to me that I very nearly yelled my bad word into my microphone. Hehe, thought me. I asked the other guys if they heard it and they said no. I just listened to this recording a few minutes ago and sure enough, I heard it. BOOM, right there where Tipper Gore can be all offended by it.

Enjoy my little eff-bomb! WOOHOO