Going Public

[daveinspain]

The whole reason I started playing guitar was to fulfill a life long dream of being able to play out for people... I think there is a need to feel self worth and be appreciated by others. I've worked with and been around great musicians and have done everything from being a roady to head sound engineer for a major touring artist. I always though, I wish I could play guitar like that... When I saw a great player or heard a great recording I would imagine how wonderful it must feel to express yourself in a free flowing guitar solo that comes from the soul. It must be amazing to be able to do that. So yeah I want to play out for people, got a gig this Saturday night with my band... I wont be doing any amazing solos anytime just yet but it could happen someday, God willing...

[retrosurfer1959]

I like playing live and I love busking on street corners eve more. I think it's the ability to interact with people and to be able to see how your music makes them feel. I prefer small venue's a perfect size would be 100-150 or even smaller. I play some hotel bars during the summer and i love that venue. That said though I hate to play for family and close friends more than anything it's probably the only thing that makes me nervous My wife even knows to hide if she's somewhere I'm performing i just can't relax if she's watching me since she knows I can play I always think she's picking out the things I do wrong which is pretty much what I hear anyway1 Give it a try though Izzy and playing with a drummer is always a great way to improve your skill at least if they can keep time. Ive been playing for more years hell decades then I like to think about and I still practice with a metronome running somewhere in the room. I think the easiest way to be a bad guitar player is to not be able to keep time with others no matter your skill set it still sounds bad if your out of sync.

 

JUST DON'T FEED THE DRUMMER AND DON'T LET HIM LAY DOWN ON THE COUCH EVER. EITHER OF THOSE HAPPEN AND DRUMMERS ARE DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO GET RID OF!

[badbluesplayer]

It depends on what your personality is like. I was always wanting attention so I like to play in front of people. But I used to get really nervous - like panic attack nervous. Now that I have overcome the nervousness, I love it.

 

It can really help the rest of your life if you want a self esteem boost or if you are goal based. It helps your confidence and your self image immensely.

[AXE®]

It's like jumping off a cliff into the lake. That heart stopping hesitation just before you do it then...Jump!

As soon as you hit the water you can't wait to do it again.

 

 

[ZenKen]

That's as good a description as I have ever heard Axe!

[Notes_Norton]

I started by playing saxophone in junior high school band. I actually started on drums but moved to sax when the rental instrument became available.

 

Then I got in a little rock and roll band with a guitarist, bassist, and drummer. We were terrible, but so was everybody else back then.

 

The first time I played in public was in this band at a junior high school dance. It was quite a rush - I loved it.

 

Here we were, playing the songs we loved and had been rehearsing for so long, the dance floor was full, and that cute girl who didn't know I existed in English class was 'making eyes' at me --- and at the end of the night they actually paid me money.

 

I've been a pro musician ever since, I've played in little intimate venues where the audience was close, I've played in the warm up band for major stars in huge concerts, I've played on cruise ships, I've played on TV, I've played on TV, and even in recording studios.

 

My least favorite of these venues is the recording studio because the audience is small (the people in the fish tank). Oh it's really great to be recorded and to hear myself as recorded by a good engineer, but without an audience, something is missing. The people in the fish bowl are there to record you, not to listen to the music, so their attention is divided - it's good, just not as good.

 

Playing without an audience to me is simply practice. When there is no audience, I play to improve my skills. These days it's mostly on the guitar as it is my newest instrument.

 

Playing for an audience is playing. I've never had stage fright, and if I'm at a party or night club I'd rather be in the band than in the audience. To me, the object of playing is to please both myself and an audience. In fact, it's a little like making love, the more I please the other, the more pleasurable it is for me.

 

I'm in a duo with my wife. When we met we were in different bands and when our bands broke up we flitted around from band to band for a while, and then decided to go duo. I learned to make backing tracks with a MIDI sequencer and we've been doing it ever since. She likes to perform as well. We like to say, gigging is our second favorite thing to do (and we can't say what's first on a family oriented forum).

 

Notes

[zigzag]

This thread gave me a flashback to the first time I ever played in public. I was 12 years old in 1965. My older sister had a party in our back yard. There were around 50 late-teenagers there. A buddy of mine asked her if we could do a song we'd been working on. We plugged into the band's amp during their break, me with my single pickup Kent (Strat lookalike), and played "Bad to Me" instrumentally. We were good, and when the crowd clapped for us at the end of the song, that was the coolest thing I'd ever done.

 

I know, it ain't the same as playing cranked in a stadium of 50,000.

[deeman]

I played in a band from 2002-2009 where we played live shows at least twice a month and at our peak twice a weekend. Looking back, those were my best times and I would trade anything to go back.

 

I currently play with a band but we all work full time and don't play out, just jam and record. And now with that band we are on hiatus and don't even jam anymore. Now i miss just the opportunity to play with other people once a week. My advice to aging musicians is to at least continue jamming with people even if you don't play out. Its so much fun (and a great excuse to get drunk with the boys).

[jdgm]

AXE® nailed it. Please excuse me AXE® but even I have to cop your licks on this one:

 

 

Yeah. Hell Yeah! Jump!

 

 

 

That's all. The truth.

[cookieman15061]

The whole reason I started playing guitar was to fulfill a life long dream of being able to play out for people... I think there is a need to feel self worth and be appreciated by others. I've worked with and been around great musicians and have done everything from being a roady to head sound engineer for a major touring artist. I always though, I wish I could play guitar like that... When I saw a great player or heard a great recording I would imagine how wonderful it must feel to express yourself in a free flowing guitar solo that comes from the soul. It must be amazing to be able to do that. So yeah I want to play out for people, got a gig this Saturday night with my band... I wont be doing any amazing solos anytime just yet but it could happen someday, God willing...

 

 

LOL Well the whole reason I started playing guitar was the girls.

[cookieman15061]

My first live gig was a girls sweet 16 birthday party. I was 15 and the youngest member of the band on rhythm guitar.We knew maybe 10 songs really well. Your basic stuff, Johnny B. Goode, Takin' Care Of Business, Smoke On The Water, but we each made 10 bucks and the attention afterwards was so cool. I was hooked.

[L5Larry]

Of all the things I've done in the music/entertainment business/industry, performing for an audience is BY FAR my favorite thing to do, and the goal which got me started in the first place. I played my first gig in 1973 in a shopping mall, and my next gig is tonight in a supper club (with something like 1000 in between).

 

I'm very task/goal oriented, and if I'm not practicing or rehearsing for something particular (concert, recording session, wife's favorite song, etc), I very rarely even pick up a guitar. So having something "on the books" is what keeps me playing, practicing and moving forward.

 

That said.... I really believe it's a matter of whatever works for you. The "business" of music can many times take away from the enthusiasm of "makin' music".

[Izzy]

LOL Well the whole reason I started playing guitar was the girls.

 

I was waiting to hear this one!

[RaysEpiphone]

I brought up a question in the, quickest way to become a better player," thread and I'd like to hear more responces on the subject.

 

Surfpup already said public playing is his least favorite aspect thought he is perfectly comfortable playing before any size crowd while Tman likes to be onstage.

 

Do guitar players generally want to play in public?

I'm not saying play it in public, mind you...but knowing you're being watched may add to your technique and make you less....sloppy?

 

I can sometimes have a tendency to play sloppy all the time!

[kaleb]

I love playing live. Paul Stanley doesn't call it "electric church" for nothin'!

 

Me and my power trio, Friends Of The Family (sometimes joined by a friend that sings and plays acoustic...when he's with us we play folky stuff. That's usually the first part of the night, Act I if you will. Then, he takes a hike (unless he's playing harmonica) and we unleash the fury...)!

[Greybeard]

My first live gig was a girls sweet 16 birthday party. I was 15 and the youngest member of the band on rhythm guitar.We knew maybe 10 songs really well. Your basic stuff, Johnny B. Goode, Takin' Care Of Business, Smoke On The Water, but we each made 10 bucks and the attention afterwards was so cool. I was hooked.

 

 

Great and vivid memory.

 

We played an all girls high school awards banquet gig back in the early 60's and we were the only five guys in the place. It was the first time I heard girls screaming when we played and also the first time we signed autographs. Biggest collection of phone numbers we ever got in one place too. It was that night that all of those guitar lessons and hours of practice paid off.

[milod]

I guess I'm waxing philosophical here, but...

 

I think there's an internal desire among humans to make music, and to do so in company one way or another.

 

The Lakota, at least, traditionally have had drum sets - bands if you will. And that's from an illiterate neolithic culture that took the art quite seriously as far back as I can tell. And then there was the more individualistic playing of a flute of some sort in that same tribal environment.

 

Not everyone was a musician, but the role of a musician was important - as important as other skills necessary to what was seen as a good life from food, to clothing and shelter. So also was painting and various sorts of decorative arts.

 

Bottom line to me is that I think deep down most musicians, painters and other artists are not just plying their art for themselves, but also for others. It's almost inevitable.

 

m

[AndyK]

I'm back in a band after just playing at home for years - best decision I ever made. It's a LOAD of very hard work, having to get on with people - some leave, some stay - but my strength has always been listening to others and playing in the gaps. I did a fair bit of amateur drama in my youth, and I love the stage - it's not that I'm a show-off (I'm actually a quiet person), but I feel it's where I belong.