So I’m sure I’m not the first one with this thought, but I haven’t seen it before and thought it was a good idea.
I thinking about starting a band, and going through my mental rolodex of people I know that play an instrument and I realized I don’t know anyone off the top of my head that can sing, at best I would sound like I’m doing karaoke…
Live band karaoke. We don’t get a singer. To really do it right you as a band would need to know a huge catalogue of music, but maybe it could work with a setlist of the right songs. And you sign up people to be the lead singer for a song, and if you don’t get one you either do an instrumental or a band member that isn’t a great singer does their karaoke version.
If done well, I think something like that could be fun.
As someone who isn´t that good with bass so far but loves going to karaoke I really like that idea. Please put Total Ecplise of the Heart in you catalogue
i feel like this would be perfect at weddings: a versatile band with a huge catalog of songs, everyone is having fun, many of them are hammered… seems perfect.
It’s not easy. This is what I do. Half of my guests are the actual singers themselves. They are pros so let’s just talk about the other half.
10% will tell you the song and the key they can sing and generously half of that were right. Almost every request “jam” would start in one key and quickly drop as soon as the first few notes sang in the first verse then drop again before second verse. If the song has an epic outtro then be prepared to drop another half or whole step. On a good set you’d have 2-3 requests, imagine doing it all night.
The goal is to make them look good and in turn get very generous tips backing vocals and realtime pitch assistance whatever to make your guest feel good performing. This is big in the Asian community. Bassist has one of the most important role as the type of fills you put into the song can make or break the timing of the singer who’s never sing with you before as well as set the right kind of energy to the music.
I like it, I like that type of high pressure live performance it’s fun when I nailed it.
See, I wasn’t thinking about playing in the singer’s key or anything. lol
That’s way more advanced than I’m at. I was thinking just the same as karaoke but with a live band so you get the “rock star” experience. The screen scrolls the words, your drunk self sings along the best you can.
Yeah, that’s is quite difficult. Live band usually have this weird effect on people and words they know well just seems to disappear from their memories along with their timing. It’s almost like the first time someone read from the teleprompter, they always read too fast.
If it’s a bar or restaurant setting it does have to be such huge library of songs just keep it to 40-60 song options each night that they can choose from. The band can probably cover no more than 30-35 songs anyway.
I’m not sure how the scrolling lyrics work on the live performance without sequencing because the lyrics is not embedded into the song.
I like the idea of live music feel instead of the studio track, I guess you can do the live recording and track the songs that way. It’d still be lots of fun. If and when you ever put one together let us know, I’ll go jam.
My idea of the Karaoke is actually the Bass Karaoke at one of the BassBuzz local meetup. just pick your songs then we just remove the bass track and you can perform in front of your peers. I can tell you it’s nothing like practicing at home, the pressure is just right under playing in front of a camera (that’s the worst)
It’s a cool idea, but I think all band members would need to be pretty good to pull it off! I think one of the challenges with this, as a lessthan competent bassist, is that:
a) as @Al1885 indicated, you would need to be really comfortable shifting key on the fly. As a barely competent bassist, shifting key on a song really ~@*&s up my muscle memory. I’ve learnt it in A, play in in A# … ouch!
b) it surprises me how much I relay on the vocalist actually hitting their mark on a song, so that I can hit mine. Again, this is in the context of a barely competent bassist seeking to ensure that he hits his marks. Playing with someone who doesn’t actually know the words, or doesn’t actually know phrasing would also likely #@$% me!
It’s a different kind of skill, one that doesn’t necessarily requires the Scholar expertise just hours or trials and errors and muscle memory.
The most important thing of all is the best kept secret with live performing, I did share the secrecy with the United Brotherhood of Gigging Musicians (UBGM) but I would spill it here with mt dearest family of strangers,
One, Nobody knows when you messed up
Two, even if they know, Nobody cares,
As long as you have the will to (just to yourself) humiliate yourself, go for it you’ll have a fantastic Time.
Yeah, I’m at the point in my bass journey where if the song is in A, that’s how I learned to play it and if you can’t sing in A, then tough luck, maybe I’ll pull a Lars and turn the bass volume down lol.
I’ve never actually played with anyone yet. Closest I’m come if playing along with a song on YouTube. I have a hand full of songs and I just memorized the sounds. I don’t pretend to be an actual musician yet. At this point I would consider myself a halfway decent karaoke bassist. I’m exploring more into music theory so I can work my way to being an actual musician.
I didn’t think I would want to join a band when I started this, I started with the goal of being a bedroom bassist but now I’d like to get into a band, but I would have to find musicians with similar goals as me.
I’m pushing 50 with a family and career, I’m not looking to get into serious gigging or touring at any point. Just maybe a gig at a bar once or twice a month and I would be ecstatic.
Do it @DarthTim! I found people on Facebook and on Bandmix. Be honest about your abilities and what you are looking for, then engage with people. There are plenty of others out there, the same as you, as me, as an awful lot of the folks on this forum.
My band, I say “my” as I got it going and I’m the one that drives it along, was created this way. I just reached out to people. It hasn’t been a straight line ride … 3rd guitarist, 2nd vocalist… but the current team are all pretty much on the same wavelength, with the same goals. In fact we had a band meeting a few days ago to align on 2026 goals and renew our commitment. We all work, are all 50+, and only one of us (the guitarist) doesn’t have young’ish kids, so we’re pretty much in the same boat.
Playing with others stretches you in a way that simply doesn’t happen at home. The desire not to be the one that fcuks up is strong!! But everyone gets things wrong, you just have to learn to style it out
