So I’m learning about 10 new songs right now and because of that I’m referring to tab while I’m playing in practice. It’s going ok but I’m usually a, “I can play it from memory if I can play it” kinda guy. Like maybe a quick peek at tab but that’s it.
So while I’m squinting at tab on my tablet I’m focused and not moving much.
Last practice we are almost an hour in and my guitar player says to me, “Dude you gotta keep time!”
I thought woh, it would have been better just to kick me right in the balls. Is my timing really that sh*??!!??
Instead of getting pissed (cause I thought I was keeping up) I paused my rage and he continued, “yea man you gotta move your body! It’ll help you and it’ll help the audience get into it too”
So yea it went from a “dude you f*n suck” to a “hey move a little” which I wasn’t doing because I was reading
So anyway, not actually horrible feedback (accurate) but for a hot second, there were almost tears
Anyway, that got longer than I would have hoped. I’d love to hear other people’s feedback horror stories…
so not exactly to the OPs question but as i teach and practice art and design, the worst feedback i have ever gotten, ever given, and/or ever heard is:
“i love it.”
or
“i hate it.”
these are equally useless comments in terms of improvment, learning, etc… while one makes me feel good and one makes me feel bad, neither help me get any better.
i have written quite a bit about giving and receiving feedback — specifically in visual art & design but certainly applies to music as well, including this little website:
Nice! I think as an artist leading with questions like, “this part felt rough for me what do you think? Any ideas on how I could be better?”
Sometimes we are just negative on ourselves or we are too close to tell that that specific part felt rough but it was the rest of the piece that was actually off.
Bass has been a master class in getting feedback and killing my own negative self talk.
As a drummer : playing my heart out in front of other guys ( from another band ) in our practice space , and it went really well.
After a few songs the drummer of the other band comes over to me and says : you know , I also give drum lessons… what a douche…
I was playing in a band with some mates years ago in a pub in Reading. We finished the first half of the set with our track “On the rise”, which segued from a Black Sabbath bass riff I stole (Warning) to the lead singer screaming (he was trying to imitate Portishead), to a full on thrashout with me hitting my distortion pedal and cranking out feedback from the 100W vocal PA I was using as a bass amp.
We broke for the intermission, and the singer came back from the bar and said “The staff say we have to leave”…
Crazy times! And people worry about going on stage with the wrong compression pedal
Oh yeah, all familiar problems here. I can tell you this, you’ll be amazed what you’ll hear if you’ll record your band playing then go back in for a listen. No one ever sounds like what they think they do and in my band, we record all our shows for review. We had two songs the other night where we had almost a 1 minute gap in between songs from players dicking around, tuning, etc. We pride ourselves on a 10-15 second turn around from song to song but I never would have guessed that happened.
The more you play the material the more familiar it’ll become. Hang in there and catch the drummer screwing up on something so you can return the favor!
