Cheap Advice On Music

I started going out to see bands when I was about 16. The very first rock band I ever saw play right up close was an outfit called Kicks, Inc. They never made it big, but they’ll always be special to me! One thing that disappointed me was that I could barely hear the singing, even though I was near the front of the crowd. The instruments were good and loud but no vocals. I figured it was a fluke.

Imagine my further disappointment as I went to see other bands and came to realize the simple fact that when you watch a live band, you can’t make out the words. It was always that way! It was as sure as the show starting late. What shocks me is how often this still happens today, even after all these years of playing rock music live. What gives?

Maybe the gear is set up wrong and there would be feedback if they turned the vocals up to the right level. Maybe they don’t have a sound man and they just don’t realize how they sound. But if you are the sound man, do the audience a favor and follow a simple rule when setting the vocal levels: make sure you can understand the words. If you can’t, turn up the vocals a bit, or give them more “presence” EQ, turn down an instrument, move the speakers - do something until you (and the audience) can make out the lyrics! And keep checking this during the show.

[An expanded version of this Mini-Tip appears in my eBook, Cheap Advice On Live Sound.]

When I took piano lessons, my teacher would sometimes have me play along with a ticking metronome to help me stay on beat and avoid speeding up or slowing down during the piece. This same concept applies to modern recording in the form of the “click track,” a metronome-like ticking recorded first, on its own track, to keep all the later parts synchronized. Some of the songs I hear online have the kind of rhythmic miscues and off-beat sections that can happen without a click track. My suggestion is to use one!

Some of the songs I record have a dramatic pause at some point, where everything hits on the 1-beat and holds through 2, 3, 4….then boom! Everything comes back in on the next 1-beat. Let me tell you, it is really hard to have all of the parts come in together like that after a pause without that tick-tick-tick to mark the time for you! Or what if the first instrument you record doesn’t play through the whole song?

Without a click, there may be a tendency to speed up during the song as you get “into” it. If you do this on the first instrument you record, the others are stuck with following it. If you do any copying and pasting from one part of the song to another, the tempos will line up only if you recorded with a click to ensure a steady pace. For all of these reasons and more, for most songs it is important for the first track you record to be that ticking metronome!

[An expanded version of this Mini-Tip appears in my eBook, Cheap Advice On Home Recording.]

When I sit down to come up with a chord pattern for a new song, I usually just start playing whatever pops into my head. When I hear something good emerge I keep playing that and gradually expand on it. Eventually I end up with the chords for a whole song. Great! You probably do this too. But sometimes I have a sneaky feeling of familiarity, like, how different is this really from that other song I just wrote? Could I be in a writing rut?

For me, the critical point is right at the beginning, the part where I play whatever pops into my head. The problem is, I tend to automatically start playing in one of a few “comfortable keys,” and as a result too many of my finished chord patterns are in A or D. But it’s not just the key itself that matters. There are habitual changes from one chord to another that I tend to follow if I don’t catch myself. After a Bm I tend to go to a G, and so on. Some of these personal habitual changes inevitably find their way into my songs.

What to do? Elementary, my dear Watson. Force yourself to start out in an unfamiliar key, like F#m or even just B. Then play whatever pops into your head. Deprived of your comfortable Bm-to-G-type changes, you will likely write a new song that really is new!

[An expanded version of this tip appears in my eBook, Cheap Advice On Songwriting.]

As the sound man for Rusty Strings, I usually set up the PA gear somewhere in the listening area. We run a snake from there to the stage to carry the microphone and instrument signals back to the mixer. We used to also run a fairly heavy cable from the PA output to the main speakers and another cable to the monitor speakers. It’s a lot of trouble to run (and tape down) three separate long cables, especially in a restaurant where customers are already having dinner!

I soon realized that the snake had four unused connections terminating with 1/4″ TRS connectors at the stage box and pigtail. Aha! At an on-site rehearsal, I tried running the monitor signal down one of these snake leads instead of using a separate cable. It works great! Even though the wires in the snake leads are very thin, it didn’t seem to affect the monitor level. And now we only have to run two cables.

[An expanded version of this tip appears in my eBook, Cheap Advice On Live Sound.]