[video:youtube]https://youtu.be/-hVbnx4aZLs?si=ShjSi1hwjMiWlena[/video]

Hi folks,

In June, I only had three gigs, but July has really picked up and thankfully I’m booked every weekend and a few weekdays too . Normally my June’s are really busy but July’s are slow so it’s exact opposite this year, go figure.!

I’ve been doing weekend shows with a six piece group and I actually use auto accompaniment quite a bit. At first it was kinda hard for the Percussionist to get a hang of the strict auto accompaniment tempo which you might notice in the video, but the venue has since provided in ear monitors and it has made a big difference. Even with some slight temp fluctuations, I prefer working with other players rather than doing the OMB routine. Nothing wrong with OMB all, I normally do just a duo with my wife because most of our clients have a shoestring budget, but every once in a while like now, we find a client with a budget for a lager ensemble.

Anyways, in the clip above I like that the crowd was having fun. You’ll see people of all ages and races enjoying themselves. Kind of refreshing in this polarized world that we seem to live now. In all honesty, I was a little bit, worried about being booed off stage since all our material is sung in Spanish and the venue doesn’t really cater the the Hispanic market. But regardless, everyone was really nice and seemed to have a really good time!

A lot about working successfully with percussion players and drummers in an arranger environment depends on mixing the Drums hot enough that the percussion player can easily lock to them.

One of the most common mistakes I hear, listening to everybody’s demos is that, compared to listening to a live band or even to a well recorded CD, we tend to swamp the drums with whatever we are playing. The minute you swamp the drums, there goes any chance of locking solidly With any other rhythmic players!

Many of us may have not played with a live drummer for decades, and have very little realization of just how clear the beat is when you are sitting next to a drummer! But try to add a percussion player, and all of a sudden the problem becomes apparent lol…

If your registrations allow live control over the parts, it pays to add 10 to 15 to the volume balance of the drums and bass versus the rest. All of a sudden, everybody locks together and time drift pretty much goes away.

There’s really only one way to judge Whether your volumes are correct, and that is to record yourself playing live, and then try to see if you can lock to it solidly. If you can’t, if your percussion player can’t, it’s time to bump those drums!

Thank you for the good solid advice Diki. I do boost the drums and bass quite a bit, but I guess I could boost it up a bit more, especially in a venue like this. It’s nice having a gig for change where we don’t have to worry about the volume so much! I have a lot more footage of summer gigs. If anyone is interested I’d be happy to post them. I hope everyone continues to enjoy their summer, I’m a teacher, and I’m already going back to work next week, the break was nice while it lasted!

Playing WITHIN the mix is a skill very few musicians ever have to learn. Most of the time either we don’t have an audience so it doesn’t matter, or if we do, we have monitors where we can listen to a mix that is what WE need to perform at our best.


But the audience needs to hear that balanced, even mix!

And arranges rarely have multiple outputs where we can split what we are playing away from what the track is doing. I say it over and over again, but learning to play a quieter part or rhythmical part without being able to hear it too well, because that is where it is SUPPOSED to be in the mix is one of the toughest skills to get right.

You really have to be able to play at your best without really even hearing yourself very well a lot of the time, and you don’t really play as a musician, you play more as a producer or engineer! Your first question should be is that a great mix? Not am I playing well?!

For me, the only satisfactory answer I ever get to that “am I playing well?“ question is by recording the mix and listening after the fact. I NEVER seem to get it dead right without a few goes at recording it and then remembering how it felt while I played it.

I am either a little too hot, or a little too quiet the first time I give it a go! I DO try to play fairly hard though even on quieter parts. That way, at least the physicality of movement helps me to be rhythmical and lock in even if I’m not supposed to be hearing it too well lol

It is funny how arranges, although really being designed and used by beginners a lot of the time, require you to actually be a BETTER player than a live band musician simply because of the challenge of playing well WITHIN a mix, not ON TOP of it..!

EDIT: I found the problem! I had accidentally changed the markup field to HTML rather than UBB code. Sacrifice so much.

[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZPsHj0EVFxY[/video]


Here's another summer gig, an outdoor farm style wedding, which seems to all the rage these days. My daughter is on violin and I'm on keys. It was a really hard set up/tear down, I had to do cart our equipment down and them up a gravel trail in the HOT Texas heat. It was at least 95 that day. I wore a neck fan, and a sweat band under my hat. I have no idea why these people had an outdoor wedding in this heat at 3pm and I learned to never agree to such working conditions again!

Maybe I have a problem, but this only links to your channel not to the specific video.

Hi there, did you try to click the link at the very top?

Oops! Didn’t scroll up that far!

Very nice!

The bride, on the other hand… Making her bridesmaids wear black on a daytime outdoors wedding in that heat!😱🥵🥵🤬

Yes, and grooms men wore wool cowboy coats, cowboy hats s and boots! WT*?
I told my daughter to play on her old student violin due to the potential for heat and sun damage. My keyboard felt hot after the ceremony even though we were in the shade.
On top of that the bride made some special requests for some horrible songs ( Theme from 50 Shades of Grey) a week before, we learned them and got no tip or thank you . Not even an offer for a bottle of water!

Bridezilla!