I have played live quite a bit ?, played jazz gigs, blues gigs and METAL... (my 2c) is that you can never really be satisfied onstage, things go wrong, you mess up, as you always reckon you can do it better, but as soon as you get offstge and guys reckon you rocked or bluesed or jazzed their socks off, then appreciate it and move on to learn a bit more, you never stop learning and playing, if the crowd liked, then the crowd liked.

Cool in Denial (SOAD)

Tips from my hard-won experience:

1) If you play a bum note, play it again so the audience thinks you did it on purpose.
2) The more the audience drinks, the better you will sound.
3) If you are a one-man-band there is no shame in having a one-man-audience.
4) If you got paid, the gig was a success.

Have fun!

Peter G

Your story brings back some horrible memories . But Keira really covered the main stuff. I especially liked the, don't do stuff you can only just manage in practise. I got myself in trouble a lot from playing right at the edge of my abilities, sometimes even beyond them if I think about it now. Not a good plan.

But then there's focusing on the mistakes and the negatives. You're right never to make a face at a mistake. If you don't, even the musos in the audience are unlikely to notice and, if they do, they'll quickly forget about it if you look like you're into what you're doing.

I have a buddy who plays in a rock band here in Cape Town. He's such a perfectionist that it ruins a lot of his enjoyment at playing live. I saw them recently in Stellenbosch. Some kids from another band were literally doing the "we are not worthy" bowing in front of his wild, zany, technically gobsmacking stuff - catchy licks with fret-tapping and crazy vibrato dives - he looked confident, hip, the band was on fire and these kids almost half his age were going nuts for it. When I spoke to him afterwards, he was upset about all the "mistakes" (absolutely inaudible to me as both a guitarist and someone who's heard their tunes many times). I just thought to myself, "Man, if you're pissed off with this show, you're never going to enjoy playing live."

Your performance can only be truly judged by the audience. You're too biased to see it objectively.

singemonkey wrote: Your story brings back some horrible memories . But Keira really covered the main stuff. I especially liked the, don't do stuff you can only just manage in practise. I got myself in trouble a lot from playing right at the edge of my abilities, sometimes even beyond them if I think about it now. Not a good plan.

And make an allowance for pressure. There is a story about some champion darts player who walks into his local pub and agrees to throw some darts for the the amusement of the punters. One old man bets him 10 pounds that he can't throw a specific combination (can't remember what it was, but it's regarded as very difficult for even top darts players - maybe three double bulls). The player does this and takes the tenner. The old bloke, who can't afford to lose the bet, says "but I've never seen you do that on telly." The player gives him his tenner back and says something like "Of course, but I'm not throwing for a championship here so it's much easier."

It's a funny old business. Last time I played at TJs I practiced a song that I hadn't played before. "Men" by Loudon Wainwright III. It's a short song, and so I decided to put a little instrumental in between the 2nd and 3rd verses. I worked out something, and it required me to play a little run of 6ths. Now this might be no big thang for y'all, but it's a little daunting for me. I figured that this was where I was most likely to stumble, but it was also an opportunity to raise my game, so I rehearsed it and rehearsed it and rehearsed it.

So come the night... I get the instrumental passage PERFECT but forget the lyrics ?

Luckily nobody in the audience knew the song and so I got away with flubbed lyrics in the 2nd verse. Nobody, that is, except The Better 5/8, but she was kind enough to not shout out "hey! You forgot the words."

I am learning to not telegraph my mistakes.

A friend and her band (djembe & african instruments) asked me to come and watch a performance they were doing and give a critical review.
It was a brilliant performance, highly appreciated by the crowd; and only marred by the scowling expressions the performers were giving each
other when they stuffed up.

Echoes the repeated sentiment - let the audience judge you.

singemonkey wrote:
Your performance can only be truly judged by the audience. You're too biased to see it objectively.

I think you hit the nail on the head!

yeah i'm a very serious musician with definite goals and vision for what i want out of my art .... but i never understand the serious (in the other context) musicians who winge and moan and dwell on every flaw....... it's beyond me......and yes i know a good few who do this....
but they miserable , unbearable musicians to work with and regardless of their talent many choose to avoid working with them because they have that attitude........

yeah ...i'm a happy child and to me performing especially is fun ..... and hey forget the flaws we all human everything on this planet is flawed.... and as i said here many times...when musicians perform they should be entertaining the audience so yeah i'll gladly sacrifice musical perfection for entertainment value........

just have fun with your music ...and the audience will pick up on it and then you have won them over ............

Wizard wrote: Echoes the repeated sentiment - let the audience judge you.

Disagree. For a start the audience might want some specific thing and ignore or even heckle anything that doesn't conform to that expectation.

More importantly, you should be satisified by your own performance - your presentation, the way you worked with your equipment, the level at which you performed. It is cool to give pleasure to the audience and to have them applaud and throw their underwear at you and buy you lots of drinks and tell you that they want to have your babies, but surely you want to be happy with your own performance too? I set myself little targets to meet that show to me that I can deliver certain things under the increased pressure of a live performance, or I want to see an improvement in some aspect or another. This may not be musical - it may be a matter of preparation or organisation (having the capos that I need, being able to get to them quickly etc).

My band played a open mic last night .... We had no monitors on stage and low volume amps which we could barely hear ....... I walked off stage just about in tears to me reckoning we had fumbled it big time , the organizer and some of the other musos come up to us to congratulate us on our performance and asked us to play next week again. So ja the audience is the judge at the end of the day . But honestly i am not playing a gig that tired ever again ........

Tailon there's a solution to that... bring your own monitors and desk if need be.

Pity that can be quite expensive and sometimes the resident "sound Guy" isn't stoked that you think he is a hack. Last night we played the winston with no monitors and everythign was way too loud, well to me anyway.

But cos we (I) had spare everythign, we used an extra guitar amp as a monitor and I had brought a DI to line the bass out as well. so it turned out Ok despite what we may have thought.