John Wicker.com

I’ve played with a lot of different people and in a lot of different places over the last few years, and it seems like there are some common practices that people follow when they’re playing out. It kind of sounds strange to think of rock and roll having a set of rules, but if you want to play with someone more than once, and especially if you’re going to be playing with them a whole lot, here are some tips for getting along, getting paid, and getting asked back to play again.

Be on time
Nobody likes to worry about whether or not you’re going to show up. Walking in at the last possible minute can lead to ulcers, gnashed teeth, and excessive sweating.

Life can sometimes intrude, so if you’re going to be late for some unavoidable reason, pick up the phone and let people know what’s going on.

Bring Spares
Whatever you play, bring back up parts. Strings, reeds, picks, cables, straps, cords, power cables, drum heads– they can and will crap out on you at the worst possible time. Have something handy to replace them if you can.

If you can, bring along a backup instrument, and make sure it’s on hand and ready to be played if at all possible. It’s much better to grab your backup axe than to cut a set short so you can change strings. Some will say that you should be able to carry on when strings break, and you should. Other times having the spare will be the only thing that will save the show– if your keyboard stops working it isn’t like you can whip out a screwdriver and a soldering iron and fix it between sets.

Be sure that you’ve got whatever tools you’ll need to make quick fixes as well. A spare set of strings or a drum head is useless if you can’t get your fancy floyd rose unlocked or if you left your drum key on the desk by the front door.

Share
If somebody is hurting for something they forgot or something that just quit on them, and you happen to have one on hand, don’t laugh at them for being unprepared. At least now until after the show, that is. Throw them a spare cable and get the show moving again– and if it’s not an expendable item or a throw away (I’m looking at guitar strings and picks here) then be sure you get it back at the end of the night.

Work Out the Money Before You Get Paid
Work out who is going to get paid what before you arrive at the show. Most bands do an equal split, but some don’t. If someone provides all the equipment they might get two shares. An equal share might be set aside against expenses– rental gear, recording, merchandise and so on. There might be an agent’s cut or there might be an extra taste for the person who brought in the gig. You might be coming in as a last-minute replacement expecting a full cut only to find out you’re getting something entirely different.

Figure out all of this stuff before the money gets handed out. Nothing can kill the buzz of a great show faster than arguing over money.

Help Load In and Set Up
It has been my experience that drummers need the most time to set up, followed by keyboard players, guitarists, bass players, and finally the singer. Of course, we’re not mentioning that someone has to set up the PA gear, or that you might be playing more than one instrument or playing and singing.

Drummers usually have to carry the most gear, but it’s usually bulky but not super heavy. Bass players have the heaviest amps on the face of the planet. Guitarists might have a guitar or two, plus amps and effects. They get off with stuff that’s mostly light, but you have to be careful carrying it around because you don’t want to break the neck off of your Les Paul. Keyboard players tend to have delicate electronics and they usually don’t have the good sense to buy a hard shelled case for it.

And whoever handles the sound? Mixers, power amps, monitors, sub-woofers, mains, multiple 50 and 100 foot cables. And don’t forget the lighting rig, if you have one.

So you’re all set up and ready for the sound check? Great! What about everyone else? A lot of people are kind of callous about helping someone else out, but when it comes down to it, you’re all gonna sound like shit if the sound guy didn’t have enough time to get everything set up and skipped the sound check.

Offer to carry stuff, run cables, set up lights and mic stands, tape up set lists, whatever you can do. Even if you’re not physically capable of lifting heavy stuff, running cables from mics, monitors, speakers, and so on can still be a big help. There are always a million things to do, but many hands make light work. My last band could load in and be ready for sound check in 45 minutes, with every bit of the gear I talked about. When I played Rupp arena last month, it took more like two hours because we didn’t know each other well enough to have a system down.

Look for more tips in the next article in the series.

There’s an old joke about guitar players that goes like this:

Q: How do you stop a guitar player from playing so much?
A: Put some sheet music in front of him.

A lot of guitarists first starting playing by picking up Uncle Fred’s beat up acoustic and noodling around. If we’re serious, we are encouraged to practice until our fingers bleed, to learn scales and chords and arpeggios, to study solos and learn them note-by-note. We are encouraged to study the masters and to learn from their styles, to determine what kind of guitar and amplifier and effects pedals they play. But we are rarely encouraged to actually learn music, and the guitarist who can actually read (much less play) sheet music is incredibly rare. It’s so rare that some guitar player invented []tablature, which is a way to record what frets to play on what string. There are actually pieces of software that you can use to record tablature and play it back.

Most guitarists eventually pick up the name for most of the common chords they play, and they can remember what note each open string on their instrument is tuned to. We can learn all kinds of fairly advanced musical theory by way of different types of scales and modes, different types of chords and so on, but all of that stuff goes out the window the first time the singer wants to change the key of a song to better suit their voice.

I’m not about to say that a guitarist who can’t read music is somehow lesser than one who can. But there are still times when it would be nice to if we musician’s all had a common language that describes the notes we’re playing. You’ll learn that the first time your keyboard player asks you what key you’re playing in and you tell her that it’s the seventh fret on the fifth string. Or when you’re trying to work on an original song and someone tells you that an A flat would sound really good at that one precise moment.

The truth is, we never had a tool like Learn the Fretboard to help us along the way. This site presents a free PDF that gives you a method to learn the notes at every position on the fretboard. It minimizes rote memorization in favor of various methods geared to helping you remember and learn faster. I’ve read through the first couple of chapters and it made a lot of sense to me.

This is NOT going to teach you to read music. But with the foundation of knowing what all the notes are, learning scales, understanding chord theory, transposing songs and so much more now becomes much more manageable.

So if you want to learn more about the way your axe works, talk to other musician’s in a common language, or amaze your bandmates with your late night bar tricks, go forth and study!