The
afternoon sun beat down on me as I squinted at the set list of soul,
pop and Motown standards and I frantically tried to connect the title
to any sort of tune to remember how the next song actually started.
Before I knew it, the drummer was giving his count-in, and off we
went. Wonderful thing, memory, it seems to kick in almost
automatically in the nick of time to save you from certain doom.
Such
is the life of a humble depping guitarist – flying by the seat of
your pants, last minute cram sessions, tweaking your rhythm parts as
you go to fit the band's arrangements (which they may or may not have
remembered to tell you about) – it's tense, it's challenging... but
it's also a hell of a lot of fun, and something I would recommend to
any musician.
Why?
Surely it's a waste of time, learning all those songs for just one
gig?
Woah.
Back up there, pilgrim. We're musicians. It's never a
waste of time learning a song. Besides which, anyone with a half
decent ear and a grasp of the Nashville Number System (see Zero Point
Guitar link for more on this) can pick out most
of the pop/soul/Motown standards which form the bedrock of many
corporate/ wedding cover band repertoires without too much trouble.
I, IV, V, vi and the occasional splodge of bIII and bVII – and if
you really can't find a particular change, just lay out. Most of
these songs aren't particularly guitar-centric anyway, so a couple of
bars of muted strings letting the bass, keyboards and/or brass
section carry the load isn't going to spoil things.
Your
rhythm chops will thank you as well – making a rhythm part work in
a situation like this is a long way removed from strumming big barre
chords in a steady quaver rhythm. Being able to fit your parts into
the whole of the music requires a sensitivity to what's going on
around you – where the keyboards are, what the brass is up to, the
register of the bass line and vocal melody. A good rhythm player
chooses their voicings to complement the whole. A solid knowledge of
triads and inversions is utterly invaluable here – even if it's not
the kind of skill that will wow an audience with a fleet-fingered
rendition of “Eruption”, playing rhythm well is an art form in
itself, albeit an underrated and overlooked one for many guitar
players (dep story – one of the hardest gigs I ever did was filling
in for a local rock 'n' roll band, as basically every song was a 12
bar in A. To play two sets of that stuff and keep each song sounding
different really stretches your imagination!)
And
let's not forget the value of actual gigging experience itself. Any
working musician will tell you that it's only when you get to the gig
that the real problems start – how do you deal with an amp that
worked fine at home or in rehearsal but now is buzzing, squawking and
farting like a cockerel after a vindaloo? How do you arrange your
gear so your lead doesn't get wound round a mic stand or trapped
under your wah pedal? How do you tune your ear into a band's sound
that may have been beautifully balanced in a purpose built rehearsal
room but now in the confines of the Dog & Duck is just a
featureless wall of noise? Experience, that's how.
So
how do we overcome the perennial Catch-22 situation – how do you
get experience when no one will take you on because you don't
already have experience?
Well,
you can always just lie. Sometimes it works (according to various
musician's autobiographies). In the real world, though, it doesn't
work, and serves to blacken your reputation for the future (“Oh,
you don't want so-and-so. He's full of sh*t, can't play.”). One
great way to break in and get yourself known, however is the open mic
night. These have been gaining in popularity in the last few years
since the economic downturn as pubs try and entice audiences in
without having to pay for a band. True, you're mostly playing to
other (frequently drunk) musicians, but it can be a valuable
low-pressure introduction to the world of live performance. For
myself, I've played with the “house band” for a couple of local
open mic/jam nights for the last few years, and found it very
rewarding – thinking on your feet, adjusting chord voicings, key,
rhythm etc to what the singer is doing, responding to the
arrangements that frequently exist in the singer's head and nowhere
else, “reading” your fellow musicians – all this contributes to
that “sixth sense” that many experienced players seem to have.
It
can also be a path to new and unusual challenges that push your
playing in different ways. One of my most terrifying but also
rewarding dep experiences happened years ago when working at the
local music shop. The head of the local amateur dramatic society came
in looking for a guitarist and banjo player to cover for their
regular guy performing George Gershwin's “Anything Goes”, and me
being me I jumped at the chance, thinking “How hard can it be?”
Very,
as it turned out. I was presented with a CD and a score of music vast
in size and terrifying in complexity, told band rehearsal would be in
two weeks, dress rehearsal with the cast the day after that, and then
we'd be performing straight through the week. I spent the first night
with the score struggling to keep my bowels in check before starting
to realise that a great many of the insane chord changes that
peppered Gershwin's music contained a great many similar notes –
for example, D7 contains D-F#-A-C (R-3-5-b7), F#dim7 contains
F#-A-C-D (R-b3-b5-bb7). Therefore, no need to play anything different
as the bass player will be looking after the root note (D and F#)
anyway – Eureka! My sanity was saved, and I made it through the gig
without suffering a nervous breakdown or being lynched by my fellow
orchestra members. And I've never lost the deeper understanding of
harmony that making those connections between chords gave me.
So,
to sum up – the great things about open mics and dep gigs are
experience, exposure, confidence, practical application of theory and
licks learnt in the practice room, a few quid in your pocket at the
end of the night (sometimes) and more than anything a hell of a lot
of fun to be had. So the next time you're asked to an impromptu jam
or to cover last minute for a friend – just say yes. You'd be
surprised what it can lead to.
