jtolbert
Well-Known Member
This may be a bit long-winded, sorry...
So, I play bass in a cover band, covering mostly rock. We've been together for two and a half years, gigging for two. Next week, I'm quitting. Well, I'm letting them know that I'll play all the gigs we're obligated to as of right now, which means I'll officially be done after 21 June. If they schedule any more before that I'll do them, but not after.
Why am I quitting? A few major reasons...
1) I'm sick of our vocalist butchering the music I love. I can't even listen to the originals now without my stomach churning cause I'm thinking about our vocalist "singing" the song. He's fairly bad. His pitch is fairly bad, his timing sucks, he has no charisma on stage and, worst of all, he thinks he's awesome.
I used to have fun gigging with this band. Now, people say it looks like I'm like, 'Just shoot me!' up there...And it's pretty true! I love entertaining people...But I know our performance as a group is being seriously hurt by this guy. I want to get away from our vocalist...He will *never* quit, and I don't have the votes necessary to force him out...Our guitarist---the most talented guy in the band and the guy the vocalist tried to unilaterally remove, which I blocked---doesn't want to can the vocalist cause he guitarist is having a blast and doesn't really care if the crowds die off and the vocalist obviously won't vote to remove himself...The drummer would, but that's still a tie. So my best move is to quit.
2) I've only been playing for four years...I am not a very good bassist...My ramp up from nothing to a gigging bassist has been great, but my showmanship skills are seriously lacking, and I think I understand why, which leads into...
3) For the past two and a half years I've been doing nothing but learning and playing songs. That's it. I've neglected any sort of skill, technique and understanding improvements that would help me overall in order to cram in more songs. In short, I've stopped improving as a well-rounded musician in order to play covers. Playing covers is great, but it can't be the only thing you do...So I'm going to stop just learning to cover songs and "go back to the woodshed," in a manner of speaking, to work on a lot of technique. This means playing a lot of scales, learning how chords relate to their parent scales, learning how to move from one key/scale to another gracefully, improving my improvisational skills and generally working on learning more about what makes music "work." More tools in the toolbox...
So, about the showmanship thing...If I improve the playing technique and expand my skills, I won't have to think about what I'm doing as much when I'm gigging...So I can work on the showmanship end of it more.
It sort of goes hand-in-hand.
So...Yeah. That's my big decision. It's nothing earth-shattering to anyone else, but it's going to change how I spend a good chunk of my free time. I've been thinking about this for a year, but the last straw was our last gig...Musically, we did pretty decently, but the vocalist just...Sucked, frankly. A conversation with a very talented musician helped me understand that part of my "problem" with the showmanship end of performing is probably due to thinking about it too much, which is an artifact of not improving my skills/technique...So I'm trying to solve all of these issues by not gigging for a while.
I feel tons better already. I'm looking forward to just being done with the whole thing at this point.
I like the vocalist---he's actually a great guy off-stage; otherwise we would have canned him eighteen months ago---and he knows how I feel about his vocals, so I don't think this will come as a big surprise to anyone. I have been dreading rehearsing and even more so gigging for the past six months or more, and it shouldn't be that way.
There's a few things that are going to suck. I love performing. I have a good time when the crowd is being entertained. I started this band. I came up with the name and designed the logo. Heck, I even found our "mascot." I picked 90% of the songs we play, and I get tons of compliments on our choice of music...But I'm going to walk away from all of it. It's a drag, but I think in the long run it's the right thing to do.
Long-winded rant over...If anyone wants to see how bad the vocalist is I can provide a link to the last show's playlist...
So, I play bass in a cover band, covering mostly rock. We've been together for two and a half years, gigging for two. Next week, I'm quitting. Well, I'm letting them know that I'll play all the gigs we're obligated to as of right now, which means I'll officially be done after 21 June. If they schedule any more before that I'll do them, but not after.
Why am I quitting? A few major reasons...
1) I'm sick of our vocalist butchering the music I love. I can't even listen to the originals now without my stomach churning cause I'm thinking about our vocalist "singing" the song. He's fairly bad. His pitch is fairly bad, his timing sucks, he has no charisma on stage and, worst of all, he thinks he's awesome.
I used to have fun gigging with this band. Now, people say it looks like I'm like, 'Just shoot me!' up there...And it's pretty true! I love entertaining people...But I know our performance as a group is being seriously hurt by this guy. I want to get away from our vocalist...He will *never* quit, and I don't have the votes necessary to force him out...Our guitarist---the most talented guy in the band and the guy the vocalist tried to unilaterally remove, which I blocked---doesn't want to can the vocalist cause he guitarist is having a blast and doesn't really care if the crowds die off and the vocalist obviously won't vote to remove himself...The drummer would, but that's still a tie. So my best move is to quit.
2) I've only been playing for four years...I am not a very good bassist...My ramp up from nothing to a gigging bassist has been great, but my showmanship skills are seriously lacking, and I think I understand why, which leads into...
3) For the past two and a half years I've been doing nothing but learning and playing songs. That's it. I've neglected any sort of skill, technique and understanding improvements that would help me overall in order to cram in more songs. In short, I've stopped improving as a well-rounded musician in order to play covers. Playing covers is great, but it can't be the only thing you do...So I'm going to stop just learning to cover songs and "go back to the woodshed," in a manner of speaking, to work on a lot of technique. This means playing a lot of scales, learning how chords relate to their parent scales, learning how to move from one key/scale to another gracefully, improving my improvisational skills and generally working on learning more about what makes music "work." More tools in the toolbox...
So, about the showmanship thing...If I improve the playing technique and expand my skills, I won't have to think about what I'm doing as much when I'm gigging...So I can work on the showmanship end of it more.
It sort of goes hand-in-hand.So...Yeah. That's my big decision. It's nothing earth-shattering to anyone else, but it's going to change how I spend a good chunk of my free time. I've been thinking about this for a year, but the last straw was our last gig...Musically, we did pretty decently, but the vocalist just...Sucked, frankly. A conversation with a very talented musician helped me understand that part of my "problem" with the showmanship end of performing is probably due to thinking about it too much, which is an artifact of not improving my skills/technique...So I'm trying to solve all of these issues by not gigging for a while.
I feel tons better already. I'm looking forward to just being done with the whole thing at this point.
I like the vocalist---he's actually a great guy off-stage; otherwise we would have canned him eighteen months ago---and he knows how I feel about his vocals, so I don't think this will come as a big surprise to anyone. I have been dreading rehearsing and even more so gigging for the past six months or more, and it shouldn't be that way.
There's a few things that are going to suck. I love performing. I have a good time when the crowd is being entertained. I started this band. I came up with the name and designed the logo. Heck, I even found our "mascot." I picked 90% of the songs we play, and I get tons of compliments on our choice of music...But I'm going to walk away from all of it. It's a drag, but I think in the long run it's the right thing to do.
Long-winded rant over...If anyone wants to see how bad the vocalist is I can provide a link to the last show's playlist...
