live in a "one man band"!

  • Thread starter Thread starter MusicalSound
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The multi-instrumentalist approach might be the way to do this.
I hang out with this guy - Professor Shyguy - who does the one-man band thing with tracks. He'll switch between guitar, keys, drums, and just vox from song to song to keep things interesting.

Now that is a good idea and would remain interesting as well. It also supports this isn't karaoke, the performer was the author of the performance, etc.

@MS, what about this idea? Food for thought.
 
@MS, what about this idea? Food for thought.

this is a very good idea and one that has crossed my mind a lot, but you have to understand my situation. I live in a van travelling town to town gig to gig, I can only travel with so much, the tracks i play to are in stereo....one '70s bass amp and '70s 15" bass speaker just for bass signal (L), and another (R) coming out of a powered speaker which is the organ/guitar/piano parts and stuff (not bass!) plus, even before I had the idea of drumming/singing for this, I always hated playing guitar on stage. I just like playing drums on stage, makes me feel more powerful surrounded by the speakers. i feel week without my 60s 5-piece blue drums and '70s zildjians. and I worried about the boring thing before, but the truth is I offset that by just hopefully picking more interesting songs. I've been in real non-one-man bands before and the audience was completely bored, and so was I because the music was just so rudimentary. I go for something a little more substantive, and the people who stick around to watch know I was playing the instruments. I just love playing drums in this one man band, i finally feel like I playing in a band it's so weird. I still have to listen and practice it like a band. here's a couple of tracks I played live last night at my show and the week before. check 'em out you might really dig the sound there!





featuring the 1976 Octave cat synth as the bass:
 
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You could always drum with your arms and sticks in the air like Tommy Aldridge. I always loved watching him live!
 
lol. I got to attempt a very fun song "nice nice very nice" by Ambrosia (1975) and I swear I went through maybe 20 keyboard players, none of them could play the damn song. so i finally just plugged my hammond into my cassette deck and just played/record it myself. at least I don't have to drag a damn hammond around now to get that great T224 sound. my hope too is that I can hook up with some kayboardists who like like to play proggy /jazzier music like this and eventually write stuff like that, very psychedelic. maybe you never heard it, it's from their frst album in '1975 and it's just a trip,I love playing this song
 
It's easy

But why????

Because although working with competent friendly musicians is the preferred way to gig, unfortunately the ratio of competency to arrogant pompous asses forces us sometimes to go it alone.And #2......because we can.
 
Unique! Great! I think you are awesome! Had a friend we called 1 man band George... He had a drum machine with sensors on his Gibson 335 pickguard. He could tap different things and get rolls & symbols etc. It didn't sound mechanical at all. Just saw another guy last week who programmed much sound including bass in a keyboard and played guitar & sang along.... Now he is the best I've ever seen and has been on the Tonight show as he plays 2 trumpets at one time... Oh God you should hear him do Johnny Cash Ring of fire... It really blows you away with those twin trumpets.. Then the next song is a Pink Floyd.. Go figure as he must be in his 60's. Great entertainment... You've got the sounds, GO FOR IT!
 
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