PianoMan51

Bring a second large container of water. Not to drink but to ladle over your head. A towel might help too! Drinking cold water will help chill your body and hydrate you. But cooling your head quickly with cool water can give you that sense of jumping in a cool pool. The clincher is that you will feel more clear headed too.

I’ve used iPads on gigs for almost ten years. Never had a failure or heard of anybody else with a failure. I do however keep a small charger cube and cable in my gig bag in case I get absent minded and forget to charge up before a gig.

One aspect of accompanying a singer is to make your accompaniment understandable on first hearing. This is about having clear musical ideas and then play them. One of your main jobs as a one-man rhythm section is to hold down (communicate) the form of the song for the singer and the audience. Your intros need to clearly sound like intros. So that the singer, who is listening to you, recognizes ‘oh, this is the intro for Song X’. And from that intro the singer knows the tempo, the key, and exactly where to start the song. If your intro is ambiguous, you’re not supporting the singer. Your endings need to sound like endings. Same with your solos. Same with your accompaniment. Good thing? The audience isn’t there to hear you, so you can play very simply technique-wise.

Or how a junk drawer magically fills itself.

My, how much stuff comes from nothing. Like the physics of vacuum energy.

The logarithmic nature of our hearing is always confusing. We think adding a second powered speaker on stage will double the volume. No, it adds 3dB of volume, which slightly increases volume, but gives us the opportunity to spread the volume over a wider expanse. I worked in telecommunications test firm for 20 years. Rather than pull out a calculator, I ended up just using a handful of useful short cuts. Here’s one… Ten times the power = two times the volume. Or, +10dB doubles perceived volume. An example is, If you want to double the volume of 10W amp, you need 100W. (All other things being equal.)

The measurement Bell (and the decibel dB) was invented by Bell Labs scientists who were studying the physical nature of sound with emphasis on making efficient telephone networks. Back in the 20s when they also invented the amplifier and electric microphone. And then researched vocoders, transistors, microwave background measurements, lasers, and on and on. It was they who explored the logarithmic nature of our hearing. The ‘+10dB equals a doubling of perceived sound volume’ was a convenient averaging of many test subjects. Move from 10dB to 1 Bell (it’s the same) and you realize that the whole measurement scheme was based around human hearing.

So many posts here refer to an “Al Quinn”. Is this Harley’s brother?

Maybe this isn’t in line with the discussion. But… I’m piano man because at the end of the day my internal musical spirit finds the acoustic piano the most simpatico. Still, I’ve played a s%%% load of synths over the years and always had a feeling of them being tools to create a certain sound to fit into a certain song. When I’m done creating the patch and practicing the riff, I’m done. Analog and digital. Didn’t hear much difference. Little personal attachment. The Moog Matriarch changed my attitude.

“the balls of your fingertips”… You have them there?

Cheap. Work. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RM6Q9XW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Theo, You are absolutely right! Having the right sounds can be inspirational. And then when you achieve that sound, going further into songs more complex than blues is really challenging. You have been sending us examples of your exploration in sounds for many years. I know for me I sometimes didn’t realize exactly what you were aiming at. But now I think I understand better. All of us here make our own jams. Some with sequenced tracks, and others just in our minds. Take care of yourself. Jack

Just one more song built on Rhythm Changes.

I’m playing in two big bands, so lots of 7 page charts. Scotch tape breaks after a few dozen uses. And destroys the paper if you try to remove it. This is my second order of art tape. Very flexible and can be removed. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BX36S6NJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Youtube has some instructions on how to use. Basically you alternate taping the front and back sides so that the sticky part of the tape between the pages always folds inwards. Otherwise that sticky edge will glue the pages together like an old Penthouse at summer camp.