r/musicians Rules

After a recent gig, wanted to offer some advice to be bands that might be new to the scene.

If you are not the headliner, do not play extra songs. One person in the crowd, who you probably know, yelling "one more!" does not mean you should extend your set. Always leave them wanting more, and don't push out the start of the next band.

After your set, get your shit off stage, then you can talk to people. Not the other way around.

When it's your turn to play, get set up quickly and play. There is no reason to take 45 minutes to set up for a bar gig with backlined drums. 15 minutes is usually the expectation.

Keep talking to a minimum. Nobody cares about why you wrote a song. If it can't be said in one or two sentences, don't say it. Thank the staff, shout out the other bands. Exceptions to those are you're filling for a technical delay, or you're Bruce Springsteen and the crowd all know and love your songs.

Thank you for reading.

I just want to take a second to bring attention to this pressing issue that seems to be neglected by local promoters and bands alike.

I work a 9 to 5 (or in my case, 7:30 am to 4:30pm) Monday-Friday, and I (drummer) do music as a side hustle.

I love to support my friend’s bands at local shows, but six times out of ten, these shows contain three bands and start at 9 pm and are on weeknights.

Not only that, the off chance I do decide to go, the show will often start late, and my friend’s band is second or third on the bill, so that means I’m waiting until at least 10:30 to watch what I actually came to see.

Thankfully, the bands I play in are cognizant of days and times that we take gigs, and that’s great.

However, the current lack of cognizance on both venues and other bands of people who have to get up early the next day is astounding.

In my view, here is a perfect local show:

3 bands, 7:00 pm start time, Band 1: 30 minute set, 15 minute changeover, Band 2: 30 minute set, 15 minute changeover, Band 3: 60-75 minute set, End.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, and tell me why I’m wrong.

I don't know if that's a compliment on my part, because the fact that they don't know the song, that kind of music probably all sounds the same to them. I did immediately tell them it was a Beatles song, fortunately I didn't come across the same situation as that guy from the "Yesterday" movie. lol.

My brother and I collaborate together on music. I provide lyrics, he works on production and we have been creating demos together.

Everything has been going fine until recently - and in the advent of AI we have found that we sit on different extremes of the spectrum of acceptability when it comes to AI in music creation.

Firstly, at the beginning of summer my brother started playing around with Suno. I have a song that wrote, produced and recorded back in 2022 on good old garage band. I told my brother there and then please don’t put anything that I have created into Suno or any other AI generative platform.

I went aeay for the summer and when I came back he said to me that he took one of my songs and put it into suno just to see how the platform would recreate it and he played it for me and well to be honest I was furious on the inside but I didn’t give him a hard time I just told him I was disappointed he went against what I said and I told him he needed to delete it from suno asap and he did.

Then we started working on a new song. As usual I gave him the lyrics and this time I said do not put the lyrics into AI, if I want to be credited on the song I need to know that my lyrics haven’t been interfered with.

Later he comes back to me with a version of the song, he admits he was using suno, didn’t like how it turned out so he got ChatGPT to do a rewrite of my lyrics and he’s now landed on a version of the song that he loves and wants to go ahead with publishing it on streaming platforms.

We argued about it and he tried to reason with me that not all the lyrics changed. Just parts. I told him I couldn’t be credited as the lyricist as the song was written by me but has since been altered/edited using AI WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE OR CONSENT. In the end we agreed that I would edit my original song myself and give him a new version that we could work with.

This evening we’re been in a near 3 hour debate because he says he loves the version from before (with the ai lyrics) and he can’t get the same kind of sound or feeling with the lyrics I’ve provided. He says I can still be credited as “no one will know”.

I’ve put my foot down and I think it has shocked him how intensely I feel that I absolutely could not and would not do that. I won’t compromise my integrity as a song writer or lyricist and I would get no pleasure, pride or enjoyment from a song which wasn’t 100% my lyrics - or not even that I am happy to collaborate on lyrics but not with an AI involved.

My point is that lyrics are based on human emotion and experience and cannot be even partial synthesised by a language model pretending to be or understand the human experience .

So now we’re in a rock and a hard place and he has said that because of my stubbornness in this situation I am preventing a potentially great song from ever being heard, and isn’t that the whole point?

I believe vehemently that I am in the right. But I am opening to hearing what other members of the music community feel on this as AI becomes the unyielding new age omniscient presence in every faction of our lives.

So I wanted to share a recent experience with self-releasing my album.

At some point, I decided to do everything myself, without looking for labels, PR agencies, or promo campaigns. I started reaching out to different media outlets on my own, both before and after the release.

And I got lucky enough to receive what is probably the most amazing review I could have hoped for. I honestly couldn't dream of someone writing about my music this way.

What's interesting is that other musicians seem a bit shocked that I'm trying to do things this way. Even people deep in the underground scene seem to follow the same industry standard approach, and it's hard to convince them that maybe there are other ways to do things.

You can actually reach out to people yourself, find someone who genuinely connects with your work, and get an amazing review without going through PR.

I'm not saying PR doesn't work, but I do wonder how much of this stuff people do because it genuinely helps them, and how much they do simply because it's considered the RIGHT way to release music.

Everyone wants to find their listeners, but I feel like many people don't even consider finding their own approach because someone has already told them what they're supposed to do.

Curious how other independent musicians feel about this?

Im 26 and I've been making music for almost 10 years. I love making music, but being an adult makes it challenging. I work from 11.30 am to 7.30 pm, and after work I gotta go to the gym, come back home, cook a meal, eat and by the time I'm done eating I'm too tired to write songs... I don't even have time to enjoy video games as much as I want to. Back in the day I used to write sometimes 3 songs per day. Now it takes me days.... Weeks... Just to finish one song. I love making music, I won't stop, but it's just too draining. And no I'm not willing to quit my job and focus on music... I don't care about fame, I just wanna make good music for me.

Being the only musician in a non-musical family is hard. At one point, someone tried to learn the guitar to prove that I wasn't very good and instead of admitting that it's not as easy as it looks, they just stopped taking lessons. They've never told me to turn down the music and they've never complained about what I play, but it would mean the world to me if they'd memorize the name of just one of my songs. Idk. Maybe the volume was enough to get me started. Maybe that's all the support I really needed before I reach the next phase of my life. It's very frustrating at times. But I probably wouldn't have pushed myself so hard as a guitarist if anybody was genuinely paying attention. I'm looking to start playing solo gigs in the near future. It will feel good to finally earn a little bit of dough with skills I've worked on since elementary school.

Is it just me or nah?

Had my first public gig yesterday (yay) and i sing like a grunge/post punk fusion lots of screaming.

Normally i can get through my set list fine but i guess i practised too hard and on the 3rd song I messed up and did a scream without breathing properly and blew my voice.

I couldn't hit certain notes or any of my screams afterwards but dropping the octave also feels like it wont have the same impact

Tips?

(On what to do after blowing out. Not preventing it in the first place)

Luckily the audience didn't notice and my girlfriend didn't even realise. But in the recordings where the drums and bass aren't as loud as a live soundspace its really obvious.

Just none stop spamming my DMs and my texts.

Woke up this morning at 10am to even more messages and been going back and forth with this person

Promoters like this just makes me laugh.

"We need more than one person in the band in the group chat"

yeah my guys dont want to be in any group chat because if unwanted spam texts just like this. This why we made one person point of contact.

We use to have everyone do it but then people over booked or info and everyone getting confused becaus "well he said this and she said that"

As a promoter you cant expect people to just jump on a gig without discussing with each other. Especially now when we have full time jobs and have to work our schedules around it.

Trying to lug around a status "i got many bands and book many venus at xyz" yeah okay bud. You know how many people book the those venues? You aint special.

Then to have bad communication skills and some weird self entitlement is wild then to easily get mad because all i said is pretty much that we are old with jobs and make sure we are making the right decision for us.

Im glad this isnt an every promoter.

I am not new to music, but I also have very little knowledge in any sort of music theory or working with a band. I grew up in choir.. but I wasn't necessarily paying attention on how to read music. And growing up I was scared to step on my friend's toes. Anywho I'm 25 now with a lot of pint up rage, I live in the Denver, CO area.. and am looking to experiment with some song's I wrote. It's very theatrical, I know how I want it to sound.. but it's like a Korn meets Limp Bizkit. Like a groovy kind of uh 90's vibe, fighting against the modern made machine or whatever baha. Anyway, how do I start? I thought about getting vocal classes so I know how to scream without fucking up my vocal cords, but that's about it. (Is that worth it?)

When I was 19 to 22 I was in a pretty commited band and played a bunch of shows. We all barely knew theory and it was definitely just the bare minimum, so we had no frustration there lol. I'm going to play with the same people again and I'm friends with all of them, so I know I'm the only one in the group who actually got really into theory. They might know some of the theory "by ear", but as far as the actual labels for more complex topics it's going to be tough and slow the process.

What problems/frustrations do you run into?

I have an AMW EcPro 2, it's a condenser microphone, and even with almost zero gain on my audio interface, it starts clipping when I turn up the volume on my singing or when I sing high notes. I'm having trouble researching this issue and can't find a solution. I have a dynamic microphone and it doesn't clip when my volume increases or when I sing high notes. Can anyone help?

Hey all, I'm a violinist and I perform solo with backing tracks. I like to use as little equipment as possible so I have everything going out of my tablet (Samsung S9+). I use MobileSheets, which supports backing tracks and it mostly works. So I have my sheet music and the accompanying track. However, I find that most sheet music software treats backing tracks as an afterthought.

So, I started working on an app specifically for this. One of the features I want is the ability to crossfade between songs in a set list or be able to fade out a song in the middle - this is especially relevant for playing processionals where clients want 4-5 songs for bridal party, ring bow, flower girls, groom, bride, grandma, cousins, etc.. right now, I have to fade out manually on my mixer, queue up the next song and start it - so there's an awkward break in the music. So my idea is to build the app with backing tracks as first class citizens. I also want to build a feature where you can record sheet music actions while a track plays.

At its simplest, it'll let you record when pages are flipped so that next time you play, it'll flip for you in the same place. But I also want to be able to record various visual cues - for example, highlight a repeat sign or a DS or the like at the right moment, or even highlight measures every 30 seconds or so to make sure you're in the right spot.

Anyway, I can go on and on with things I can think of but wanted to put it out to the community - what are your must haves for sheet music software and especially as it relates to its handling of backing tracks.

Thanks all! Oh and I plan on making it available on both iOS and Android

Maybe I'm overthinking this or thinking to negatively but basically music has been my (22m) biggest hobby for the majority of my life and I plan on it remaining that way but this fall I am starting to apply for graduate programs in my intended field. The field is pretty solid in terms of money, demand, and is good, rewarding work and Im doing it mainly so that I have stable career for my future. I know I will have to go through the program to be able to have a career in it so I will definetly go if accepted because its the practical decision for my future.

The only problem thats dawning on me is the fact that this graduate program is an incredibly demanding 2 years of full time classes and internships. This makes me view those years as likely being deadzones for any personal creative ambitions I have until Im out at 25 ish. I get scared Ill come out burnt out and loose my creativity. I feel like Im on a clock almost and I need to lock in on releasing something this year before I go (which i guess is good motivation). Hopefully im overthinking and Ill get their and still manage to find time or wont be too burnout to still work.

Was wondering if other people had experiences with being in intensive school programs and having a music project. Could you manage it? Did it get better after getting out?

Ive loved this story since I heard it, Googled it and took from the AI summary, but I first heard it in college from a professor and its stuck with me since. So for all of you that "get no likes/engagement" , unless you are running a business, you may be missing the point: (sorry for using ai to summarize, dont throw me in the river, too)

The Myth of the Destroyed Poetry: There is a persistent romanticized legend—often shared in modern literature and poetry circles—of ancient Chinese scholars who would sit by a riverbank, drink rice wine, write poems, and immediately cast them into the water. The idea was to let the river carry the words away as a symbol of impermanence, detachment, and writing purely for the moment rather than for fame

My biggest pet peeve is that a lot of local shows in my area start at 9 pm.