The Pre-Show Chant And What Comes After

Most artists have the pre-show chant, shot, prayer, speech, song that they do just before walking on stage.

Why?

Easy, it is thought to set the tone for the show.  The act wants to be unified or happy or smiling or confident or contemplative or some combination pertaining to what is deemed important.

But really the pre-show thing (and I’ve been a part of thousands of them) does a good job of setting up the walking on stage at best…beyond that it loses its force quickly.

BUT then the walking on stage picks up it’s importance and sets up the next thing.

And the next thing sets up the next thing.

Thing after thing. Each one being set up by the one before.

So you have your pre-show thing, and it carries the power to intentionally influence your walking on stage in the way that you want to walk on stage.

But now carry the idea through…what is the walking on stage thing that will influence the next thing?

And so on.

 
p.s. The last thing (for the audience) at each show will be you leaving the stage: a depression, absence, void, longing.

The goal is to ultimately set up that moment to be as strong as possible.




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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

The Music You Sing Of

Tell me what kind of music you sing of.

Not tell me what kind of music you sing about.

Not tell me what about your style of music.

Not tell me what you sound LIKE.

Not what kind of music do you play.

It’s more powerful than that.  It trips a different trigger in the brain.

Tell me what kind of music you sing of…the answer then starts with “I sing of…”

And an answer like that brings you inside of the truth.  It removes the verbal (and often therefore psychological) barriers…it’s not ABOUT the truth or in the style of the truth, but the truth itself.

This is your power.

It’s the ocean instead of the river.

So…

Tell me what kind of music do you sing of.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

The New Bowling Ball

No one is looking for it.

No one is on pins and needles waiting for a new, lighter, rounder version of the bowling ball.

The existing bowling ball is the perfect iteration for the game.

And we would roll our eyes at any bowler who said they were hinging their career on an innovation like this…because it’s not time to wait (on innovation), it’s time to bowl.

Bowl.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Batting One-Thousand

It’s silly for a baseball player to focus on hitting 1.000 for the season, to be a perfect hitter.  If that is the one focus, the one singular goal, they will live in constant disappointment…which has a tendency of leading to less hits and more disappointment.

On the other hand, if a baseball player understands that hitting just .400 will be wildly helpful to the team and help the team win lots of games and probably win themselves a lot of batting awards on top of it all…the player will be much less concerned with the imperfection…the fact that sixty percent of the time he’s failing at getting a hit.  The player isn’t focused on whining and complaining about missing sixty percent of the time because the forty percent success rate is just that…a success.

It’s a matter of focusing on greatness rather than perfection.

Perfection says when you step up to the plate you need to get a hit ALL the time.

Greatness says you need to step up to the plate and get a hit THIS time.

Perfection is great.

But greatness is rarely perfect. 

Step up to the plate with everything you have at that moment in time.  And then do it again and again.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

What’s Behind The Vault Door?

I was at a show this weekend at an old bank that had been converted into a venue. One of those banks the size of Grand Central Station, beautiful marble floors and massive columns…probably built sixty or seventy years ago when everyone had to actually go to the bank.

Downstairs there was a bank vault door. It looked like a door out of Mission Impossible.  A giant round door, five feet high and it was open so we could see it was two feet thick.

Two feet thick! It seems like that would have been a great place to keep the money, behind two feet of solid metal.

It was a very cool, very intimidating door.

So in order to have broken into the vault, you would have had to get good at chiseling your way through two feet of metal.  If you wanted to break through and obtain the riches behind the door, your adversary was a door that was impossible to break through.

You would have had to hammer and saw and scrape your way through the door…

Or…

You could find the combination.

See…now you’re not fighting two feet of metal any more, but working to discover the sequential numbers that will completely negate the impossible strength of the metal door.

If you have the combination, the door is meaningless.

If all you’re focused on is the door, it retains ultimate power.

We’re now in an era in the music business where there’s a doorman next to the door handing out combination codes to the ones willing to take their focus away from the door.

I can’t tell you what’s waiting in the vault for you, but I know you find out what’s behind that door.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Finding The Right Guitar Tone

How do you decide on the sound for the guitar solo when there are millions of possibilities? 

By already having practiced giving weight, value and commitment to your decisions.

There’s always going to be more sounds to try…but the trick is knowing when to stop trying and start moving on to the next work.

This doesn’t only apply to guitar solo tones.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com