Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve DeRosa
Maybe it's just me - you're talking about a room not much larger than a typical suburban basement here - but as a church musician I've played venues as large as 700 seats without amplification and without taxing my physical or artistic resources, and IME when you're playing more roots-oriented forms it lends a period aura that gets lost as soon as you plug in; anybody worth his/her performer's fee should be able to carry a 50-100 seat room with no problem, and if it's a matter of a rude audience - far too prevalent these days, and easily grist for its own thread - that's why them old bluesmen packed a .32 H&R and a straight razor...  |
I get your point, but most crowds aren't as polite as a church crowd. The truth of the matter is, unless you're in a house concert type setting, that the crowd will not keep it down so that the music can be heard. The general public is (generally) loud and obnoxious, and doesn't care about the music. So you wind up getting drowned out by the crowd, even if there are individuals present who would like to hear you. 50-100 people can be pretty darn loud. Add to that the sound of the commotion in the kitchen and beer bottles banging around and whatnot, and you've got a lot of noise to compete with. I've done a few gigs like that, and it's not very fun.
You certainly won't be heard if you're playing string bending blues with single note lines if you're unplugged in a public setting, so if playing unamplified is your bag, chord solos are the only way to actually be heard.