Foolin' With Your Gear On Stage

[Wadcutter]

I must admit that I don't attend too many concerts anymore. Too expensive and the ear drum shattering volume at these venues drives my tinnitus into the stratosphere. I have however attended about a half dozen smaller venue concerts of several not so famous electric guitar players over the past year and I have noticed a trend that seems to me somewhat annoying. Of course maybe that's just the way it is these days with all these new electronic gizmos available out there. The annoying (to me anyway) trend is the onstage non-stop fiddling and adjustment of the electric guitar players gear. It seems these guys spend an inordinate amount of time on stage tapping foot pedals and buttons, adjusting something or other on some panel on a stand next to them, screwing around with on board guitar knobs, man it never ends. And to tell you the truth, I really can't tell all that much difference after the "adjustment" has been made. In fact in most cases, I can't detect any. Seems to be less and less eyeball to eyeball contact with the audience and lots of attention paid to all these "adjustment" that the artist seems to think must be made to enhance the musical experience. I'm no electric guitar expert by any means, but as a simple observer of the electric scene, from what I've seen lately of this on stage behavior, well, it kinda turns me off. I say just play the doggone instrument and quit screwing around with all these stupid adjustments of this that and the other thing.

[jmccain]

These guys should attend each other's concerts and find out how tedious and boring it is for the audience.

A group I belong to increased our audience size (by several times as well as invitations by promoters) by aiming a camcorder at our audience and carefully reviewing their reactions during the performance. Since we often perform at festival-type events, audiences have many choices.

What we learned was what seemed like a few seconds of stage adjustments to us seem like eons to audiences and that lots of patter drives audiences away. Fast, clean transitions are what keeps and builds the crowd (as long as the content is good, too).

[srderby]

Growing up in the eighties I am a huge U2 fan. Lead guitarist Dave "The Edge" Evans uses a ton of effects but he is innovative and every one adds something substantial to the music. I think the trick is to know when the effect adds something and when it is just a distraction.

[cyclistbrian]

I always get a chuckle when reading an interview where the guitarist says "I keep my rig pretty simple." Usually what follows is some thing like "..its just my guitar plugged into my overdrive into my reverb into my echo into my delay into my flanger into my envelope filter into my............"

My band isn't guilty of messing with effects on stage but we are multi instrumentalists. Its been nagging at me that switching back and fourth creates dead space and kills the cadence of a show. This thread has inspired me to put together a more logical set list with less constant switching back and fourth.

[cyclistbrian]

I always get a chuckle when reading an interview where the guitarist says "I keep my rig pretty simple." Usually what follows is some thing like "..its just my guitar plugged into my overdrive into my reverb into my echo into my delay into my flanger into my envelope filter into my chorus into my............"

My band isn't guilty of messing with effects on stage but we are multi instrumentalists. Its been nagging at me that switching back and fourth creates dead space and kills the cadence of a show. This thread has inspired me to put together a more logical set list with less constant switching back and fourth.