The ol' self-doubt (5 Viewers)

[Pantone247]

Originally posted by Alex
because everytime we're about to perform live I can't know if that "X Factor" will be there or not... and this makes the difference between a nice song and a killer tune

Any ideas/comments/suggestions?

Cocaine?

 

[Theseus Mock]

Originally posted by Juno
I've noticed that in certain music circles it's not knowing how to play your guitar that counts - it's knowing every fucking thing about them

The "my guitar is better than yours" topic of conversation. I don't really get guitars, I don't own one but my two flat mates do. They *sometimes* let me play in which I show them how they should be playing.* All these pedals and yokes, one setting for a nice sound, 99 for shitty sounds. What gives?

funk sucks!


* let it be known I don't know how to play and even failed trying to learn the few chords of blister in the sun!

 

[Theseus Mock]

Originally posted by Alex
"X Factor"

do yiz remember the "You're a Star" auditions when that ulgy guy was striving for the X factor? Class.

Why bother worrying about the X factor when you can just get drunk?

 

[Speed Racer]

Originally posted by Latex lizzie
..thats not the way I look at it. Some people call certain music noise, others call it music..when does it become one or the other..what's the criteria how many chord changes and augmented fifths do you have to have?

You don't have to have any particular chord standards in your songs, just use them as a guide or contrast for the melody thats in your head. So if your brain is coming up with melodies which really need augmented fifths to realise the song, so be it. I'm personally just tired of the noise passing off as music. Seems like a cop out to me. So many bands do it nowadays, I believe in discipline, thru lots of discipline comes new direction.

Bands of the 60 and 70's were WAAAY more competant instrumentalists than bands nowadays. And they made albums once a year, not every 3 or 4.

 

[SONYMEGADRIVE]

Originally posted by Alex
Any ideas/comments/suggestions?

perhaps you could rent this instructional video!

hope it helps!

 

[herv]

Originally posted by conor
constant worry, not so much for other people's benefit besides not wanting to look/sound like a tit.

likewise. i think about 50% of what i do is rubbish and its only by constant self critism that i can actually develop stuff. but i wont spend forever perfecting stuff, i get really fed up if i'm working more than a week on something. if it sounds a little rough in the recording but i'm happy with all the sounds, arrangement and then like, then to hell with cleaning it up. its a done track.

 

[Ed]

X-Factor: when used for describing music it roughly translates as - "i don't have a fucking clue why anyone would bother their asses to buy this vomit inducing moronic shite"

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by Ed
X-Factor: when used for describing music it roughly translates as - "i don't have a fucking clue why anyone would bother their asses to buy this vomit inducing moronic shite"

OK, I misused the term then... what I meant is that sometimes you play a song and it really rocks, then you play it again and for some strange reason it's not the same: maybe it's all correct but it doesn't sound as good and you can't figure out why, see what I mean?

 

[egg_]

Originally posted by herv
i get really fed up if i'm working more than a week on something

A week? Jesus! Em ... am I alone here in being the sort of fella who'll keep chipping at something for years? If I have an idea I think is good it'll take at least a few months before it makes it into a song that appears at a Stoat gig ... and then it can be taken out of the set, reconfigured and tried out again in a new guise (sometimes contained within a totally different song).
As for recording ... Stoat recorded the first version of 'I wish I was stoned' (with different lyrics) on a 4-track in 1992.

... having said that, I don't sit down to "compose" very regularly ...

 

[Jimmy Magee]

Originally posted by Alex
Apparently it's something you can't really control and this drives me nuts because everytime we're about to perform live I can't know if that "X Factor" will be there or not... and this makes the difference between a nice song and a killer tune

Any ideas/comments/suggestions?

Well, I find this as well...one thing I find helps is to rehearse a good bit before the gig, and not play in the meantime...this way, the stuff is fresh, so you can get into it that bit more, which is I think the difference...the aim is to play naturally (i.e. not having to think about technical issues), and to, er, "feel" it properly...then, hope it comes out right. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Like being "in the zone" in sporting parlance...if you think too much about it, it doesn't work either...

 

[Jimmy Magee]

Originally posted by egg_
A week? Jesus! Em ... am I alone here in being the sort of fella who'll keep chipping at something for years?

No....I feel your pain

 

[Ed]

Originally posted by Alex
OK, I misused the term then... what I meant is that sometimes you play a song and it really rocks, then you play it again and for some strange reason it's not the same: maybe it's all correct but it doesn't sound as good and you can't figure out why, see what I mean?

Ah, i thought you were talking about the way people refer to travis as having an x-factor. I tend not to read things properly

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by Ed
Ah, i thought you were talking about the way people refer to travis as having an x-factor. I tend not to read things properly

You're grand

Travis having an X-Factor? Well.... that sounds just silly. However, I HATE the media: you see? Just because they talked a lot of shit about the "X-Factor" someone can't mention it in a discussion. Pricks

 

[egg_]

Originally posted by michaelknight
one thing I find helps is to rehearse a good bit before the gig, and not play in the meantime...

Stoat is the opposite - we need to practise the day of a gig to be relaxed enough to play at our best
We also often play gigs where one of us will think we were bad while the other two will think we were good - very rare we're all happy with a gig (partly caused by the tension between being relaxed enough to enjoy it and concentrating enough to play right)

 

[silo]

Originally posted by egg_
and then it can be taken out of the set, reconfigured and tried out again in a new guise (sometimes contained within a totally different song).

that's really rocking. the fugazi dvd has a couple of examples of them doing stuff just like this. i approve. this isn't self-doubt, it's evolution.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by egg_
A week? Jesus! Em ... am I alone here in being the sort of fella who'll keep chipping at something for years? If I have an idea I think is good it'll take at least a few months before it makes it into a song that appears at a Stoat gig ... and then it can be taken out of the set, reconfigured and tried out again in a new guise (sometimes contained within a totally different song).

mmmm dunno about this... sure it doesn't work for us. Every single time we tried to change a song we waisted a lot of time and ended up scrapping it.

All the tunes I really love were actually written in half an hour and we never changed them. Sure it takes a while to refine/arrange them

 

[egg_]

I was really enjoying the whole artistic discussion buzz going on there for a while
<sigh>
Pete, any chance you'd split all the hissing and scratching off to a different thread?

 

[the pope]

self doubt is a good thing though, cos if you think you're a genius a then you're not got to try and improve are you?

its an artists responsibility to be all 'that sounds like fuckin' swervedriver maaaaaann' n stuff.

however lack of confidence could render someone unable to play their stuff in public. i suffered from terrible stage fright for ages and to this day have never spoken through a microphone to a crowd... i can hide behind my yamaha though...

 

[Knacker]

Ah.. the Spiders aren't too bad.
I believe they're very web-based though.

I'm still the only person who voted Darius.

 

[MDR]

aaah, nothing gets rid of that self doubt like having to defend your band eh?

Speedy, glad you liked my cd.

Rad alarm, stop ratting on people to your uncle pete.

..now if I could just get my 'back on topic' crane and lift this fucker to where it should be...

...yeah, the whole self doubt thing - I have so many really good cd's in my collection and really, there is no need to bring one single more crap song into the world, so I don't feel in a hurry to write stuff - I'm sorta like egg_ on this one - after all, I reckon I'm lucky if I get the chance to release another album or two in me lifetime, so I'm prepared to be patient.

By the way speedy, have you heard the rollers/sparkers ep? - I bought it at the weekend and I think it's excellent - been listening to hardly anything else for the past few days - I only ask because you said you liked 'smile' by the beach boys before and this has elements of that but elements of noise too - I reckon you'd actually like it.