For the Self-Employed...

Finance Tips for the Self-Employed

I agree with all five of these points.

BAD GIGS by Tuck Andress

What can go wrong? By Tuck Andress (of Tuck & Patti)



Borrowed guitar, different string spacing, bridge or nut sliding during string bending or vibrato, wrong strap length or strap breaking during solo, unwound guitar string used as backup strap gradually cutting through shirt and shoulder, sleeve snagging on bridge suddenly locking up hand, wrong pick, dropped pick, broken pick, no pick, pick stuck between strings, finger caught between strings, wrong strings, dead strings, sticky strings, blood on strings, broken strings, no extra strings, jar of honey spilled all over strings, vintage L-5's gig bag shoulder strap breaking immediately before album release concert for 5,000 people causing guitar to fall on concrete and creating crack from tailpiece to neck which gradually splits apart during performance with action getting higher and higher, amp too far away, amp too close, amp broken so play through bass amp or P.A., tone all wrong, overdrive bypass switch broken, cymbal in ear, band too loud, audience too loud, band downstairs too loud, bad monitors, no monitors, in-ear monitors broken so Patti is heard acoustically but Tuck is heard only through house PA 50 yards away resulting in Tuck being unavoidably out of sync with Patti by1/6 second for whole show, guitar buzz, RF from nearby transmitter louder than the music itself, brownouts making organ pitch fluctuate randomly over an octave range, power outage, equipment plugged into 230 volts immediately before show, earthquake during show in high-rise, outdoor desert performance at 131 degrees with sand-blasting winds, sub-freezing outdoor mountaintop performance with snow storms and 40 mph winds, high altitude dizziness, no sleep, no food, too much food, wrong food, food poisoning, fever, locked bathrooms, way too many liquids before long show, nagging suspicion that zipper is down, contact lens falling out during moment of peak concentration, compromised hand position due to repeatedly sliding full width of stage while trying to keep playing but not collide with Patti on yacht in rough Finnish Gulf of Bothnia, charts blown away by wind, charts on thermal fax paper, charts in wrong key, charts without bar lines, charts with bar lines all displaced by two beats, charts in bass clef or C clef, chord charts with do/re/mi (France) instead of C/D/E and everything else in Portuguese, realization that Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Pass, George Benson, Chaka Khan, Bobby McFerrin or Steve Gadd just walked in, drunks falling on stage, drunks disrobing on stage, drunks grabbing instruments or band members, band members falling asleep during song, pigs frolicking in sawdust-covered frat house knocking over band equipment, thinly veiled animosity between bride's and groom's families erupting into violence during heartfelt version of My Romance, nightly juggling of playing and operating the lighting console/footswitches and talking to audience members and trying to reign in tempos and egos of various fellow top-40 band members, arrival at duo gig with unbelievably loud, aggressive fuzz-wah hard rock bass player to discover that assignment is to back up elderly white-haired and white-suited gentleman singing unfamiliar country songs to unforgiving patrons, crowded upscale happy hour dance floor unraveling into pandemonium as normal-looking customers all collapse to the floor and writhe around on each other while astonished saxophone- playing duo partner walks out leaving helpless solo guitarist playing The Hustle for 25 minutes, funk bass player imprisoned in lounge band insisting on popping strings throughout sensitive ballads, accidental imprisonment of Patti in wine cellar out of earshot during guitar instrumentals, onstage and on-instrument living creatures with varying numbers of legs, belligerent drunken bowling alley lounge customer demanding that funk band play Debussy's Clair de Lune while remainder of band looks expectantly at guitarist, drummer watching ball game on portable TV with headphones throughout performance, guest singer repeatedly changing keys at random moments, realization that the people who have just boldly picked up instruments and are unexpectedly sitting in are Herbie Hancock and Wah Wah Watson, guns drawn at rehearsals to settle disputes about form of song, marginally famous singer resorting to the dreaded "Do you know who I am?" line, drummer and delusional would-be front man jumping off the drums in the middle of a song and mistakenly chanting "We don't need no drummer to keep that funky beat" to a dance floor packed with suddenly hostile former dancers, unstable band member deciding that it is his responsibility to educate the audience over the microphone, bass player playing random notes and rhythms because he is not a bass player at all but nonetheless booked the gig, drummer announcing that he killed somebody just before the show, swimming pool party turning into orgy with splashing on inexperienced solo electric guitarist sitting beside pool doing his first solo gig and fielding endless requests for the same song he had just played yet again, bride's and groom's special song evaporating from mortified solo musician's mind at the crucial moment, band member disappearing suddenly when his chair falls backwards off riser, unstable enormous man peaking on LSD brandishing artificial limb removed from his companion at audience
and threatening band to "sing with this", mirrors on back wall of club causing introspective young guitarist to question meaning of his life at early stage in career.

-Tuck Andress

Tip: Keep your credits updated...

For example my IMDB page.

Reading for the Studio

Through the years I've learned a lot of skills out shear necessity. One of these skills was learning to read a piano roll of midi. There is more information on the piano roll than there would be in just a chart of music notation. 

For example when you print a chart from a midi file the timing nuances quantize to the nearest eighth, sixteenth of thirty-second note, removing the anticipation or lag that the composer played into the midi file you are replacing. 

Also notated thoroughly in a piano roll as opposed to standard notation are the dynamics. In the case of the Logic piano roll the colors are your clue here. The spectrum from purple to blue to green to yellow to orange to red is similar to ppp, p, mp, mf, f, fff. You can pretty clearly see the dynamics just a glance. It's actually easier for me to read these dynamic markings than some random p's and f's below the notes I'm trying to read.

Since the advent of samples a composer has a growing number of options for articulations. Notice the chart below. In bar 10 through 13 there are octave D's. But that's not what the composer wanted. This is the chart created from the midi file. Each note is a different sample of an acoustic guitar. In the case of bars 10-13 the low D is a down strummed open D chord and the high D is an up strummed open D chord. Knowing that now look at those four bars. See, a very simple basic folk strumming groove. 

Ah, but I know what you are thinking, "why are the B notes up an octave in bar 14?". Good question. The octave, in this guitar sample, determines the tonality. If the B's were in the same octaves as the D's then they would be major chords, but what is needed here is a B minor chord strummed. Therefor the octave change. The higher octaves are minor chords. Cool huh? The chords in this cue are D, Bm, G, Em and A. All common chords in the key of D

One of my latest sessions...

Justin Bieber - All I Want Is You

(Under the Mistletoe)

I played my Gibson Dove (double tracked), my Larivee Parlor strung high-strung (also double tracked) and G&L for the power chords in the choruses (oh, double tracked).